Black Screen after loading Win7 64-bit on new PC

[mathur]

Hello all,

I am going to give a quite detailed explanation of my problem here - as I know it is important to have as much information about the problem as possible. I have also raised this through PCSpecialist support in the hope that they can help.

PC is new from PCSpecialist -

Processor: AMD PHENOM II X4 QUAD CORE 980 (3.70GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3)
Motherboard ASUS® M5A87: AM3+ PLATFORM, DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM) 8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card 2GB AMD RADEON™ HD6950 - 2 DVI,HDMI,2 mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable
Operating System: Windows 7 64-Bit Home Premium

It worked absolutely fine for about a week - I managed to get it set up and working with no issues. I installed Steam and Skyrim, and was playing fine on my system for about a week.

Last night, after I turned on my PC, Windows appeared to load fine, I entered my password, and the blue 'Welcome' screen was displayed. After a few seconds, the screen went black.

Note: My PC remained switched on, and I did *not* lose signal to my monitor. There was no cursor, and alt-ctrl-del / alt-tab etc had no effect.

My PC booted and entered Windows absolutely fine in Safe Mode.

I ran the following diagnostics:

AVG Virus Scan - no results
System File Check - no integrity violations found
Memory Check - no problems found
Windows Restore - (restored to two days previously) - still experiencing same problem
Windows Start-up Repair - did not detect any problems

Following this, I decided to reinstall Windows 7.

After reinstalling Windows 7, it worked for about an hour, during which time I installed various drivers from the PCSpecialist discs. (Motherboard, Sound, Graphics).

On restarting my PC and logging in, I entered Windows, but about 60secs later, the black screen had returned.

I called PCspecialist tech support, having exhausted my own diagnostic routine. The chap advised me to replace my monitor cable (I was using a VGA cable with a DVI-VGA converter into the back of my PC) I purchased a DVI - DVI cable, as I was told that the conversion process could be causing the random black screens.

Unfortunately, this did not resolve the issue. (My monitor is a Hanns-g HW191D, for reference)

The PC still boots in safe mode, so I once again tried system restore to revert to immediately after my windows reinstall. This was successful, and once again, I can access Windows fine (albeit I don't have any of the hardware drivers installed!).

I tried to install my hardware drivers one at a time, creating a system restore point after each install.

It *seems* to me that the black screen is only happening after I install the AMD Radeon display drivers.

The problem happened after installing the drivers from the PowerColor disc provided by PCSpecialist, but was resolved by reverting to the restore point immediately before the install.

I then tried to install the AMD Radeon drivers available through Windows Update instead. Same problem - same solution (revert to a restore point before the install).

So - my conclusion is that there seems to be a problem with the graphics hardware / firmware - or its compatibility with Windows 7 64-bit. Beyond this however, I am a bit stuck!


Anybody got any thoughts? Your suggestions / advice would be much appreciated!

 

[Fear]

First thing i would try is going to AMD's website and downloading the latest drivers from there for your graphics card as they will be newer than what is on the disc, also never let windows update install your GPU drivers get them yourself from the cards website and i am not sure about AMD's installer as i have only had nvidia GPU's and they give you the option to choose advanced and select a clean install which fully removes the old drivers first hopefully this will sort your problem out if not then post back.

 

[mathur]

Thanks Fear,

I have tried to install the Catalyst Software suite v 11.11 (which includes the latest drivers) direct from the AMD website - unfortunately the problem persists.

I install the driver, log into windows, and then 30secs to a minute later, I get the black screen

If I then uninstall the driver in Safe Mode through Device Manager, I can log in and everything works fine. The only problem being, I don't have any display drivers installed!

Something else I tried, was disabling the Power Saving option on PCI Express, as I had read in a few places that this could cause problems. It didn't solve mine though.

'tis driving me ever so slightly crazy

First thing i would try is going to AMD's website and downloading the latest drivers from there for your graphics card as they will be newer than what is on the disc, also never let windows update install your GPU drivers get them yourself from the cards website and i am not sure about AMD's installer as i have only had nvidia GPU's and they give you the option to choose advanced and select a clean install which fully removes the old drivers first hopefully this will sort your problem out if not then post back.

 

[AshleyUK]

Sounds really stupid, make sure that your Monitor is attached to the AMD Graphics card, as that will explain the blank screen once AMD driver's have been installed forcing Windows to use the Descrete Graphics card and not the onboard one.

 

[cadence]

I guess that's possible, but wouldn't there be no output at all to the monitor once you'd restarted, if you'd got the lead plugged into the mobo instead of the graphics card? Sounds like this chap is getting an image for a few minutes, then the black screen. Just out of interest, have you got another monitor you can try, just to rule out it's not that?

 

[AshleyUK]

Depends on which stage the Driver's are loaded by windows, for example most Motherboards you can see the bios and Windows Loading on any display even if it's disabled in Windows untill windows fully loads its kernel and settings.

 

[mathur]

Thanks for your thoughts guys,

I can confirm that the monitor is plugged into the graphics card and not the mb.