SammiGene

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Oct 16, 2009
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Hi,

Recently I've been having problems with my computer, I was hoping someone here could help. The problem first presented itself by showing a bunch of lines on my monitor screen. This would happen during a video game, and once in a while at random. The only way to get rid of it was to turn my computer off and then back on by it's power button.

Eventually, a second problem came up, where when I would pull up a certain program, the monitor would just go to sleep. The computer wasn't asleep, only the monitor. And when I would click the mouse, or press a key on the computer to try and wake the monitor up, nothing happened. So I was forced to turn the computer off and back on with the power button.

This happened for a while, and I went to Gateway's support center 'chat with a tech' thing, and they told me the only solution was to perform a system recovery. I wasn't happy. However, I went ahead and did so, wiping the computer.

However, this did not get rid of the problem with my monitor going to sleep. I find that if I let my computer pull up a screen saver (any of them, it doesn't matter which), the monitor goes to sleep. Not the computer, just the monitor. I've also tried to open videos in fullscreen mode, but that also puts the monitor to sleep.

I also found that when opening a small third party art program, the lines popped up on my monitor again. So I got rid of the program, and haven't had the lines show up again.

I came here to ask if there's something I can do. I searched my problem here on the internet, and it seems like a lot of people have had the same issue.

I'm using a Gateway FX 6000 series computer with a Vista Home Premium 64bit operating system. My video card is an ATI Radeon HD 4850.

(I apologize if this is in the wrong forum section!)
 

Jonmor68

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You have a problem with, either the video driver or less likely the monitor. Reinstalling the OS won't fix that, as you have found. Do you have the latest 64 bit video drivers installed?
Do you have onboard video connection, if so try the onboard to see if the problem goes away, you will need the drivers from Gateway in this case.
 

SammiGene

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Oct 16, 2009
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I'm not sure if I have the latest video drivers installed or now, how do I find that out? I also don't know if I have an onboard video connection, how do I find that out?

Also, how do I get the latest drivers if I find that they are out of date?
 

SammiGene

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Oct 16, 2009
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I clicked the link, but I'm not sure what I'm doing next is correct. I went to 'support & drivers', then I went to 'download graphics drivers'. On that page, I chose windows vista 64 bit edition as my OS, and then radeon as my product family. I'm assuming I want to choose Radeon HD 4800 series as the product, is that correct?

And when I go to download the driver, do I want the full download or the display driver only download? I'm sorry for all the questions, I just want to be really thorough and make sure I don't mess anything up.
 

Triplelle

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Oct 16, 2010
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We're having almost the identical issue here. ATI Radeon 4850, monitor randomly "sleeps" and will not respond or wake up, forcing a manual restart of the computer. I can trigger it with a video game, or with some of the "display" settings, but even that isn't consistent. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the most recent video driver, double and triple checked the Hz setting and the resolution. I even thought for a while it might be a DirectX problem and screwed around with that some, but no dice.

It's not the monitor, as it happens with multiple monitors, therefore it's something screwy with the computer system itself. It began happening *after* we did a system restore from factory spec, actually, on a Windows Vista 64 bit home edition. Frustrating as heck.

Did anyone ever get an actual workable answer for this? I've seen several mentions of the same type of problem with this driver/card, but I've never seen anyone give an answer that worked out for the person asking. Thanks for any help.