System crashes, Video Hardware Error?

[Rhiot]

I've had my computer, and Alienware Aurora R2 for about five years now, and I've updated it's ram from 4 to 16GB, and boosted the graphics card from what it was, to an AMD HD7700, and everything else is just about the standard fare for 5 years ago. For the last few years, I've been having problems with my PC crashing. I always thought it was some part of the PC that I needed to replace (Ram, Graphics card), but nothing's worked. I've updated drivers, performed a system restore, even re-installed my OS (An Alienware specific version of windows 7).

I have no idea what's causing it, but this is the crash:

Screen freezes, if I'm on skype or voice chat, the headphones go silent, but out of my speakers comes a stuttered, garbled sound of what was already playing on my screen. I took a short video clip while I was playing a game and the crash occurred. The crash happens at random, but seemingly mostly when I'm playing a Tank in the War Thunder game (depicted on screen) or when I'm downloading/updating/patching new games. The crash itself, however, can occur anywhere at any time, and has. Youtube videos, music programs, or just when my computer is sitting there, or if I open a new program, the crash is prone to happen at any time. Sometimes when the crash occurs, there is no sound at all. But most of the incidents have that garbled noise.

Also the sound isn't a loop, it's whatever is and was going to play. For instance if a video was saying "Nice to meet you" and it froze on the word "to", if I waited long enough, the stuttered sound would continue to play out "meet you" in the garbled manner.

Here's the link to the 11 second clip I took, TODAY, immidiatly before coming to this forum.

https://youtu.be/aEefA-V5Isk

(I'm an amatuer, don't expect anything ocsar-worthy)

After checking the Windows Reliability Tool, it mentioned there was a Video Hardware Error.
The error technical details are as follows:

Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: FFFFFA800D071010
BCP2: FFFFF88004229CAC
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1
Bucket ID: X64_0x117_Tdr:2_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys
Server information: 9b93cf98-61ca-45fe-be53-3584571c2683


If anyone can help me figure this out, please let me know.

[Allan]

I think the error messages is pretty self-explanatory ("A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly."). It's being caused by either the video card or driver.

[Spoiler]

Make sure your graphics card has all the power connectors firmly plugged into it. And you can try to reseat the card. Next check to see if you have the latest drivers.

After you have done this you can take a look at the temperature of the graphics card. If it goes too high, which might be because of you getting a bad model or the heatsink sitting wrong and getting massive heat spikes.

[Rhiot]

I previously THOUGHT I had all my drivers updated. I visited AMD's site and got the auto-detect (I ran this a month ago, and nothing was new, or the download had been corrupted and didn't display anything properly) and there -was- in fact a driver update needed. I also downloaded a program to monitor my heat, and my GPU idles at about 38-40C, while in game it runs at about 68-70C, and I beleive that's the norm (from the site I got the program from).  After updating my driver, I was able to play War Thunder (The game that crashed me in 90% of my games) and played four matches without a crash.  I'm hopeful, but it'll take another day or two for me to be sure.

I appriciate the help, and I guess I needed someone with more tech knowledge than me to state the obvious, because I have the dumb.