# Monitor Randomly goes black (Its not the monitor!)



## redrip

Hi Guys,

I know if you have had this problem before there are literally a million posts about peoples monitors going black on a random basis and really no solution that I have found yet. I have checked for days now tons of forums and posts about this issue and it seems to me people are completely confused or have like 300 reasons why it might be happening.

Basically I built a brand new computer, I am running a GTX 295 on Windows 7 (32 bit) with 8 gigs ram, I have a Q9550 CPU 2.83ghz and an EVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW motherboard. I am running over 1.8 tarabytes on 5 seperate baracooda harddrives with a 1000 watt power supply.

I started having this problem when my monitor would randomly go black a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago I was using a 19" HP monitor that I have been using for like 4 years. I figured it might be the monitor until I recently just picked up a brand new 26" Samsung LCD. 

Low and behold I still have the same problem, obviously it's not the monitor, I am wondering if it could be my basically brand new EVGA GTX 295 card, or the power supply could be going bad although I just built this computer less then a year ago. 

I'm really frustrated, I mean it's not like the monitor goes black every hour, but like a few times a day it will do this and I have to restart. It usually does it when I am playing games, so I figure it has to do with my graphics card, but I'm still am not 100% sure why or what is making this happen.

Some people said it could be dust in the computer, I cleaned by computer inside and out and still have the same problem. So basically it could be my graphics card overheating, which blows me away because a GTX 295 is suppose to handle high end games, I am wondering if it might be a driver issue? I didn't have this problem until I installed the Nvidia 195 Drivers. I guess I can try installing a previous Nvidia driver and see if the problem goes away.

If anyone has a solution, please contact me, desperately trying to figure this problem out, and it seems like lots of people are having the same issues all across the board.


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## Lord Sirian

Hi. Welcome to TSF.

Could you please post the make and model of your power supply. Even though it's a 1000 watt, it needs to be of good quality to handle a Gtx 295.


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## redrip

Hi Sirian,

Thanks for your reply, my PSU is an Antec - TPQ 1000. I'm really hoping it's not a hardware issue, but I did narrow it down to either my GTX 295 or the PSU itself, although there's a possibility it could be driver related from the Nvidia drivers. I didnt have this problem before I loaded the 195 release drivers.

One thing I do need to figure out though, my computer is SLI ready, and I was about to put in a second GTX 295 in... If my PSU can barely handle my GTX 295, how is it suppose to handle 2 of them? Again my computer ran perfectly until a few weeks ago.

Thanks for your help.


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## Lord Sirian

So you say the problem occurred _after_ you loaded the newer drivers? What happens if you do a rollback to an older driver version?

That PSU seems good enough to run one 295 on at least. Could you please check your voltages in the BIOS.


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## redrip

Hey Sirian,

Well so far so good, I installed the latest beta drivers from Nvidia, I did try rolling back and it didnt work, so I luckily found some beta drivers. Also I moved my monitor input to my other DVI slot on the back of the GTX 295 and so far its been good. 

Regarding my voltage im not exactly sure what to look for, I did check the bios and found in voltage 1.25000 but theres like 5 lines of different things and wasn't exactly sure what to look for.

I will keep you posted if my monitor goes black again, hoping the drivers and the DVI switch might of fixed things.

Cheers,


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## Lord Sirian

Glad to hear it's working for the moment.

There's a fairly easy way to check, try switching back to the other (suspected faulty) DVI port, and if it malfunctions, then it's just a faulty port. Also you could try switching back to your old drivers (and again, if it happens again, then that's the problem).

Also, about the voltages, could you please download Everest, then use it to check them. (They'll be located under Computer -> Sensor). The +3.3V, +5V and +12V are the most important ones.

Let me know how you go.


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## redrip

Hi Sirian,

Well bad news, it just happened again, still on the second DVI port for the graphics card, this time loading up a game, it only happens when playing games, starting to think it could be a power issue. I will post some of the info from Event Viewer, not sure if it will help but maybe...

I downloaded Everest, here's the info.

Field	Value
+3.3 V 3.25 V

Field	Value
+5 V	5.46 V

Field	Value
+12 V	8.21 V

Hope that helps... Is it odd that the 12v is running at 8?

---------------------------------

Event 41, Kernel-Power
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.


[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power 
[ Guid] {331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4} 

EventID 41 

Version 2 

Level 1 

Task 63 

Opcode 0 

Keywords 0x8000000000000002 

- TimeCreated 

[ SystemTime] 2010-01-15T21:53:31.685200000Z 

EventRecordID 47165 

Correlation 

- Execution 

[ ProcessID] 4 
[ ThreadID] 8 

[ UserID] S-1-5-18 

- EventData 

BugcheckCode 278 
BugcheckParameter1 0x88ae9510 
BugcheckParameter2 0x8fed7eb0 
BugcheckParameter3 0x0 
BugcheckParameter4 0xd 
SleepInProgress false 
PowerButtonTimestamp 0


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