Here's a strange one

[Tipsy Turtle]

Running this on a Pentium D(yeah I know but it was cutting edge at the time) system, 2gb ram, Radeon x1950 Pro with the latest ATI/AMD drivers.

Occasionally my display goes black/blinks for a second or two. Doesn't seem to be any pattern. Sometimes I'm on a webpage, sometimes I'm in Word, etc....

Anyone seen similar happenings?

Solutions?

Ideas?

Punt?

Thanks!

 

[Lord Banshee]

My vista machine does this when the UAC pop-up comes up... other than that i have yet to notice it in my machine.

 

[Aberforth]

Originally posted by: Tipsy Turtle
Running this on a Pentium D(yeah I know but it was cutting edge at the time) system, 2gb ram, Radeon x1950 with the latest ATI/AMD drivers.

Occasionally my display goes black/blinks for a second or two. Doesn't seem to be any pattern. Sometimes I'm on a webpage, sometimes I'm in Word, etc....

Anyone seen similar happenings?

Solutions?

Ideas?

Punt?

Thanks!

• Did you upgrade your RAM recently?

• Pentium D's suck more power. You need atleast 500-550 W PSU- you have power hungry CPU and graphics card

• Try lowering the resolution and see if the problem persists, if it doesn't happen then its the clear case of insufficient Power

• Windows Vista uses your GPU for rendering graphics by default - you might notice this problem more often in Vista than Windows XP.

or maybe your mainboard is not able to deliver enough power.

 

[jedisponge]

Also make sure your monitor's plugged in correctly. It happens to me since I have to move my monitor more often than I like, so the DVI isn't always screwed in.

I'm sure this is probably not the reason, but it may be so inane that you could be overlooking it.

 

[shekondar]

I'm having a similar issue - only on mine Vista will completely hang and I have to reboot. No error messages or BSOD, the screen just goes blank (and the power light on my PC turns off, but the NumLock light on the keyboard stays on). Also, no meaningful error messages in any of the system logs - the only error that shows up says that the system wasn't shut down properly last time. The first time it did this was when I plugged in a flash drive - it came back up after a couple seconds. Then it started doing it more often after I installed Symantec Anti-Virus (corporate edition, 10.2) - this fixed it for a day or so but now it's doing it again.

I'm running Vista Business on a 3.06 GHz P4 with 2 GB RAM, Radeon 9500 Pro with the drivers from the Vista CD. I don't think it's a memory or power supply issue because I also have Win2K installed on a second hard disk, and it runs just fine (and always has).

 

[Tipsy Turtle]

Originally posted by: Aberforth

Originally posted by: Tipsy Turtle
Running this on a Pentium D(yeah I know but it was cutting edge at the time) system, 2gb ram, Radeon x1950 with the latest ATI/AMD drivers.

Occasionally my display goes black/blinks for a second or two. Doesn't seem to be any pattern. Sometimes I'm on a webpage, sometimes I'm in Word, etc....

Anyone seen similar happenings?

Solutions?

Ideas?

Punt?

Thanks!

• Did you upgrade your RAM recently?

• Pentium D's suck more power. You need atleast 500-550 W PSU- you have power hungry CPU and graphics card

• Try lowering the resolution and see if the problem persists, if it doesn't happen then its the clear case of insufficient Power

• Windows Vista uses your GPU for rendering graphics by default - you might notice this problem more often in Vista than Windows XP.

or maybe your mainboard is not able to deliver enough power.

Haven't upgraded the RAM since I built the system new.

I have a 620w power supply

Tried that. Same issue when running various resolutions.

 

[Tipsy Turtle]

Originally posted by: jedisponge
Also make sure your monitor's plugged in correctly. It happens to me since I have to move my monitor more often than I like, so the DVI isn't always screwed in.

I'm sure this is probably not the reason, but it may be so inane that you could be overlooking it.

Tried that. Sadly I'm getting the same result. Even switched the DVI connections that I was plugging into on the card itself.

The strangeness continues.

 

[Aberforth]

maybe its a faulty graphics card. This is not a driver or OS fault just remember that because I've noticed similar problems with multiple operating systems using same hardware. This is a hardware problem. This problem also occurs if you play DirectX Games in Windowed mode.

EDIT: try updating the BIOS too

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=61254

 

[Tipsy Turtle]

I have a hard time believing it is the card. I have had is since October and have played a whole lot of Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty and WoW with it and never had an issue.

 

[longhornlump]

This has happened to me a couple of times. I get this when I use older applications that can't be skined by aero. My screen will go black and either be followed by a message saying windows dekstop manager has switched into basic mode or an error has occured with window desktop manager.

 

[Tipsy Turtle]

I'm not getting any type of message, just the blink. It is happening in IE, Word, Media Player, etc.

Just odd