Screen goes black while gaming

Leeroy123 · 15 May 2011 at 22:40

Try a really old driver. give the 197 driver a go. If you use the 8800 like in your sig, im sure that was the best driver for that card. I did have an 8800gts 640 a long time ago and i remember that was the only driver which i didnt have problem with

andy_mk3 · 15 May 2011 at 23:16

Ok, I will give that a try soon! Just installed XP so I'll see if it's any good on here now lol.

andy_mk3 · 16 May 2011 at 00:04

Ok, so tried it running under XP, it lasted about 10 minutes 'till it froze completely and I had to close it through task manager.

I'm going to re-download it from elsewhere and report back tomorrow!

Leeroy123 · 16 May 2011 at 00:23

make sure your card aint overheating mate when on full load. Just noticed you say you fitted new ram, have you tried 1 stick at a time. Could be a number of things

andy_mk3 · 16 May 2011 at 00:35

It did the same with the old ram. It was using ~94% of the ram when I had 2gb, so I bought a set of 4gb, however my crappy motherboard wont let me use the full 4gb, so I have ordered a new one.

It's defo not overheating, I've left gpu-z running and it barely reached 50c.

Re-downloading the 6.2gb ISO now, maybe I had a bad download.. who knows!!

Oh, and just before anyone says I didn't pay for it...

Leeroy123 · 16 May 2011 at 08:59

Might be time for a more updated card mate. And using an ISO wouldn't make a difference.

olivier renault · 16 May 2011 at 10:06

Is this a display driver crash & recover? Look at the windows logs, or run game in windowed mode and look for crash info popups.

Leeroy123 · 16 May 2011 at 10:13

He doesn't get a crash error

andy_mk3 · 16 May 2011 at 12:50

Right, so I have cleared out all the drivers and installed 197.77, removed COD completely and installed a new download. Still the same!

However I think it's a driver issue still after looking in the event viewer. Any thoughts on this?

Leeroy123 · 16 May 2011 at 13:15

maybe your card is knackered mate. have you another card to try? yeah it looks like a driver issue, but if its still doing it after a reinstall of windows it could be the card.

olivier renault · 16 May 2011 at 13:26

I've had some display driver crash and recover before, and it was related to drivers not the card. ATI 5850 though. Are you using dual displays? You may get better info running in windowed mode.

andy_mk3 · 16 May 2011 at 13:52

Ok, as a last resort I flashed the BIOS on the card. I found the original BIOS which was different to the one on there, so I have managed to install that after ages making a bootable usb drive with dos files and nvflash.

I am pleased to say I've just been playing for 15 minutes without a single hitch!

Edit: Thanks to you guys that replied for your help, it was greatly appreciated

olivier renault · 16 May 2011 at 16:01

Good you got it sorted.

Completely forgot about flashing the BIOS :/

panyan · 16 May 2011 at 16:56

andy_mk3 said:
Ok, as a last resort I flashed the BIOS on the card. I found the original BIOS which was different to the one on there, so I have managed to install that after ages making a bootable usb drive with dos files and nvflash.

I am pleased to say I've just been playing for 15 minutes without a single hitch!

Edit: Thanks to you guys that replied for your help, it was greatly appreciated

WOW - so it is fixed? can we have more details of how you did it so we know for future reference?

andy_mk3 · 16 May 2011 at 18:26

Yes it's fixed! Played a few games this afternoon without a hitch!

In short:

1) Download BIOS files
2) Download NvFlash
3) Download DOS files
4) Download HP USB format utility
5) Plug in your USB drive
6) Open the HP format utility, point it to the DOS file folder and click start
7) Extract NvFlash and copy files to USB drive
8) Copy BIOS file
9) Reboot computer and boot from USB drive
10) At the command prompt, type:

Code:

nvflash --save backup.rom

11) Once that is done, type (I changed the file name to something easy):

Code:

nvflash new.rom

12) Once it's done reboot and job done

That's how I did it, a different process or options may be needed for other cards but it worked a treat for me!