Recently stuff started going awry which I posted about here but stuff is continuing and changing so I think I need to ask more generally.

The issue:

I am getting pretty regular driver errors with the pop-up below. They don't happen in all games but in the games they do occur in they happen quite frequently eg. Ori losing focus every 30 mins or so.

I am also now experience super slow hard drive speeds. Loading takes ages (Wolf Among Us) and this defrag I have begun has been at 1% for over an hour, I know they are long but that seems longer than normal. Below I've posted the stats which say it's "Good" but it doesn't feel that way.

These two are constant but I am also getting some SUPER weird one off stuff as well. I alt tabbed out of Wolf Along Us and it told me Direct X 9 had stopped working. I got a similar looking but different worded pop-up with KOTOR 2 saying Open GL had stopped working.

I'm running Windows 7, using 350.12 drivers for my Nvidea GTX 580 and my HDD is a Western Digital Caviar Black.

And as I typed this I got a flash to black screen and driver error, wasnt even in a game. I know this is quite broad but hopefully someone can give me some vague direction to move in.

Your videocard issue sounds like overheating or poor connection. Check if your card sits tight in your motherboard and install SpeedFan or MSI Afterburner to check videocard temps. Enable logs, so you would know what the temp was when driver crashes.

@evilrazer: It's not the temps, speccy, afterburner and GPU Meter all report normal so maybe it's how it's seated. I've given it a press in and it hasnt happened since but to be fair it hasnt been that long either. Thanks for the tip though.

Nvidia put out a hotfix to try an deal with a lot of their TDR's a day or two ago, very common with Chrome users. Outside of that the drive might just be toast, I'd recommend swapping it out.

14% free space on the C drive can't be helping.

@cwniles: that would cause substantial defrag time as well as increase load time for a bunch of stuff.

@evilrazer: @cwniles: I had considered that, but it does feel like it got much worse very suddenly. I'm running CHKDSK now so I'll probably have to report in a few hours but thanks for the recommendations.

I just figured out that my first hard drive ever was going bad on me last week; it still technically works, but my computer has been getting progressively worse over the last month.

The windows scan didn't pick anything up, so I downloaded the western digital drive checker and it found so many errors with the drive.

I'd give that a try.

As a general rule, I never let a hard drive (especially the drive my O/S is on) get below 35% free space.......just a thought but any chance of using that Elements drive (I assume that is an external drive) for the Windows page file (virtual memory)? It would free up a little space on your O/S drive and, if performance improves, will give you some clues on the cause(s).

It may not be your biggest problem but like I originally said, 14% free space is certainly not helping and if it's not already causing a problem, it will be soon enough. (hope I am not coming off like a jerk, just trying to be clear).

Good luck.

That seems excessive, where did this 35% figure come from?

Just from my own personal and professional experiences. If your O/S drive is kept clean and you don't install programs or store media etc. on it, I guess you could cut 10% to 15% off that figure but all I said was that "as a general rule, I never let a hard drive get below 35% free space" and no, I don't think that is excessive at all, especially as just a guideline.

I'd call that a bad hard drive.

Okay so I've cleared up some space and now have 300 gigs free. Running a defrag now which it still says will take a while but we'll see. On the plus side I haven't seen any driver errors since I reseated the GPU so fingers crossed that was the issue.

@believer258: It's quite old so I wouldn't be surprised but all the health checks come away saying good. Could a bad hard drive be giving good reports?

@hayt: How old? Even if whatever health checks you're running are coming back good, an HDD that's more than a few years could still be getting close to the end of its lifespan. I'd at least recommend backing it up. How much did clearing data and defragging help?

@believer258: It's about 4 years old. Bought it September 2011. To be honest I haven't actually checked in a game as yet since clearing the space. I'm running lots of tests and defrag stuff before I even try but they are still slow but its hard to tell if that's due to hdd issues or just defrags being slow (i typically do them then go to work so I dont actually have a solid concept).

Have you tried a fresh install of Windows? I mean a full format-the-hard-drive-and-start-anew fresh install, not just a Windows 8 refresh or whatever. That should help, even if the HDD is starting to go.

It's entirely possible that your hard drive is fine and your Windows installation is just too gunked-up to go on. That can happen, especially in a gaming PC where things are constantly being installed and uninstalled and drivers are being installed on top of old drivers all the time. However, 4 years is still a pretty good lifespan for a hard drive - if a fresh install of Windows solves your issues, I'd still recommend getting an external HDD to back everything up on.

Okay wow things are getting even worse. I've had it totally reboot on me twice now and when it returned from the boot my audio drivers were missing and my mouse would move the cursor but not click. These both fixed themselves as drivers were redownloaded automatically but I'm increasingly alarmed. It seems to be running games fine (i played a whole episode of Wolf Among Us without issue) except for just now when Ground Zeroes caused a full reboot.

I'm maybe thinking this could be a power supply issue. Considering I had planned to carry over my psu to my new build I'd like to know if there's anyway to troubleshoot the power?

I'm already moving stuff to my external and planning to reinstall windows but I'd like to know if any part of this pc is busted

Edit: huh, in backing up my important files I've got a "Cannot find the file" error on an item I see right there. Worrying.

A powersupply issue capable of the magical act of vanishing drivers?

personally, i think it sounds more like a hard drive in the process of dying.

A reboot could be caused by the powersupply, sure, but also by pretty much any other component as well.