Cannot boot with 7950 set as primary device

[supra21]

Hi I have recently purchased a Asus 7950 DCUII Top graphics card. It was all working fine until yesterday morning when i tried to wake my pc from stand-by and nothing came up on screen. After a reboot it kept hanging just after the windows logo disappears; all i get is a black box.
So after trying various windows repair options I just re-installed windows 8 so I had a clean slate. Still just hangs, only a black box.....

I found that if i plugged my display port cable into the mobo (asus z77) and set the iGPU to be the the primary display device everything worked fine.
When back on the desktop I re-installed latest stable ati ccc drivers which installed fine (except the screen flicked for about 10-15 seconds).

I loaded up the game "Hard Reset" to see if my 7950 was working but as i had set the iGPU to be the primary display device it was not utilising the 7950.

Now the strange part, I also have a panasonic plasma connected to the 7950 which after installing drivers shows the extended desktop if i turn off my monitor the plasma becomes the primary display (which is connected to the 7950). When i loaded Hard Reset on this display the game was playing perfectly using the 7950........what is going on?

From what i can tell the card works but when setting it as the primary display device windows just will not boot? Is my 7950 faulty?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[gwr3850]

First thing I would try is see you can try a friends display and change the hdmi cable

And maybe boot in safe mode. Disable and reinstall the graphic divers. Other than that I'm not too sure

 

[seabiscuit]

Out of interest, what happens if you turn your screen off and then on again. I'm finding something simmilar, and this seems to bring it to life.
/edit This is on win 7. When my system starts, it shows a picture untill it gets to windows and loads drivers. Then usually a black screen untill I turn my monitor off, then on again. Sometimes I don't need to do this, but then some of those times there are blue bars across the screen unless I turn my monitor off and on again.
I've not had a chance to check a different screen or cable yet as I've only had the card for a few days. For me, it could also be a PSU issue as thats a little older now.

 

[supra21]

Safe mode did work; but even when i re-installed windows and re-installed stable drivers does not work. Also I have tried using a dvi cable instead but it does the same thing. I haven't tried turning my monitor off then back on at the black boot screen.

 

[nick.lidgett]

I have the msi version of this card and im also running windows 8 i have exactly the same problem but it has not done it in a while, at first all it would take is a reboot, it would boot very slowly im talking 30-40 seconds maybe even a full minute before i got to the log in screen, a few times it would hang on the little blue windows logo and the spinny thing would dissapear. I have an agility 3, although not the fastest ssd it should be booting in a shade over 10 secs. I keep my machine on 24/7 so booting up is not a task it has to perform regularly.
Now one day last week i was messing around on the computer the and clicked to bring up the metro view i then clicked the email tab and the screen went blank nothing could wake the monitor although the light o my case was flashing telling me it was still active. As i went to pull the hdmi cable out the back of the card i noticed through a fan vent the vga light was on, on the mobo (p8p67-pro). I switched the machine off and left it for a bit then powered it make on and the monitor wouldnt find a signal (lg flatron e-series) the vga light was on again. i turned the machine off and changed slot and powered it up and voila, monitor came back to life, took and age to boot but i was back in, i went and checked ccc and msi were upto date and knocked my overclock off my cpu (i7 2600k) and tthe gpu, switch the machine off again and returned the card to its original slot, it booted into windows very quickly, i left the machine like this for a few days with no probpems so i OC'd the GPU via msi afterburner (1100/1100/1500) and ran it for a while no problem so i OC'd my CPU again (4.4 @ 1.32v) and left it, its been absolutely fine ever since, so like the OP im kinda stumped as to whats causing this to happen.
Im thinking its a ccc or msi vs windows 8 problem that might get updated and go away???

 

[supra21]

So this seems to be down to windows 8? I also restored all stock clocks on my cpu (i7-3770K) and the 7950 also. Firstly I thought it was something to do with my ssd's (I have 2 Crucial M4's in Raid 0) so I flashed the latest firmware; which has windows 8 compatibility improvements but still no difference.
Its so weird that it was all working fine and then randomly generated this issue. I may go back to windows 7 again to see if that resolves the issue but windows 8 has grown on me and I cannot be bothered to re-install os/programs all over again!

 

[nick.lidgett]

Yeah i thought ssd at first simply because of the hanging/ extra long boot times once it hits windows, after rebooti g from this error, however im not convinced, the fact it started for seemingly no reason might mean it will go away on its own too

 

[seabiscuit]

So this seems to be down to windows 8?

I'm on Win 7 at the moment. So not sure it's a Windows 8 thing.

 

[supra21]

To get around this I have set the igpu as the primary display adaptor in the bios. This is connected via DisplayPort to my monitor. I have also connected a DVI cable to my monitor from my 7950.
I have configured my DVI connection to be "My Main Display" using windows settings, and have disabled the DisplayPort display.(so the desktop does not extend) This allows me to boot into windows and use the 7950 as the primary vga adpator. However if I need to see the post or get into the bios i need to switch to the DisplayPort input.

 

[supra21]

I just thought I would report that after updating my bios to the latest version this issue has been resolved!

(ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE: Updated from 1709 to 1908)