AMD Graphics card gives black screen after updating drivers

[xX_Jesus4208gbram4tbhddbf369fps_Xx]

My card runs fine without the drivers. With drivers installed, I get a black screen on Windows 7 after 20 seconds. Anyone know what this could be?

My onboard video runs just fine as well.

My card is an HIS Radeon 6950 HD.

 

[akseli]

Have you had the card for long, or did you recently buy it second hand? When the drivers are not installed, the card doesn't run with all features, it will work as basic 2D adapter.

If the card is faulty, installing the drivers will make it work with all features and full speed, and it might even fail to work in 2D mode on Windows. It's an highend card and they suffer from heat and related problems, which might damage some cards beond the point that they work at all. Specially when they are few years old.

If you know the card should definetly work, try other driver versions. Latest released non-beta, latest beta, and then older non-beta versions.


The computer stays on right? So that we can rule out not having powerful enough PSU.

And your monitor supports the graphics mode you are using in Windows, for example that in the short time it works, you are able to see the picture in the resolution it's supposed to work. Initial splash screen during boot might have limited resolution.

 

[xX_Jesus4208gbram4tbhddbf369fps_Xx]

I've had the card for 3 and a half years.

I can't find older drivers for it anywhere on the internet.

 

[akseli]

I guess you can find the latest AMD Catalyst 15.7 drivers easily from AMD site, and from here

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

you can find latest beta version 15.6. Looks like older versions are not available anymore, and I'm not sure why the latest beta has lower version than the "latest" version. Anyway worth the try.

Are you doing a fresh reinstall of Windows 7 by any chance, maybe the drivers might depend on latest SP and might not check before installing and you haven't installed that yet?