not sure what the specific problem is... decided to post in this section

[Taine42]

Hello,

I had been running the same configuration for quite a long time without problem, here are the highlights:

Seasonic S12 600W Power Supply
AMD Phenom II x4 925 Quad Core Processor AM3 2.8 GHz 6MB L3 Cache 95W
with Zalman CNPS7500-ALCU LED Heatsink Fan
Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 DDR3 AMD 890GX Motherboard
Corsair XMS CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1333 CL9-9-9-24 Dual Channel Memory Kit
Patriot Sector 5 PGV34G1333ELK 4GB DDR3 DDR3-1333 CL 9-9-9-24 Dual Channel Memory Kit
Gigabyte Radeon HD 5750 Silent Cell 700MHz 1GB 4.8GHz GDDR5 DVI HDMI VGA PCI-E Passive Video Card (GV-R575SL-1GI)
ADATA SX900 2.5" 256GB SSD SATA 3 SandForce 2281 550MB/SEC Write and 530MB/SEC Read
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB Cache 3.5IN Hard Drive OEM
LG Flatron W2253V(QV)-PF 22” Widescreen LCD Monitor
Logitech MK700 Keyboard/Mouse Combo
Windows 7 64 bit

- I had not updated any drivers in the recent past.
- Started having trouble with a couple BSOD's and black screens (no signal into monitor), i am not sure if blue screens or black screens happened first (this started a couple weeks ago)

The original bluescreens were when attempting to play a game and i think referred to atihdw76.sys (one much later in the process of troubleshooting did) i did a bit of searching about this then decided to try and play the game again and it worked. i played a few hours, then watched a movie on my pc then shut it off.

Next day i attempted to play a game and got a black screen... could not use the reset button and ended up holding the power button to shut pc off. turning it on/off again resulted in lights flashing but never a beep. had been thinking vid card but now maybe motherboard.
I put in my old vid card
eVGA e-Geforce 7900 GT KO 500MHz Pci-E 256MB 256BIT 1.5 Ghz GDDR3
and to my surprise it booted. got into windows, but things were sometimes odd graphically (patterns on the screen etc.), then began a process of cleaning drivers and trying the vid cards back and forth...looked for conflict with the onboard video (which would have been strange but there was none) the onboard video worked by itself btw.

On either card i could get into safe mode or regular mode using the windows drivers but then with the cards drivers i would get to the windows splash screen for a few seconds then... no signal to the monitor. So we (me and the people who were advising me) pretty much decided that the best bet was the pci-e slot gone bad. I ordered a new mobo.
ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 mATX AM3+ DDR3 AMD 760G 1PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 2PCI SATA DVI HDMI GBLAN

I put the new motherboard in (as well as a sata dvd and soundcard for what it's worth to tell you that) and long story shorter... i still have the same issue. safe mode ok with whatever driver, normal mode ok with windows driver only. with the gigabyte's driver, splash screen then no signal to monitor...
I have not tried the older card in the new mobo.

What's next?
Is it a windows thing?
an asus thing?
Thanks for listening and I appreciate any and all help or opinion.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It could be an issue with both cards, but is much more likely to be related to either the power supply having come to the end of it's useful life or simply problems with some software or drivers conflicting. I'd try doing a clean install of the drivers, using whatever AMD driver is listed as the most recent for that card, according to the instructions in the clean drivers section at the following link.

Since I don't see a II designation after the PSU model I'll assume this is an older power supply. Pretty old in fact as the S12II has been around for quite some time so the version 1 has to be really old. I'd suggest that it's almost certainly the power supply or graphics card, but there is always an outside chance that for some reason an update or other installed application has conflicted with the GPU card drivers or the drivers themselves were somehow corrupted. Even an issue with the OS if the installation is very old as well, could be to blame. I suspect it's more likely to be hardware but I'd make certain of the drivers first using the Wagnard Tools Display driver uninstaller and a fresh driver installation.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2492424/laymans-simple-guide-solving-graphics-card-issues.html

Considering both your graphics cards are pretty old, they could certainly both be faulty, but the chances of it are probably lesser than other possibilities. Might even be worth updating your motherboard bios if you haven't done so yet.

 

[Taine42]

It could be an issue with both cards, but is much more likely to be related to either the power supply having come to the end of it's useful life or simply problems with some software or drivers conflicting. I'd try doing a clean install of the drivers, using whatever AMD driver is listed as the most recent for that card, according to the instructions in the clean drivers section at the following link.

Since I don't see a II designation after the PSU model I'll assume this is an older power supply. Pretty old in fact as the S12II has been around for quite some time so the version 1 has to be really old. I'd suggest that it's almost certainly the power supply or graphics card, but there is always an outside chance that for some reason an update or other installed application has conflicted with the GPU card drivers or the drivers themselves were somehow corrupted. Even an issue with the OS if the installation is very old as well, could be to blame. I suspect it's more likely to be hardware but I'd make certain of the drivers first using the Wagnard Tools Display driver uninstaller and a fresh driver installation.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2492424/laymans-simple-guide-solving-graphics-card-issues.html

Considering both your graphics cards are pretty old, they could certainly both be faulty, but the chances of it are probably lesser than other possibilities. Might even be worth updating your motherboard bios if you haven't done so yet.

I have been using Wagnard actually - i am glad to hear someone say it is a good product - but numerous fresh installs of both cards drivers did not fix anything. A new power supply is not possible right now unfortunately and a graphics card even more so. I will look at bios and then possibly a fresh windows install. Thank you for your feedback.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yeah, I'd freshen up the bios if a newer version is necessary and then reinstall the OS. At least that will give you a clean slate to know it's not a file system or driver related issue. Then, if the problem persists, at least you'll pretty well know it's hardware.