Intermittent black screens w/ EVGA 6800GS on DFI NF4 ULTRA-D

[GusS]

I'm writing about some intermittent black screens I'm encountering with a new computer I just got. The specs are:
DFI NF4 Ultra D motherboard
Athlon 64 X2 3800+
EVGA 6800GS
OCZ 2x512 DDR400
Windows XP /w SP2

It seems I'm getting them whenever I do something that requires a refresh of some graphical elements. ex. click on a link that displays a new window, dragging the scrollbar of a window up and down. The screen gets momentarily frozen then a black screen appears for about a second. Another example: The file copy folder animation can cause the black screen to appear several times. Sometimes when bringing back a minimized window, its contents are not shown - only the title bar and window frame.

Interestingly this seems to only affect windows navigation - this does not happen in any games.

I tried the latest Nvidia drivers, the latest EVGA driver, and the EVGA drivers on the CD - same thing. Rarely and randomly small parts of the screen get garbled too. Refreshing the garbled area gets rid of it. Note that with the basic Windows VGA drivers the problem did not occur.

FWIW I also got a BSOD when installing Windows and couple of program crashes when installing Visual Studio 2005 and a Windows security update. None reoccured when I tried again.

Mobo BIOS date is 06/23/05 which appears to be up to date.

thanks for any help

 

[Triggerhappy007]

That's a wierd problem, have you thought about moving the card to the 2nd PCI-E slot? Just a thought. Also when you uninstall drivers, make sure you use "Drive Cleaner Pro" or similar software. Can you get a different PCI-E card to try?

 

[GusS]

Hi,
thanks for the suggestions. I'll try Driver Cleaner Pro. I tried moving it to the 2nd PCI-E slot but unfortunately the cable routing from the power supply inside the case (Antec P180) does not allow enough room to install the graphics card in the lower PCI-E slot. It could be done if I remove the fan in the PS cavity, and then route the cables via another opening which is closer to the front of the case, however this would be an immense hassle.

If all else fails, I'll try it. However before that I'll probably go buy another PCI-E card from a store that allows returns as I unfortunately only have an AGP Ti4200 at my disposal.

 

[shimsham]

probably not the same, but heres my exp from a few days ago.

i upgraded drivers, and games would give me that black screen for a moment, and then go back to normal looking, but run choppy. after a few times, it would just crash to the desktop. so i went back to the older drivers i was using, and it was still doing the same thing. used all the driver cleaners and reg cleaners, and still no dice.

so i thought "maybe this is one of those flukes where a driver borked my system for some reason or another". backed up all my stuff, reinstalled xp, and tried again. worked great for a while, but then started doing the same thing. so i started thinking power supply. popped the case, and good god at the dust. then it dawned on my that it had been a loooong while since i cleaned it out. the cpu hs was completely choked of any air flow. cleaned it up, new artic silver 5, and been running great for days now.

long story short, make sure youre case is clean and you dont have any heat issues.

as i said, probably not even related, but just be sure to check over the little things like that before you go all crazy and waste a lot of time and work.

 

[GusS]

shimsham - thanks for your input. the system is brand new and the temperature is steady at 37/46 (mobo/cpu)

here's an update:

-reformatted/reinstalled windows. installed only Forceware (nForce drivers).
Instead of momentarily hanging and giving me the black screen the system rebooted - which come to think of it has been consistent from the get go. It seems that the nVidia video drivers "converted" the less frequent reboots into more frequent momentary hangs and garbled window contents.

-got a diamond viper radeon x700 from the local best buy. swapped cards, it eventually gave me a bsod. Reformatted/reinstalled windows to start from a clean slate w/ the radeon. as i was trying to install the graphics driver the system rebooted.

Since the card is shorter than the 6800GS, I was able to put it in the second PCIE slot. Success. No bsod's during the windows installation, i then successfully installed the ati drivers and here I am writing this w/ the radeon in the pci slot.

So I will now have to take apart all the power wiring, remove the case fan in front of the PSU and re-rout the power cables through the aforementioned opening that's further away from the mobo in order to try to fit in the 6800GS

 

[A5]

Or you could RMA your mobo

 

[GusS]

Yeah I just might - I spoke too soon. Minutes after I hit the submit button, it rebooted and I was unable to boot back into windows w/ restoring a previous state.

Recommend a stable mobo w/ decent features pls