[Windows 8.1] Display driver crashing

[jimmeh13nitsaw]

System specs
Windows 8.1 64 bit
i5-4670k
GTX 770
8GB RAM
ASUS Z87-A
I am also running a 2 monitor set up with my main monitor being 144hz and my secondary being 60hz.

So I hadn't played this game in several months until last week when I played two long sessions with friends and the game was perfectly fine, as it was in the past. However the next day I played the game again and since then have kept having this issue where my game will randomly black screen and I can't see the screen, even if I tab out and in. The game will still be running and I can hear some noises and see my in-game cursor but I cannot see the rest of the game aside from a small black bar in the top-left corner of my screen.

I tested around and after putting the game in windowed mode and at a lower resolution I could see that when this black screen occurs I get a notification in the bottom-right corner saying either "The Nvidia display driver has crashed and successfully recovered" or, "The application was blocked from accessing the display driver".

When this error occurs the screen will keep freezing until I close the game.

I have tried a bunch of different possible fixes including:

• Uninstalling my Nvidia driver and installing an older one
• Updating my Nvidia driver
• Editing the registry to add a line as advised here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...sponding-and-has-recovered-error-in-windows-7
• Changing the game's resolution and refresh rate
• Turning Vsync off
• Editing the power settings from the Control Panel
• Force DirectX9 in the Launch Options

I am kind of out of ideas here. I checked my GPU temps and they only reached 80C which seems normal to me. I can also run other games and even EU4 runs fine without this problem, so I believe that it's not a hardware problem.

I should mention that I did do a clean reinstall of CK2 and that did seem to fix the issues for 1 play session with the same friends but then the next day it went back to being broken again.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.

 

[AndrewT]

I checked my GPU temps and they only reached 80C which seems normal to me.

Not normal, that is certainly your problem. We'd normally see running temps in the 50s or 60s at most.

Clean out all air vents it has (compressed air cans are good for this). Make sure airflow to them is not blocked by anything like walls, books or whatever.
If that doesn't drop the temps enough, you probably have a faulty fan or a heatsink/thermal paste problem. You may need professional help at that point.

 

[jimmeh13nitsaw]

Okay so I cleaned out the inside of my PC with a compressed air canister and I also put vsync back on and I'm getting lower temps (50-60s) now. I just played for a few hours and it was fine. Thanks for the advice! Hopefully I should be good from now on.