Display Driver Crash

[Ranma344]

This is happening increasingly often as I play games. My display drive will say that it has stopped responding and been recovered after the screen has completely turned black and then reset. Some times this error goes as far as causing my computer to get the blue screen error saying that it could not restart the driver. This issue has plagued me since I bought the computer, and has recently been getting worse.

I believe I am using an nVidia Geforce 8600M GT. I have updated to the newest drivers, although Dell doesn't seem to like me doing that... and I have also made sure and run a driver sweeping program in between switches. Is there any possible way to fix this?

[Salem]

Do you have adequate cooling?

Games will stress the hardware, so it seems to me the card just runs into thermal shutdown after a while.

Further, since you've had this a while, cooling could be further hampered by the build-up of dust around the fans and heatsinks.

A better fan, and a clean perhaps?

[Ranma344]

I clean my laptop on a regular basis, hitting every possible area. I don't believe the computer is getting overheated, as I have had this problem occur during a test I setup to check for that specifically.

This test included me using many external fans and winter air to keep my computer cool while the game was running, I still experienced the crashes.

[Ranma344]

Just adding some information, I just installed the TechPowerUp GPUTool and monitored my GPU temp while playing the game. It never once made it above 57C and I still got a blue screen error.