PC screen goes black and pc locks up

gerico

gerico

gerico

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12 Dec 2009
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Location
Gloucester, UK
Hey guys,

Started getting some strange things happening lately. Recently I've updated to Windows 8.1 64bit. After like an hour or so of doing some local development with XAMP on various websites (so nothing strenuous for the pc)—one screen just goes black (my main screen) and everything seems to lock up.

It's becoming more frequent, but I've no idea where to even start with trying to diagnose it.

SPEC:
Intel Core i7-4790K 4.00GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor
2 x Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Vapor-X
Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force Intel Z97
Corsair Dominator PLATINUM 8GB DDR3
 
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Hi,

What are your temps like? if it is the rig in your sig try and turn the overclock down.
 
The 4790K runs at 4ghz anyway - if it is the rig in his sig the CPU isn't overclocked.

I'd try the following:

Try running with only one GPU.

Try each stick of RAM independently

Try resetting the CMOS

What power supply do you have incidentally?
 
ExRayTed said:
The 4790K runs at 4ghz anyway - if it is the rig in his sig the CPU isn't overclocked.

I'd try the following:

Try running with only one GPU.

Try each stick of RAM independently

Try resetting the CMOS

What power supply do you have incidentally?
Click to expand...

Correct, from memory this isn't overclocked. I did do some back along, but it's back at stock now. I've got a superflow Leadex Gold 1000W PSU. I will try your suggestions.

To answer the above comments, my temps look fine from what I can see. I've not even been gaming, so temps never go very high of late.
 
R9 290s have been having a few issues with certain types of memory in some of the cards causing Black screens and lock ups.

Found this out while investigating issues I was having with the same card.

If its not the memory issue then another way to resolve it is clear all drivers and only install the driver and no CCC or any other add ons. Also Could be a BIOS issue.

Not too sure if im allowed to post links to other sites or i could show you how some people have solved it.
 
I would strongly suspect it's the graphics card BIOS. I've had a similar problem with 2x 290X cards. Sapphire released an updated Tri-X BIOS to deal with the "black screen" issue which has fixed the same issue on my reference 290X cards.

So flashing a new BIOS to the cards has alleviated the issue for me as far as I can tell.

More info on it here https://www.sapphireforum.com/showthread.php?33437-R9-290-Black-Screen-Fix
 
I had a very similar sounding issue to this recently, after exactly an hour from booting with not a lot going on the pc would start locking up and after a minute or so one of my screens would go black before the system locked, restarted and crashed on boot. It was doing my head in for days then I sat watching resource monitor and watched it crash exactly an hour after booting. Some googling of the symptoms lead me to this:

http://blog.caustik.com/2012/08/23/crucial-ssd-firmware-bug-crashesbsod/

As it turned out the firmware on a second hand ssd I bought was the issue. If your running a crucial ssd I would find out which one and update its firmware. I spent ages blaming the gfx for this as the screens would just lock up but the give away was that there was no errors written to the system logs, only a single critical on reboot informing that the previous shutdown was unexpected. No failures on the run up to the crashes made it very difficult to diagnose.

To find the event logs go into control panel > administrative tools > Event viewer. Down the left hand side expand windows logs and select system, right click on system and select filter current log. From there put a check in critical and error, this will allow you to first identify times that it crashed, following that you can look at these times and the few minutes before in all the other logs to get some indication of what the system was doing in the run up to the crashes.
 
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Vince said:
To find the event logs go into control panel > administrative tools > Event viewer. Down the left hand side expand windows logs and select system, right click on system and select filter current log. From there put a check in critical and error, this will allow you to first identify times that it crashed, following that you can look at these times and the few minutes before in all the other logs to get some indication of what the system was doing in the run up to the crashes.
Click to expand...

UPDATE

Thanks for the info Vince. Much appreciated.

I've now tried one card at a time and on both cards I'm getting the black screen issues. So I can now rule those out in all likelihood.

In the logs I get errors marked as Critical such as:
Code: 
Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
Date:          15/02/2015 20:24:49
Event ID:      41
Task Category: (63)
Level:         Critical
Keywords:      (2)
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      MatsPC
Description:
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power" Guid="{331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}" />
    <EventID>41</EventID>
    <Version>3</Version>
    <Level>1</Level>
    <Task>63</Task>
    <Opcode>0</Opcode>
    <Keywords>0x8000000000000002</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-02-15T20:24:49.952428700Z" />
    <EventRecordID>3022</EventRecordID>
    <Correlation />
    <Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer>MatsPC</Computer>
    <Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data Name="BugcheckCode">0</Data>
    <Data Name="BugcheckParameter1">0x0</Data>
    <Data Name="BugcheckParameter2">0x0</Data>
    <Data Name="BugcheckParameter3">0x0</Data>
    <Data Name="BugcheckParameter4">0x0</Data>
    <Data Name="SleepInProgress">0</Data>
    <Data Name="PowerButtonTimestamp">0</Data>
    <Data Name="BootAppStatus">0</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Doesn't really say a lot though. And as per your reply Vince, I'm not running and Crucial SSDs or HDDs. Could be software related perhaps?

In addition I've uninstalled BitDefender from my PC as that was a fairly recent installation and I don't like that program - so on the off chance it's the reason I thought it worth ridding myself of that.
 
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Crashing a lot last night. Removal of recent software didn't work.

I've not longed upgraded to Windows 8.1. from Windows 7. Could this be causing any issues if, for instance, my mobo drivers were in conflict or something? Or is this most likely a hardware issues.. I'm confused.
 
gerico said:
Crashing a lot last night. Removal of recent software didn't work.

I've not longed upgraded to Windows 8.1. from Windows 7. Could this be causing any issues if, for instance, my mobo drivers were in conflict or something? Or is this most likely a hardware issues.. I'm confused.
Click to expand...

Most likely hardware related. Although if it is software it would be pretty evident in the logs. If you export your logs I could help you have a look through and try to pinpoint where to look.

Although if it was me I would start by building the system as bare as possible, a single gfx card, single stick of ram (all stock clocks), and your OS drive. Check that the boards serial presence detect (SPD) is picking up the memory properly and setting the correct voltage and timings as per the memory's recommenced.

Use windows resource monitor and hwmonitor to monitor the system usage and the voltages/temps. With all the information from these as well as windows logs it shouldn't be too much of a chore to spot what is going on.

If you have steam or something like that then am happy to help out over some form of chat.
 
It'd be so much quicker to just test if it's the BIOS issue that has been widely documented by flashing a BIOS that is known to not have a black screening problem...
 
spoffle said:
It'd be so much quicker to just test if it's the BIOS issue that has been widely documented by flashing a BIOS that is known to not have a black screening problem...
Click to expand...

Oh wow, didn't realise there was an issue. So I need to get hold of an update and flash it a.s.a.p — Been trying to type this message a few times but it's doing it more frequently!

Vince said:
Most likely hardware related. Although if it is software it would be pretty evident in the logs. If you export your logs I could help you have a look through and try to pinpoint where to look.

If you have steam or something like that then am happy to help out over some form of chat.
Click to expand...

Yes buddie, my steam name is 'corpral stan'. Going to try and flash my bios and then see if that helps. Add me in the meantime.
 
gerico said:
Oh wow, didn't realise there was an issue. So I need to get hold of an update and flash it a.s.a.p — Been trying to type this message a few times but it's doing it more frequently!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've had it, not as severe as yourself. Mine was in game primarily. The BIOS fixed it completely.
 
gerico said:
Oh wow, didn't realise there was an issue. So I need to get hold of an update and flash it a.s.a.p — Been trying to type this message a few times but it's doing it more frequently!



Yes buddie, my steam name is 'corpral stan'. Going to try and flash my bios and then see if that helps. Add me in the meantime.
Click to expand...

Have a look here for bios updates for your board:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4949#bios

There are a few updates so its worth a look.
 
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