Extended Display goes dark for no reason at all!

[integraoligist]

So I've had 2 PC's for some time now, decided to put both monitors onto 1 tower as an extended display... both monitors work for some time then out of no where the Extended display just goes black... but it's not off, if you look real close to you see the screen is still on and can slightly see the mouse move.

Troubleshooting: Bother monitors are fine, depending on which one is set at the "Extended" display is the one that will go dark.

Video card still operates normally, went from just using Windows drivers for the video card to downloading Catalyst, but neither fixed the problem.

Also turned off the sleep timer just in case that may be causing the problem... nope, still goes dark.

Went from Windows 8 to the new beta 8.1, nope still the same problem.

I ran out of options... anyone else have any ideas as to what could be the problem?


-Specs:
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 AMD 970/SB950 AM3+ FX ATX Motherboard - ATX, Socket AM3+, AMD 970 Chipset, 2000MHz DDR3 (O.C.), SATA 6.0 Gb/s, RAID, 7.1-CH Audio, Gigabit LAN, USB 3.0, CrossFireX Ready
CPU: AMD FD8120FRGUBOX FX-8120 Processor - Eight Core, 8MB L3 Cache, 8MB L2 Cache, 3.10GHz (4.00GHz Max Turbo), Socket AM3+, 125W, Fan, Unlocked, Retail
RAM: Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9 Vengeance 8GB PC15000 DDR3 RAM - 1866MHz, 2x4096MB, Non-ECC, Unbuffered
Video Card: XFX HD677XZNFC Radeon HD 6770 Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.1 (x16), Dual-DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, DirectX 11, Dual-Slot, CrossFireX Ready, Eyefinity
Monitor1: Planar PX2230mw
Monitor2: Acer AL2017

Thanks all for the help!

 

[Temp_Username]

More than likely the dual port on the video card is having issues keeping both monitors on. Do you have another video card lying around to test this theory?

 

[integraoligist]

not with 2 DVI ports like this one.

 

[k1114]

I don't think it's the ports, since it's just the backlight going off. The monitor gets its power from the wall, the gpu just provides video and from what you are saying the monitor is still getting signal. Check power settings. Was this upgraded to 8? You could try to uninstall gpu drivers, run driver sweeper then reinstall.

 

[integraoligist]

Windows 8 was a clean install... Win 8.1 was an update... happening with both OS

I put the original windows gpu drivers back on just to check, but still the same issue.

I thought it was just happening when I moved a window over to the screen (did not matter what type of window either) because it just seemed to happen more when doing that... so I stopped moving everything over there and now I find it does not matter, it will just randomly go black for no reason.

I adjust all power setting to be on all the time, but it's still having the problem. I have no idea.

After a restart it will work fine... then go off again.