BleepingComputer.com: Vista Home Premium 64Bit Display issues.

I have Home premium (64bit version) and am running the following equipment:
I7 920 Processor
8 Gig Ram
X58 EVGA Motherboard
GTX280 Nvidia Graphics Card
On board realtek high def sound device

Samsung Syncmaster T240 Monitor

OS boots fine every time but then when I try to use an application such as a Game, IE or Thunderbird mail the screen will scramble to a wierd mix of primary colours. I then have to reboot. After rebooting it is usually then okay for hours or until I reboot again. Very occasionally this will happen 3x or so in a row and its damn annoying.

I have the latest NVidia 64 bit drivers and have checked the performance / reliability monitor etc. Registers a crash but it isnt telling me what to do about it.
I also made sure I have the latest realtek 64bit sound drivers.

The samsung T240 Syncmaster monitor doesnt seem to have a specific 64bit driver but the Microsoft web pages do list it as compatible

I do have an item on my device manager with an exclamation against it: A0T6V5D8 IDE Controller - Its saying there is a problem with this and the device will not work as it cannot load device drivers. (code 39) When I look at the driver its trying it isnt digitally signed so i guess that could be the issue but I have no idea what this is for. I assume its driving one of the 3 hard drivers I have installed though. But again this confuses me as they are all working. When I click the option to update driver it is unable to find a new driver.


Has anyone else seen these symptoms before and have an idea whats causing it? Would much appreciate any guideance or a nudge in the right direction if anyone has any ideas for this problem.

Appears to be resolved. Almost by accident. had still been having this issue. Due to the scrambling of the display I couldnt see any error message. Tried taking out various mem sticks etc etc and going through a process of elimination to get to the cause. After a long time taking out components and reinstalling them I eventually got to my various drives. (All SATA)

I use four SATA harddrives of various sizes. Eventually after taking all but one out my system became totally stable. Was not my imediate thought of something that would cause the problem so it hadnt occur to me even to look at this. After adding them back in the display scrambling issue returned.

After some hunting around I found that I am not the only one experiencing the same problem. There is an update to the nvidia motherboard chipset on the EVGA website which sorts out the issue on my motherboard. EVGA X58 SLI.

The ones dealing with the SATA controller. I updated these chipset drivers and the problem seems to have largely cleared. Been fine for five hours now so hopefully the issue is cleared completely.

SIDENOTE: I am not sure if it was part of the cure or not but I also deinstalled various virtual drives as a precaution. (Though I still have one 2 installed and it works fine.) Trying to remove another one of these from a legacy install of magic iso which refuses to go away anyway but it doesnt appear to be involved in this probelm.