PC to HDMI connection randomly stops working

[Kaarel]

Hello everyone!

I have a odd situation. I have connected my PC to a Philips full HD TV (39PFL3188H/12) using an HDMI 1.4 cable. Mostly everything is working flawlessly, but entirely randomly the HDMI connection just stops (the TV starts displaying "no signal detected"). This is only fixed by a reset - just plugging in the cable again does not work. This can happen once in every few days or sometimes 2 times in 1 hour and it does not appear to depend on the intensity of the tasks on hand (happens during both heavy and very light intensity tasks).

The PC is running Windows 7 64-bit. Components that are probably relevant to the problem are following:
Asus M5A99X EVO 2.0 motherboard
AMD FX 6300 processor (overclocked to 4,5Ghz)
MSI R9 280 graphics card (3gb version)
8GB Kingston HyperX ram, 1866 mhz,

I am out of ideas and could really use some help on how to fix this problem. If you need any more information, I will gladly provide it.

Kind regards,
Kaarel

 

[Frag Maniac]

Check the integrity of the cable by testing a new HDMI cable, sometimes they go bad, esp cheap ones. Make sure ALL the system cabling is connected and seated properly.

Make sure your MB chipset drivers are installed, and try updating the MB BIOS if it isn't.

Check to see if your display is recognized by name and model in your GPU's control panel, and check to see if it's being recognized as HDCP compliant.

I bought a MSI 660 Ti PE OC some time ago and it would not recognize my Panasonic TV as HDCP compliant, and it would go to BSOD when I switched from TV to PC.

My prior GTS 250 GPU didn't have this problem, nor does my 7970. It may very well have been the custom BIOS MSI put on the GPU. If you have a backup GPU, see if it does the same thing.

If you bought the GPU just recently form a place that has 30 day returns like Newegg, make sure you do as much testing as you can BEFORE that return period expires.

I had to send mine back to Newegg due to apparent incompatibilty issues with my TV, and bought a 7970 instead, which they accepted no problem. I made SURE I checked all the small things like cables first though.

Note that I got help from a neighbor by taking my tower to his apt and checking everything on his TV, which didn't have the same problems. If you do this and find it's a compatibility issue between your GPU and TV like I had, and you're sold on that GPU and considering a TV change, you may want to change TVs now if you can afford it.

 

[Kaarel]

Thank you for the through answer and sorry for the late reply.

The problem I had disappeared after I installed some Windows updates that I had not installed previously (did not have automatic updates enabled accidentally).

Therefore it looks like it was either some kind of a driver problem. Looks like the moral of the story is to keep everything up to date

Regards,
Kaarel