warwickm Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 Afternoon All I am having some problems with my system & I need your help pinning down where the fault is. After playing FTX & other games for 5-10 minutes, sometimes less, my screen goes black. Occasionally I can hear the sound for approx 30secs. When this black screen occurs I can do nothing except reboot my pc. If I am not playing games I have no issues with my PC. I have the latest drivers for my ATI Radeon 6970 (I tried reverting to earlier drives with no success). My Radeon seem to be operating fine & does not exceed 80-84 degrees C I have defragged & cleaned every possible surface on & in my PC including the fans. System Spec is: Intel i5 3.3 GHZ factory overclocked to 4.2Ghz 4 GM Ram Win 7 64 Bit ATI Radeon 6970 This system is 10 month old & has had no hardware changes & has run everything fine util a couple of weeks ago when this started happening. Could anybody tell me where this fault is likely to lie? Cheers Warwick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotspot Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 fwiw - When I had the same problem using a GTX280 nVidia card I found that by swapping for another card I had the problem disappeared. When I put the original card in another system the problem transferred to that system - ergo - my card was shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kwiss Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 Sounds like your card could be over heating, If you have the over-drive option in the Catalyst menu, over-ride the fan and try it at full setting, it will be noisy but just see if it fixes the issue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marshkop Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 You have a virus,adaware, or trojan. Or...you did not install the catalyst right. ATI drivers are very picky, you MUST install them properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 You have a virus,adaware, or trojan. That's a pretty harsh inference, and scary as it might be it is plausable. With your screen is going black and essentially locking up would lead me to thinking some type of DirectX issue as this will often be manifested in this way. BUT lets do some diagnostics and clean up. Download , Install and run , MalwareBytes Antimalware AND Super Antispyware to check and clean your system of possible causes, at least it will help eliminate that potential. A few other questions. Has the system has been functioning perfectly well prior to this issue? Do you employ any pathetic excuses for Auto Software updater's if so, REMOVE THEM !! as these can cause way more problems than they EVER solve. You may need to totally remove the ATI CCC Tools and utilities totally, a search of guru3d will likely yield a clean up tool for this job. Replace the Graphics Driver ONLY and NOT the Catylist Slowdown Centre. Oh and don't overclock ATI's as they tend to not like it much. It could be Power Supply related too especially if the Graphics card is getting older. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmiller Posted October 31, 2011 Share Posted October 31, 2011 Thanks Guys, Am at work at the moment so will have a bash this evening & get back to you. Regards Warwick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotspot Posted October 31, 2011 Share Posted October 31, 2011 Thanks Guys, Am at work at the moment so will have a bash this evening & get back to you. Regards Warwick I'm confused - are there two Warwick Millers? -'warwickm' and 'wmiller' or is this just a Freudian 'ego/alter ego' thing - or was that Jung? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warwickm Posted October 31, 2011 Author Share Posted October 31, 2011 Nope just the one Warwick Miller. I have a separate id for my office PC. As once upon a time I wanted to sign in & could not remember my details so I created a new one with my office email. 4 hours of malware scanning & still going strong.... Cheers Warwick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maurice_King Posted October 31, 2011 Share Posted October 31, 2011 Scanning like this can be a Pain in the rear BUT rewarding as you can often times find things you weren't aware of , and remember that you might get false positives too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warwickm Posted November 1, 2011 Author Share Posted November 1, 2011 Hello All, Following the above suggestions I have done the following: Scanned my PC for Malware/Spyware-Found no Malware & removed all spyware. Also checked for viruses & Bullguard found nothing, Removed Catalyst & replaced it with the latest graphics driver from ATI Direct X DXdiag shows no errors Also my PSU is 750 watts so I think it can hande my PC comfortably. Once this was done I ran ARMA 2 & Grid and unfortunately the same error occured again. It is harder to reproduce the error in FSX so I did not try to test it.. I borrowed Two Worlds 2 from a friend to test another game & it too crashed. Rather weirdly however Oblivion runs fine at maximum settings. They all have the same symptoms. After a few minutes (between 1 & 5) of playing the game the screen goes black. I can hear the game sound still going on. I am unable to change screens either with Alt Tab or CtrlL Alt Delete. Following up to 15-20 seconds the screen goes a flatter black & the only thing I can do is reboot the PC. And to answer Maurices question my PC was running fine util around a month ago. Other than when I play games my PC runs beautifully Also the Graphics card also seems to be running smoothly. At no stage did it exceed 85 degrees C before the crashes occurred. Any suggestions as to how to proceed Cheers Warwick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kwiss Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 It still sounds like an over heating problem, even though the temps would suggest otherwise, I have had cards that have done the same and was due to the heat sinks coming away, it unfortunately sound like a new card Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skypilot Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 Save/rename the current fsx.cfg (then delete it and) then start FSX and let FSX re build the default FSX.cfg and see it that makes a difference - if it doesn't then restore the original FSX.CFG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockliffe Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 Hi Warwick, have you checked to see if the CPU fan is clogged with dust? Unsure whether this could be the culprit, but it's worth checking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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