Black screen, but computer still running/locked up.

[Niserox]

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.

 

[nolpam]

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

 

[SpaceStranger]

I have exactly the same issue with my Sapphire HD 7750 (though I wouldn't think it's a GPU's problem at all). You don't name your OS, I guess it's Win7, same as mine (I've never had this problem on WinXP on this same hardware). I first had this issue when I've enabled Aero (and turning it off appeared to be no option - it gives trails on screen and high cpu load by windows GUI) - strange, but fact. Also in my case Ctrl+Alt+Del was returning the screen back to life! I've digged around a bit and found: starting the service "AMD External Events Utility" (atiesrxx.exe) fixed the problem!!!.. I've disabled it as always to save system resources, but under Win7 with Catalyst 15.20 driver it gave such a strange problem. I've been downgrading the driver lately (there are newer versions available), so this maybe an issue of this driver version..

 

[sogrei]

I have a very similar problem, it happens 3 times already. However the third time it happened, I tried pressing a button on my keyboard and my PC was back on after the monitor went black. The other 2 times that happened didnt have the same result and i was forced to shut it down through the power button. Im using a Nvidia 970 GPU and it only happens when the computer is AFK or idle

 

[rayneblackmoon]

I have the same problem, except my screen only blacks out when I'm playing... but I admit I pretty much don't do anything else with it...
It started months ago, but now it's become a real pain, since it shuts down 2 or 3 times in a row, sometimes hours into the game, other times a few minutes after I turn it on.
It does warn me, though: while I'm playing I notice the game becoming more and more laggy, until my screen goes black and there's no way to turn it back on.
As someone here suggested, I tried to press caps lock or num lock to see if the lights on the keyboard turn on: they don't.

This is my PC:
- Intel i5-4670k CPU
- GeForce GTX970
- MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Mobo
- 24 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
- Windows 7

 

[John Merino]

I have the same problem, except my screen only blacks out when I'm playing... but I admit I pretty much don't do anything else with it...
It started months ago, but now it's become a real pain, since it shuts down 2 or 3 times in a row, sometimes hours into the game, other times a few minutes after I turn it on.
It does warn me, though: while I'm playing I notice the game becoming more and more laggy, until my screen goes black and there's no way to turn it back on.
As someone here suggested, I tried to press caps lock or num lock to see if the lights on the keyboard turn on: they don't.

This is my PC:
- Intel i5-4670k CPU
- GeForce GTX970
- MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Mobo
- 24 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
- Windows 7

Have you found a solution yet?

I've been having the exact same problems and symptoms as you. I've been trying to figure this out and compared parts with everyone else here to narrow down what it could be. Originally I thought it was my processor deciding to go bad but this seems to be happening to new systems too; both AMD and Intel.

I replaced my power supply with a Seasonic Prime Titanium, had my video cards RMA'd a few times, motherboard RMA'd a few times, ran mem tests, and ran the system with one card at a time (I have an SLI setup; which doesn't seem to be the cause). You're running windows 7 (I'm running 10) so that doesn't seem to be the cause either. The only thing it might be that I don't see mentioned here a lot is the hard drive. Is everyone experiencing thing running an SSD? Next time this happens I'm going to try disconnecting my hard drive and reconnecting it. I saw on another thread to try that.

My CPU is also running cool, under load it reads 43C or so and idle is 32C. GPUs are around 60 under load, sometimes 70. I do have the processor overclocked but this seems to be happening regardless if I'm overclocking or not.

My Computer:
Intel I7-4820K
2x EVGA GTX 960
EVGA X79 Dark
16 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum
Windows 10
1TB Crucial MX500
Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W

 

[blackrayne]

I solved this problem on my pc! I don't know why, but my Gtx 970 had only one spinning fan, so it got to pretty high temperature.
First, I installed MSI Afterburn: everything seemed fine, but then I noticed that one of the gpu fans wasn't working. I had to spin it with my finger, at first.
Now, if I keep MSI Afterburn running (even in background) everything is fine, otherwise only one of the fans work, the gpu reaches 80°C and the monitor goes off. Tested it a couple of days ago, after two weeks of smooth functioning.

Don't know if this could help others, but it kind of "solved" my problem.