Screen randomly goes into standby during games.

[kingmicas]

I have an 8800gtx and recently its been doing this.

 

I used it for 6 months on my older rig before i upgraded some stuff the other day. Never had any problems with it before. Im not sure what it is. The computer doesnt reboot but i have to hard reset the pc for the screen to come back.

 

Its hard to diagnose too since it can happen twice in 10 minutes and then not happen for 2 days. There doesnt seem to be a solid way to reproduce it.

 

After this happens i can reset and power back on and everything is fine untill it happens again. What would or could cause this ? Ive narrowed it down to the following but im unsure where to look first.

 

Display driver faulting out and halting the card. The reason i dont think this is it is because the card would send signal even with no driver installed at all. At most i think it would give me a bsod or something instead of killing the signal.

 

Maybe the monitor is dying. If it was i think the problems would be more consistent though.

 

Screen is being driven out of range. Possibly. But the screen doesnt give an "HV frequency overrange " error. It simply loses signal.

 

Failing video card. Maybe. Hope not. If it is i dont see why its dying now after having worked flawlessly for so long and then just randomly start acting up in a new build.

 

I dont think it has to do with heat or power issues either. If it did it wouldnt go days at a time without happening and then happen 5 mintues after i log in. Same goes for seating and whatnot. it doesnt happen when i bump the case so i doubt its that.

 

 

 

Like i said earlier i cant reproduce it reliably. So far its only happened during WoW. It happens to randomly i could play another game or run benchmarks for 12 hours and it wouldnt happen and i couldnt be able to tell if it was luck or because the problem is with wow.

 

Im getting frustrated.

 

EDIT : And ive already turned off all the power saving features. They are set to "always on" "never" and "never" . IEST is cut off and so is voltage throttling.

Edited October 13, 2007 by kingmicas

[Waco]

Try another monitor...if it does the same thing then you know it's a problem with the computer.

[kingmicas]

Try another monitor...if it does the same thing then you know it's a problem with the computer.

 

I would try that but the only other monitor i have is alot older. Because of that i would have to lower the resolution and refresh rate to one it supports which wouldnt be apples to apples troubleshooting. I'll try lowering everything and use the other one and see if it happens. Just frustrating that it could go for an entire day before i know if it is or isnt the problem.

 

I just wish i could get it to happen during something other than WoW. At least i would know its not the game.

 

First i guess im gonna roll back to the driver version i had before the rebuild to rule that out since i didnt have the problem with that version.

Edited October 13, 2007 by kingmicas

[ClayMeow]

Just because you're not receiving an error, I wouldn't rule out a driver issue, and it's one of the easier things to remedy, so why not start there? Go into Add/Remove Programs and find "nVidia Display Drivers" or "nVidia Drivers" and choose to uninstall. If you have the "nVidia Drivers" that probably means you have other nvidia drivers besides the display (like chipset, ethernet, etc.), so it'll give you the option to choose what you want to uninstall; obviously you only care to remove the display ones. It'll ask you to restart; do it. When you're back in Windows, obviously your display settings will be really low. It'll say it found new hardware; cancel it. Go to nVidia's site and download the latest driver (you can do this before uninstallation of the old drivers if you want). Install it, change your settings back to "normal" and then give it a whirl and see what happens.

 

The other things it can be...the monitor, like you said. If you can, test it with another monitor. Also, the memory on the video card could be dead/dying. Let's hope it's not the latter, though I assume you have a warranty. Do you get any artificating at any point? If not, then it's probably not the video card, but I wouldn't rule it out just yet.

 

EDIT: Since it's only in WoW, check their forums/faqs to see if others have had similar problems, and if there is a solution.

[kingmicas]

There are a few people have the same issue but it is of course passed off by blizzard as faulty hardware. I dont at any point get artifacting in WoW or anything else. Its fine and then it freezes for a second, followed by a black screen followed by the monitor going into standby. The computer stays on but doesnt respond.

 

The more i think about it the freeze before the loss of signal would indicate the card actually crashing resulting in the loss of display rather than the display just failing to show what the card is sending it.

 

There are a few variables from before i rebuilt. Before i didnt have rivatuner ( to max the fan speed ) so im not sure if a registry or d3doverride setting could be causing it.

 

Im pretty confident its not the monitor. If it was the game wouldnt freeze before the loss. It would just go into standby and the game itself would continue to function ( sound etc ) .

 

 

Im going to uninstall rivatuner and try to rollback to a driver version i know was working if i can find one. I'll update after i do this and see if its still happening.

Edited October 13, 2007 by kingmicas

[Waco]

There are a few people have the same issue but it is of course passed off by blizzard as faulty hardware.

That's because it most likely is.

 

WoW is incredibly touchy about your computer running 100% stable. Single bit errors can make it crash.

[GuJuMaN89]

similar thing happened with my friend, and it was heat related. he could browse the net and stuff for hours and like after 5 mins of wow he just loses signal.

[kingmicas]

Well i uninstalled rivatuner and swapped to the 163.75 beta drivers and was able to play all day without any problems.

 

I tried rivatuner and the 163.71 drivers again to confirm.

 

I was able to reproduce it with rivatuner and 163.71 but not 163.75

 

With 163.71 it doesnt happen unless i have rivatuner installed but when i have rivatuner and 163.75 it doesnt.

 

Evidently rivatuner and 163.71 are conflicting somewhere.

[get_saif]

Well i uninstalled rivatuner and swapped to the 163.75 beta drivers and was able to play all day without any problems.

 

I tried rivatuner and the 163.71 drivers again to confirm.

 

I was able to reproduce it with rivatuner and 163.71 but not 163.75

 

With 163.71 it doesnt happen unless i have rivatuner installed but when i have rivatuner and 163.75 it doesnt.

 

Evidently rivatuner and 163.71 are conflicting somewhere.

 

 

i have the same problem, i am using 163.71 driver, and as well rivatunner, it happens to me when boot the system. after the desktop screen appears then suddenly the screen is dead and the monitor goes in standby mode.

 

i thought it was an overclocking problem, related to gpu or cpu as i have overclocked both of them. now reading your post and hope after getting 163.75 this would solve my problem as well.

 

will keep u updated after trying.

 

have a nice system day!

Edited October 14, 2007 by get_saif

[BrewMeister2010]

I too have this same problem, but I have an X800 XT. This used to happen to me a lot when I was beta testing LOTRO.

 

I am pretty sure it is a heat issue. I did all the driver updates, etc, but it helped the most when I had my window cracked with cool air pouring in over the PC. (In winter)

 

It hadn't happened to me for several months, and then 2 days ago I was playing Lego Star Wars and it happened to me twice in a row, at the exact same spot in the game. I noticed my intake filter was clogged with dust, so I popped it out, cleaned it and haven't had a problem since. ::shrug::

 

This issue drove me nuts when I was playing LOTRO, but I haven't dealt with it much since my gaming time is severely diminished since my kid was born in May.