Hi all,

I have the Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 Card and the drivers are up to date. Periodically though my screen will go black and after it returns to desktop I get a message .

It doesn't happen all that often and it doesn't seem to effect anything. I'm just wondering if it might be an indication of a pending problem with my video card.

I have an alienware X51 computer and it is still under warranty but calling Dell is really a chore and I don't want to go through the hassle unless necessary. Any thoughts?

I found tons of hits on this error message and at least as many possible reasons for it. Hopefully Inland or Jenny will have some help for you.

A lot of things can cause it.

Someone at battle.net put up a guide to the possible causes.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/14058227079

If it's happening when you're NOT playing a game or stressing the video card in some way, there is an interesting post at ***EVGA forums*** from thexcodec that might be relevant...

A little too confusing for this feeble brain. However the good news is that I'm not alone and doing nothing doesn't seem to have any ill effects. If, down the road, it becomes a significant problem I'll bite the bullet and call Dell tech support. It takes forever and it's like pulling teeth but the good news is that I'm covered for in house repair. Sometimes when I call and I get someone with an accent I can't understand I just hang up and call again until I get someone who can at least speak my language understandably.

Thank you Jenny for your help.

NVidia cards will shut down if the cpu on the card overheats. That could produce symptoms similar to what you stated. Inspect the board for dust etc., clean it if necessary, and make sure the air flow is adequate.

Robert

Is that the skinny model like the one pictured here
http://www.pcworld.com/product/1179403/alienware-x51-mini-system-desktop.html

With my last video card, I would receive the same error message as described in this thread. It would happen about once a month or so. It never seemed to affect anything adversely and appeared to be just an annoyance. I don't remember if it ever happened while I was playing a game. I remember it happening once when I was browsing the internet.

Nothing useful in what I posted above, I know, but I always wondered what caused it.

Hmmm... if it is that skinny one, then Robert Gault's suggestion about overheating would make perfect sense.

That's the one I've got.

Skinny cases like that tend to overheat more than regular cases.
It's strange that Alienware, which makes itself out to be a gaming computer company, would use skinny cases for their computers.

You might try monitoring your computer temperature with HWMonitor
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
or some other temperature-monitoring utility.

If temperatures are normally on the high side, you might try to find some way to provide additional cooling -- maybe putting the computer on top of a large laptop cooler like this guy did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btwqw1_x7fA