Strange crash screen with visual artifacts?

[unt4bl]

Okay let me begin with how the computer was left of and how i discovered the crash, so last night i left the computer to sleep with nothing new installed on it from weeks, this morning upon waking it up and logging into windows i got an Adobe Flash player update, at this point i'm not sure if the update downloaded and installed or because I opened chrome and I saw a tiny artifact around the cursor and then the screen just went grey, no blue screen of death or infact no error message the screen remained grey until i restarted and went into safe mode. In safe mode none of those problems occur i can open web browser etc.

Pc Specs:
i5-2310 2.9ghz
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
8gb ram
GTX 680 (palit oem)
Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium

What I have done so far:
- Uninstalled drivers (in safe mode) and have removed any leftovers with Display Driver Uninstaller
- Installed older version of video drivers that i haven't seen this issue with.

After i did those i came back into normal boot, and opened the web browser again (Chrome) and i saw the artifact again around cursor and along the top of the screen, but this time ended with a plain blue screen no screen of death so far. I have googled this issue and nothing significant comes up.
My question is what is causing this and can it be the flash player update?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Quick followup, I just did a 3D Mark Fire Strike test with no crash or artifacts from GPU I haven't yet come across the error yet I have opened the browser just once, but I am still insecure of using the computer.

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

It could still be a GPU issue problem. It seems when the GPU is running in 2d mode it has instability. It has been a while and maybe someone can correct me. I think msi afterburner you can force 100% GPU utilization of force 3d rendering just to confirm my theory.

Also make sure you driver sweep the old drivers and don't use a BETA driver.

 

[Wraith]

Check the Event Viewer! and let us know what that says.

 

[unt4bl]

@Wraithguard
I checked the Event viewer and im not sure for what to look for not familiar with it (should i take a look at Critical, Error, Warning etc. in the overview and summary tab or somewhere else?)

@KING_OF_SAND
I already sweeped and removed all old drivers, current driver that I'm using is 344.11whql

 

[Wraith]

@Wraithguard
I checked the Event viewer and im not sure for what to look for not familiar with it (should i take a look at Critical, Error, Warning etc. in the overview and summary tab or somewhere else?)

Look into the Windows logs, specifically the Applications. and pay attention to warnings and criticals, keep in mind your last known installed software it'll give you a good idea as to what's wrong.

 

[unt4bl]

These are some from the System tab:
Error
Source: DistributedCOM EventID: 10005
DCOM got error "1084" attempting to start the service WSearch with arguments "" in order to run the server:
{9E175B6D-F52A-11D8-B9A5-505054503030}

Error
Source: Service Control Manager EventID: 7001
The Computer Browser service depends on the Server service which failed to start because of the following error:
The dependency service or group failed to start.

Warning
Source: Wininit EventID: 11
Custom dynamic link libraries are being loaded for every application. The system administrator should review the list of libraries to ensure they are related to trusted applications.

These are some from the Applications tab:
Error
Source: WMI EventID:10
Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.


All of the above are repeated and are the only ones i see from today as an error/warning.

 

[Wraith]

Uninstall Chrome and flashplayer (completely) reboot, then reinstall them both to see if you can recreate the issue. It would appear that when you updated flashplayer, it has corrupted or removed a required .DLL file which Chrome needs. Chrome has been plagued with bugs since the last update.

 

[unt4bl]

Okay I just rebooted the PC and as I launched IE to download flash player etc. I saw squares on the screen with artifacts and then this came up "Windows Kernel Mode Driver v344.11 stopped working and has recovered." this has happened to me before when for example i play games for a long period keep alt+tabbing and it will end up crashing like that but it will go in a way that sound will freeze and then screen will restart and it will just recover. In this situation is artifacts screen restart and recover.

How should I take this, graphics card is dead or driver issues? Should i do some error report or something if anybody has an idea?

 

[Wraith]

v344.11? The latest WHQL driver is v344.48.. can you uninstall the display drivers and run it generically without drivers (I know it's a pain) and see if it replicates the artifacts. This should rule out either hardware or software fault.

 

[unt4bl]

I had the computer run with no drivers, and the problem didn't come up when i upgraded to the latest drivers however it didn't fix a thing, and what ended up happening was the issue with the plain blue screen. Idk what the issue is but its so frustrating, i was thinking of flashing the BIOS, would that help with anything?

 

[Wraith]

So the issue only appears when you have drivers installed, which PSU do you have?

 

[unt4bl]

It does seem like it there was no issues while all drivers were uninstalled + safemode was fine but that doesn't mean anything. The PSU i have is CoolerMaster GX 650W I have had it for 2-3 years roughly.

ATM I took out the graphics card and all the pins that go into the mother board as I haven't open the PC for a quite while so I just opened it and cleaned most of it just incase fluff/dust is stopping anything.

EDIT: turned it on it just happened again with drivers installed
EDITv2: this error happened i believe right before i crashed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950375 should i do on what they advise me to?
EDITv3: i think its coming down to motherboard/psu issues as its getting crashes from rondom, did some furmark no artifacts or anything i closed it 30 secs after i open afterburner and it crashes as the program is launched