Black screen, but computer still running/locked up.

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Niserox

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Jul 19, 2013
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Hey guys.

So recently my computer has been running great, but as of late its been black screening (so far twice). The first was a few days ago, I stepped out of my room to go downstairs for a while and do some things and when I came back I noticed that my monitor was off (power still on, but the screen was black). So I thought to myself, oh it just turned the monitor off because its been 20 minutes (thats what I have it set to) and when I tried to make it come back it wouldn't. I also noticed that the keyboard had froze up and NumLock was stuck too, so the computer locked up. However it didn't blue screen or turn off the computer, the screen was just black and unresponsive.

Fast forward a few days to today, it did the EXACT same thing. I was also out at the time so I don't know what happened up until it did it, but when I came back it was black screened and locked up again. Also I should mention that this ONLY happens when the computer is idle. I can play a game for 4 hours straight if I wanted to with no lockups or restarts at all.

I had already checked my temps, they were fine. CPU was at 44c and GPU was at 27c. The fans were still going and everything too. I re-checked the connections on the video card and the mobo to make sure nothing was sticking out, but it was all secure. I recently replaced my heatsink actually, around a week ago, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it considering my temps are fine (better actually).

I haven't run any mem-tests or checkdisk yet. Also my computer is completely stock, nothing is overclocked. I've also taken the liberty of taking off the 20 minute timer to turn off the monitor, but we'll see if it works or not.

My computer is:

Phenom II 965 black edition
MSI 970A Mobo
Sapphire HD 7950
8 gig RAM 1600
Seagate 1TB 7200 HDD
Apevia 680 watt power supply.

Computer is custom built and only around 5 months old.

Recap: computer black screening and locking up, only when idle, playing games is fine, happened twice in the past week, replaced heatsink recently but lower temps, temps are fine on both CPU and GPU.
 
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Niserox

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Jul 19, 2013
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Thats the first thing I go to every time this happens, but theres nothing in the event view other than the usual "windows has shut down in an improper manner" etc etc. Theres nothing about what caused it, or if it was a driver or a hardware issue.

As I've said though, I've turned off the function that turns off my monitor after X minutes because it really only seems to happen when it goes into that state, other than that the computer runs mint perfect.

I actually checked out a bit online and apparently the 7900 series is (was) really bad with this. Apparently what was happening was that 7900 cards would turn off the monitor like normal and then after they did it, the card went into a really low power state with powerplay. Sometimes though, the card went so low, that it couldn't recover when you wanted to come back into Windows so it just froze the entire computer because the drivers crashed. I think thats also whats been happening with me.

Like I said, I'll continue to monitor this thread for any other suggestions and I'll update if it happens again outside of the monitor being shut off.
 
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AverageGreek

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Jul 21, 2013
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Did you ever figure out the cause of your problem? I am going through a similar situation- my computer will black screen completely randomly it seems. I have a 7950 as well.
 
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Niserox

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Jul 19, 2013
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I did, for myself it was due to the power-saving features I had enabled. Apparently 7900 cards don't like turning off the screen too much lol. I had my computer all set to High-Performance power mode and everything, but I had the monitor set to shut off after about 20-30 minutes. When the monitor shut off, the computer would freeze up and black screen and be unable to turn the monitor back on for some reason.

All I did was turn off the feature that turned my monitor off after 30 minutes and set it to never turn off, and my computer hasn't done it since. Its been running perfectly for weeks now.
 
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AverageGreek

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Jul 21, 2013
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Thanks for the prompt reply! I'm glad you found a solution, I'm still searching for mine lol
 
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Razultull

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Oct 27, 2013
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Hi i'm having a similar issue, however it happens randomly while i'm using the computer and doesn't seem to be making sense to me at all, did you ever resolve yours?
 
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bmxjumperc

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Jul 9, 2009
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After this malfunction occurred maybe you hit the reset button. Right after Windows boots again did you look and find any error events in the Windows event viewer similar to: [an error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\dr0 during a paging operation.]?
Or an external HDD failing?
 
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Kuriomato

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Apr 18, 2014
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im also having this problem but it only happens When im running world of warcraft and nothing else and its only been doing this past two week i figured it was my 430 watt PSU i had but i droped in my 1000 watt but that wasnt the case it still did it



my computer is:
AMD Athaon II
GA-970A-UD3P
8 gigs ram 1600
80 gig SSD-note OS is running on this
2 TB-games movies and what not
500 gig -misc storage
Antech CP-1000 watt continuous PSU
 
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Gorzul

Gorzul

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Mar 28, 2014
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Im runnign a brand new PC, been about 2 month now, all was perfect but now same thing started happening weirdly, and just as i browse the net, pc freezes a few seconds then monitor goes off (black)

Gigabyte GTX780ti
Corsair Professional Series 860 Watt Digital ATX/EPS Modular 80 PLUS Platinum Power Supply AX860i
Intel i7-4820K LGA 2011 64 Technology Extended Memory CPU
Corsair Hydro Series Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler H100i
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB 2x8GB DDR3 2400MHz
ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
3Tb WD Drive
Saumsung 24inch LED monitor
Windows 7 Pro Updated
 
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bjs12258

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May 25, 2014
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If anyone has found a solution to this I'd like to know also. Mine has been doing this for about 2 months now. I am FAR from computer literate so I can't try all the stuff you guys did. The only two steps I took was to download a new driver system (which keeps all my drivers up to date) and Spybot. Neither has helped. My system will randomly shut down. First it freezes - then it asks to "recover the webpage" - which it does. But not long after that it will just go black. My "fix" is to power down, then power back up. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. I have a Presario CQ62 laptop that is about 3 years old. I must say, it's really ruining my poker game.
 
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The_Icon

The_Icon

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Dec 6, 2013
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Hi,
I have this same problem and been looking for the remedy for months now! I made sure my computer never sleeps and turn off the display in the power options. But sometimes, the screen just goes blank after being idle for a while and can't do much about it until I do a hard reset.

My System:

Win 8.1
Core i5 4670
R9 290 Sapphire Tri X
8GB RAM
 
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cjtaxi

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Aug 16, 2014
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4,510
Hi,
I also have the same problem...i just bought the system for around 3weeks and 2days since i bought the comp. the problem starts to showing....blank screen only but the system still working...sometimes it happens when i left my comp for lunch or dinner....sometimes it happens when im surfing the net...sometimes it happens when im playing games...

My system :

intel i7-4790K (stock cooling)
msi z97-gaming 7
msi r9-290
corsair vengeance 2x4GB kit
corsair CS750M PSU
1TB WD caviar black HDD
OCZ Vector150 120GB SSD
Windows 8.1
 
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Rendawg

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Sep 11, 2014
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4,510
Hey Everyone,

Here is a possible solution for all of you experiencing the issue of the computer not coming out of sleep mode properly. You close your lid or the computer goes into Sleep Mode and then when it tries coming out it locks up. This can be caused by the O2Micro Integrated MMC/SD controller (For many Dell laptops) or basically your SD controller driver conflicting with some other OS software. You can find this under Device Manager / Storage controllers.

Basically this can happen by the driver updating and becoming unstable and you can do one of two things: Just disable the driver or try downgrading it to an older version.

To disable it: Right click on the O2Micro Integrated MMC/SD object and disable it. Then see if this fixes your issue. If it does then either just leave it like that (if you don't use your SD slot) or try downgrading the driver.

Good Luck
 
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boostdemon

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Oct 7, 2014
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This happened to me initially with my 7950, then i updated the catalyst drivers to a beta version to fix a bug with photoshop crashing the video driver... it went away. I just the other day updated to the latest driver and it started doing it again. Update again tonight and we'll see but I'm almost positive this is purely a driver issue.
 
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anoverdramaticauthor

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Jan 7, 2015
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4,510
I have been having exactly the same problem as you. I have searched a lot of websites and asked my ICT teachers, eventually I have come to a resolution.

I think you have to change the moniter. You could hire an expert to do it but if your good with computers you might be able to do this yourself.

It makes perfect sense to all my friends who are good with technology so I think you should give it a try. ;)

 
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The_Icon

The_Icon

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Dec 6, 2013
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It was my GPU. I changed from AMD R9 290 to GTX 970 and don't have those issues anymore.

 
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boostdemon

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Oct 7, 2014
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I have been having good results with driver packaging version: 14.501.1003-141120a-177998C
 
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