For a week now, whenever I load up a game or internet explorer (GPU-rendering) the display driver crashes, with the following message "Display driver stopped working and has been recovered". this suddenly started happening with no recent updates nor installs of any software Asus P5W DH Q9550 @ 2.7 4GB corsair ddr6400 Radeon HD6970 Corsair AX 850W Corsair Force 115GB SSD 500GB WD 7200rpm At the moment I'm using Windows 8 preview and the problem still persists.. I have gone through: Windows 7 pro, Windows 7 home and @ this moment Windows 8 (Format C: everytime) I have tried different Display drivers, Cat 11.09 Cat 11.10 cat 11.11 cat 12.1a I have tried the latest drivers on my hardware (sound, mainboard, etc) even rolled back to previous versions I have checked all of the connectors/powercables on my mainboard, Taken out RAM-sticks to see if they were causing it. I have Removed the CD/DVDROM I have tried to disable the Display timeout function in "regedit", then the picture just hangs and will not reset, (duh) I'm at a loss.. Can't figure this out, I know that My Asus P5W DH is pretty old and I have had issues with it when i bought my CPU, had to downclock since my mainboard ain't up to the task running the CPU at full speed, (FSB bottleneck), I have tried downclocking as low as possible without any improvement. it has been workeding flawlessly the past four months (had an E6600 clocked @ 3.6 before my "new" CPU) A little research into the matter leads to "Event ID 4101 Display driver stopped and has been recoverd" and many others are experiencing the same problem, as me, Nvidia, AMD/ATI, Intel. It seems as if it's not locked to one manufacturer. This is why I am at a loss.. is my motherboard the culprit? my GPU? or some other hardware? I doubt it. well I'm considering on purchasing a new Mainboard, that will certainly help alot, then I can Finally push my CPU beyond reference clocks. but I bet the problem will persist on a new mainboard as others have noted. Rant off.. any input?