update your graphics drivers

I went to the nvidia site. Went to the drivers section. Had it auto-detect my settings. Download program. It installs/updates w/e for awhile. Tells me that the NVIDIA Installer Failed. It says essentially that it attempted 4 things.

1. NVIDIA Update (Not installed)
2. PhysX System Software (Not Installed)
3. nView (Not installed)
4. Graphics Driver (Failed)

Went to a different section and it told me to download the same thing. Am running that now just incase it was a bad download or something.

Edit: Same outcome.

Uninstall your existing drivers first. Alternatively, try to install after a clean boot.

I had similarish problems a few months ago when installing the nvidia drivers, I think it worked after a reboot though.

Did custom installation > clean installation > it seems to be working... i'll report back in edit after it's done

edit: chuck testa, it failed.

Unless you can get the drivers installed, I would say the graphics card is bad.

Graphics drivers don't seem to be the culprit here, but it's certainly something to do with graphics. Here's a number of things I would try:

uninstall old driver software (check tweakguides.com for some tips) and attempt to install latest, 1 month ago, 6 months ago drivers.
Use HWMonitor to check the temperatures under stress. Clean graphics card/rest of computer. Compare temperatures just for your sake.
run something like prime95 or OCCT to see if there's any sort of crashing.
Backup everything, reformat and reinstall windows.

Also when uninstalling the drivers, uninstall and reboot so windows starts up with default microsoft drivers, then install the new ones.

Updated drivers successfully. I unchecked everything except the install drivers (see above post for the four things that it was trying to do beforehand), and then ran it, and it actually worked.