From Freezing to Blue Screens - Issues w/ Nvidia 960m Laptop Graphics Card

[LegendaryLeader]

Hello! So recently, I've been trying to get to the bottom of figuring out why my laptop was freezing.

(http/www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3058881/rog-asus-laptop-freezing-startup.html)

And here are the specs:
Asus GL551 15-inch Gaming Laptiop
Intel Core i7-4720HQ 2.6 GHz Processor
16 GB DDR3 RAM; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
1TB HDD Storage; DL DVD±RW/CD-RW
15.6 inches 1920*1080 pixels LED-lit Screen
Windows 10 Operating System; Red/Black Chassis

After searching and help from the community, I've been lead to the conclusion that the issue was a video driver issue. When starting up my laptop, it would immediately freeze within 1-5 minutes, so I went into safe mode, uninstalled the video driver my Nvidia 960x graphics card, and the freezing stopped. I decided to reinstall the driver (from windows) and the freezing continued again. This is the message I got.

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered. Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 353.54 stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

So I installed the video driver and decided to go to the official Nvidia website instead after it continued freezing. I downloaded the driver and got this message instead.

"Display driver stopped responding and has recovered. Display driver NVIDIA Windows Kernel Mode Driver, Version 365.19 stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

However, this time, it was even worse. Instead of freezing, I get the blue screen of death for every time I tried to start up my computer.

What could be the source of the problem? A hardware issue? Or Software?

How could I go about fixing this? Would using the warranty be a better alternative? I've owned this device for less than a year.

I barely play games on this computer, so it's a real surprise to me that the graphics card would suffer from hardware failure. However, what I do know is that there was one incident where I closed my laptop and placed into my backpack (much recently while I was going to work). I normally keep it in my laptop bag but this time I chose to place in my backpack. After closing my laptop, it was still running (so more heat was being generated) and after taking it out much later, it was hot. But it's hard to believe that this could possibly be the cause of it because this is the first and only time that this has happened.

Thank You!

 

[Colif]

have you done this: http/www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2767677/clean-graphics-driver-install-windows.html

does it cause errors with no drivers?

does graphics card show up in device manager? does it know its a card? I seen failed cards just show up in other devices

if you can't boot into windows to do any of this, download a win 10 install USB on another computer, and use it to boot off

you can get it here: https/www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10

to get to safe mode,
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot up installer and on page after languages, select repair this pc, not install
select troubleshoot
select advanced
select start up options
choose one of 3 Safe modes, pc will restart in safe mode

look in device manager or run ddu, whichever. I don't think you can install DDU in safe mode so might just need to remove nvidia drivers to old way. and then once you boot into desktop, install dduy and run it to make sure no Nvidia left before installing new version and hopefully get no errors.

 

[LegendaryLeader]

have you done this: http/www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2767677/clean-graphics-driver-install-windows.html

does it cause errors with no drivers?

does graphics card show up in device manager? does it know its a card? I seen failed cards just show up in other devices

if you can't boot into windows to do any of this, download a win 10 install USB on another computer, and use it to boot off

you can get it here: https/www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10

to get to safe mode,
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot up installer and on page after languages, select repair this pc, not install
select troubleshoot
select advanced
select start up options
choose one of 3 Safe modes, pc will restart in safe mode

look in device manager or run ddu, whichever. I don't think you can install DDU in safe mode so might just need to remove nvidia drivers to old way. and then once you boot into desktop, install dduy and run it to make sure no Nvidia left before installing new version and hopefully get no errors.

I apologize for taking a long while to reply. So I did as you said. I downloaded DDU which was completely safe, did a complete uninstall of the Nvidia Driver. Downloaded the latest driver from the Nvidia website. Upon starting up my laptop, there is no longer any more freezing. However, whenever I attempt to open up the Nvidia Driver Control Panel, the computer gets a blue screen. So I'm guessing that this is a hardware issue correct?

 

[Colif]

hardware sort of works though, you can't access all the options but you say you only bsod in the control panel, what about every where else. It could be the drivers

I didnt notice you had two threads running or I may not have answered. Did you get a answer is the other toms post?

 

[LegendaryLeader]

hardware sort of works though, you can't access all the options but you say you only bsod in the control panel, what about every where else. It could be the drivers

I didnt notice you had two threads running or I may not have answered. Did you get a answer is the other toms post?

In my other Tom's post, I was simply looking for a way to prevent freezing whenever I started up my laptop. Now that I know that the source of the problem was something Driver or Video Card related, I created this thread to solve this issue. I might do another clean uninstall again with DDU just to double check to see whether or not this is software related. Whenever I tried to run the Nvidia Control panel, the driver crashes. Also, when I ran the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, Nvidia Drivers crashed again. It seems that no matter what I run, that if its related to some way to my Nvidia Card 960m Card, it will crash.