Display goes off whilst playing a game...pls help me!!

[ramon82]

I have been having a strange problem ever since I replaced my ol
geforce 5200 with the radeon 9600. When I am playing a game...and no
all games do it...sometimes the display turns black and the monitor'
LED turns amber. I cannot due anything and have to restart. I am no
assuming its a temp problem since CPU does not exceed 55 degree
celcius even when heavily in use. Apart from that I have adequat
cooling directly on the video card and inside the case. In the even
viewer the only occurance at the same time of the fault is thi
entry

The time provider NtpClient is configured to acquire time from one o
more time sources, however none of the sources are currentl
accessible. No attempt to contact a source will be made for 1
minutes. NtpClient has no source of accurate time.

Also I have up yo date drivers, directX, virus free for sure and load
of RAM..1.2GB DDR 400

Can anyone give me some tips on how I could find out the source o
this saga??? any software in particular? please HELP ME! even a fres
format and installation of XP was not enough to get rid of this

 

[Grinder]

I have been having a strange problem ever since I replaced my old
geforce 5200 with the radeon 9600. When I am playing a game...and not
all games do it...sometimes the display turns black and the monitor's
LED turns amber. I cannot due anything and have to restart. I am not
assuming its a temp problem since CPU does not exceed 55 degrees
celcius even when heavily in use. Apart from that I have adequate
cooling directly on the video card and inside the case. In the event
viewer the only occurance at the same time of the fault is this
entry:

The time provider NtpClient is configured to acquire time from one or
more time sources, however none of the sources are currently
accessible. No attempt to contact a source will be made for 14
minutes. NtpClient has no source of accurate time.

Also I have up yo date drivers, directX, virus free for sure and loads
of RAM..1.2GB DDR 400.


Can anyone give me some tips on how I could find out the source of
this saga??? any software in particular? please HELP ME! even a fresh
format and installation of XP was not enough to get rid of this.

It might be a power supply problem. One way you could attempt to
diagnose this without additional hardware, is to strip your system down
to the minimum configuration you need to run the game. Hopefully you
have some drives and cards that can be removed to take load off of the
system.

 

[UT Student]

I have been having a strange problem ever since I replaced my old geforce
5200 with the radeon 9600. When I am playing a game...and not all games do
it...sometimes the display turns black and the monitor's LED turns amber.
I cannot due anything and have to restart. I am not assuming its a temp
problem since CPU does not exceed 55 degrees celcius even when heavily in
use. Apart from that I have adequate cooling directly on the video card
and inside the case. In the event viewer the only occurance at the same
time of the fault is this entry:

The time provider NtpClient is configured to acquire time from one or more
time sources, however none of the sources are currently accessible. No
attempt to contact a source will be made for 14 minutes. NtpClient has no
source of accurate time.

Also I have up yo date drivers, directX, virus free for sure and loads of
RAM..1.2GB DDR 400.


Can anyone give me some tips on how I could find out the source of this
saga??? any software in particular? please HELP ME! even a fresh format
and installation of XP was not enough to get rid of this.

By any chance does it have TV_out and/or dual displays?

When I had my nVidia a few years back, when playing movies full
screen or some games, my monitor would simply go dark into standby like
you describe. It turned out that there was a "full screen to secondary
monitor" setting. Since I almost never had the TV hooked up, it
took me a while to figure out that my video card was redirecting the
output to the enabled but non-connected TV out port.

 

[kony]

I have been having a strange problem ever since I replaced my old
geforce 5200 with the radeon 9600. When I am playing a game...and not
all games do it...sometimes the display turns black and the monitor's
LED turns amber. I cannot due anything and have to restart.

Do you have other systems, perhaps networked to this one
with file sharing? I ask because we can ignore the monitor,
except to recognize that when it goes amber, it simply means
there's no video to it. More important would be the cause
of no-video, if the video card is failing (to work, it might
still be a "good" working video card but for the purpose of
video output, that output stops for whatever reason...) or
if the entire system has crashed completely. I mentioned
other systems networked because if only the video output had
failed, it's possible system is still working even if
unusable. It would be good to know if rest of system works
(so you would then focus on video-related things) or if
entire system crashed, greatly widening the potential
suspects.

I am not
assuming its a temp problem since CPU does not exceed 55 degrees
celcius even when heavily in use.

CPU overheating during gaming would more likely just crash
the game, show anomolies in the game, or maybe kick you out
to the desktop. Seldom if ever would it just go completely
black unless there were a severe sudden failure, perhaps
heatsink falling off but obviously that isn't the situation
here. On the other hand, it might be possible the video
card is overheating? even if a fan is pointed at it, if the
heatsink isn't making good contact it could still overheat.
If the video card heatsink fan is failed (assuming it has
one), an aux. fan pointed at the card might not be enough.
Try to replicate the failing environment and then check
video card fan, and take PSU voltage readings.

What PSU make/model/wattage? A concise list of all major
components in the system would help - it is a hardware
forum.

Apart from that I have adequate
cooling directly on the video card and inside the case. In the event
viewer the only occurance at the same time of the fault is this
entry:

The time provider NtpClient is configured to acquire time from one or
more time sources, however none of the sources are currently
accessible. No attempt to contact a source will be made for 14
minutes. NtpClient has no source of accurate time.

You might try providing a different time server URL, but
that is not THIS problem, it would only effect how often the
system time is updated.

Also I have up yo date drivers, directX, virus free for sure and loads
of RAM..1.2GB DDR 400.

Well up to date drivers would still be ATI drivers (yuck!).
Try uninstalling them, using a driver cleaner, reinstalling
DirectX9C, then a different video driver.

How long had the system worked in it's present
configuration, and what has changed besides the video card?

Is the problem happening on multiple games or only this one?
If only the one game, try patching the game and try to
replicate the problem on other games. If it is only this
game, suspect the game.

Can anyone give me some tips on how I could find out the source of
this saga??? any software in particular? please HELP ME! even a fresh
format and installation of XP was not enough to get rid of this.

IF it is hardware, it might be the power supply.
Insufficient info to make that determination though, also
open the system and inspect all cards/cables/memory/etc,
since any use taking system to a fairly loaded state from a
fairly idle one creates more heat and intermittent
mechanical connections might be subject to disconnection
with temp changes.

If all else fails, run Memtest86+ and Prime95's Torture Test
(large in-place FFTs setting). Run each for at least an
hour and if there are ANY failures, you need to regain
system stability before any further scrutiny of the gaming
issues.

 

[cavebutter]

I was having overheating problems with games and music...couldn't for
the life of me figure it out. I discovered that my BIOS was out of
date, and that for my motherboard (ECS 848p-a2.0), there was a BIOS
update that "fixed cpu temperature". After running my machine with all
the panels off, and box fans pointed at the cpu, turns out that a BIOS
update was all that was needed.

 

[kony]

I was having overheating problems with games and music...couldn't for
the life of me figure it out. I discovered that my BIOS was out of
date, and that for my motherboard (ECS 848p-a2.0), there was a BIOS
update that "fixed cpu temperature". After running my machine with all
the panels off, and box fans pointed at the cpu, turns out that a BIOS
update was all that was needed.

Was it instable in that overheating situation? There are
two primary things such an update could do:

- Fix a misreading, cosmetic mistake, make it more
accurately reflect the true CPU temp. If that is what
happened, the system was never really overheating and should
not have had any related instabilities.

- Enable a dependant subsystem to support ACPI Halt-cooling.
That will keep the CPU cooler when it is not at full load,
but the CPU should never have been overheating if this is
what the situation is, because the heatsink should be
(chosen such that it is) adequate to keep the CPU cool
enough running for extended (even indefinite) periods at
full load in the worst possible ambient conditions the
system will face.

 

[XModem]

what a bunch of crap

Was it instable in that overheating situation? There are
two primary things such an update could do:

- Fix a misreading, cosmetic mistake, make it more
accurately reflect the true CPU temp. If that is what
happened, the system was never really overheating and should
not have had any related instabilities.

- Enable a dependant subsystem to support ACPI Halt-cooling.
That will keep the CPU cooler when it is not at full load,
but the CPU should never have been overheating if this is
what the situation is, because the heatsink should be
(chosen such that it is) adequate to keep the CPU cool
enough running for extended (even indefinite) periods at
full load in the worst possible ambient conditions the
system will face.