5 replies to this topic

[colosssus]

About a month ago i had an issue where my screen suddenly froze while i was watching a movie on netflix. The audio, however, kept going. After a minute or so the whole screen went blank. The audio continued until i manually reset the computer. At this point the screen would immediately go black on startup. Safe mode worked however. After some troubleshooting swapping videocards between two computers it was determined the card was defective. It was an MSI radeon 6970. Sent it for repair, it was replaced and things have been ok until about 2 weeks ago.

Again, watching netflix, screen froze, audio continued..screen blanked out, and i had to manually reset. However this time the boot drive simply vanished. It did not appear in the bios at all. When i powered the computer off from the back/power supply, waited a few seconds, then switched it on, everything is fine. This has occurred to me several times now in the last little while, twice in the last 5 minutes. Only seems to happen when watching movies, but does not happen repeatably in general. i can watch movies for 3 hours no problem...or 2 minutes and bam! Now my friend suggested it was an issue with the hard drive. it's a pyro 120gb solid state. I'm running windows 7 pro, with no heating issues. My question is...do you guys think it's a hard drive issue...a videocard issue..a driver issue..or some very unfortunate combo? While my first card was off being replaced i used the video card in my wifes computer..a geforce gtx 465 with no issues. I have swapped the sata position between my boot drive and my storage drive with no effect. Any advice would be awesome.

Edited by colosssus, 11 April 2012 - 07:29 PM.

[Fogel]

The boot drive disappearing is a SandForce firmware issue... the firmware update back in Aug/Sept corrected this issue. If you haven't updated your firmware yet, I would do that NOW. If you have updated your firmware to the current version than I would go to the Patriot forums NOW because it sounds like the drive is going bad.

The other issue/s sound like a video card issue. Since you are switching from nVidia to ATI I would perform a clean driver sweep and make sure all your old drivers have been removed as cleanly as possible. I used to have a link for doing that but I cannot find it right now. If I find it I will post it.

Another option is, I would try the GTX 465 again, just to see if you can duplicate the problem ...throw a couple movies in and see how it runs. You said it ran fine with the GTX 465 which leads me to think it is a driver issue, but if you are still having issues after a driver sweep and reinstalling the ATI drivers than trying the GTX 465 again wouldn't hurt. IF it is a motherboard issue, only way to find out is by trying multiple pieces of hardware anyway.

[colosssus]

thanks, i think i got my drive after that time period, and i thought i had updated the firmware, however i will double check. i will also go through and remove every last trace of the old drivers and do all that fun stuff again. when i finish all that i'll test everything out. It will take a few days to test and run through everything so i will update this one way or another when i have some more information. Thanks again for the suggestions!

[NuComer]

About a month ago i had an issue where my screen suddenly froze while i was watching a movie on netflix. The audio, however, kept going. After a minute or so the whole screen went blank. The audio continued until i manually reset the computer. At this point the screen would immediately go black on startup. Safe mode worked however. After some troubleshooting swapping videocards between two computers it was determined the card was defective. It was an MSI radeon 6970. Sent it for repair, it was replaced and things have been ok until about 2 weeks ago.

Again, watching netflix, screen froze, audio continued..screen blanked out, and i had to manually reset. However this time the boot drive simply vanished. It did not appear in the bios at all. When i powered the computer off from the back/power supply, waited a few seconds, then switched it on, everything is fine. This has occurred to me several times now in the last little while, twice in the last 5 minutes. Only seems to happen when watching movies, but does not happen repeatably in general. i can watch movies for 3 hours no problem...or 2 minutes and bam! Now my friend suggested it was an issue with the hard drive. it's a pyro 120gb solid state. I'm running windows 7 pro, with no heating issues. My question is...do you guys think it's a hard drive issue...a videocard issue..a driver issue..or some very unfortunate combo? While my first card was off being replaced i used the video card in my wifes computer..a geforce gtx 465 with no issues. I have swapped the sata position between my boot drive and my storage drive with no effect. Any advice would be awesome.

Hey man,

I'm not sure about the booting device dissapearing but about the screen going blank and sound still going, I had a similar issue with my 4870 all I did was underclock the card about 20 ghz on memory and 10 on the processor, give it a go and good luck!.

[colosssus]

Well i did have to update the firmware. I also swept the old drivers. So far, after about 4-5 hours of netflix..no crashes. So i'm not exactly sure what was the cause, assuming it is fixed and not just behaving for the moment. If i had to hazard a guess i would say the hard drive firmware fixed it. If it happens again, i'll be back to update this then ^_^ If i don't have to underclock it i won't. but if it happens again i'll keep that in mind as a potential solution. Although underclocking a factory overclocked piece of hardware seems redundant. But if it works....

[Rofltroll]

what psu do you have?