Frequent black screen / occasional BSOD during first hour of startup

xiiliea · 12 Nov 2013

Hi, I've been having some issues with my computer. Almost every day when I start up my computer, within a few minutes the screen will freeze for a few seconds, and the screen will go black, while the computer fan is still running (if I am playing music or having music playing from something, the music will freeze too). This frequently happens for a few more times (sometimes as much as 5 times) after I start the computer up again.

Sometimes, like today, the screen will keep going black and coming back on and a balloon notification will popup on the right saying "display driver has stopped responding and successfully recovered", many times until it finally BSODs.

The odd thing is that this usually only happens during the first hour when I start up my computer for the day. After multiple crashes and restarts it will stabilize and it won't occur again, until the next day when I do a cold bootup of my computer again (rarely it does happen later on though, when I'm playing my games). And I'm only usually running Firefox and just checking my Facebook when it happens.

I did do a bit of research on this problem, and I found that maybe it could be my Power Supply Unit which needs replacing. I never opened up a CPU before so I thought I would ask here first to confirm. I have the crash minidump file of my latest BSOD which I feel is related to the black screen problems I'm getting. Hopefully someone can point out the problem for me, thank you.

YoYo155 · 12 Nov 2013

Welcome to Seven Forums :) .

What you are experiencing is called a TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) and its not a real crash
in the sense that something wrong occurred in the Kernel.

TVeblen said:

"Display driver xxxxx stopped responding and was recovered"

Timeout Detection & Recovery (TDR) = "Display Driver Stopped Responding and was Recovered" is a useful feature that started in Vista and is also in W7 that allows the OS to try and recover from a video timeout so that the system does not crash to a bluescreen. Symptoms included a screen flash with the TDR message appearing one or more times or the screen blinking out to black. If the system cannot recover it will crash (Stop Error 116 typical). The issue is that the video card is not responding as expected.
.
.
.
.
There are numerous reports of hardware solutions to TDR's. The most common are:

Poor Cooling
Problems with the power supply
Overclocking Issues
Bad System memory or incorrect memory timings
Defective PC Components

More details HERE, please read.

Please roll-back to a known stable version:

Arc said:

Install the 314.22 WHQL only.

Uninstall All nvidia items in Control Panel > Programs and features
- 3D Vision Control Driver
- 3D Vision Driver
- Graphics Driver
- HD Audio Driver
- PhysX
- nvidia Update
(Are you using nvidia chipset drivers? If so, dont uninstall anything other than those are listed).
Now follow Drivers - Clean Left over Files after Uninstalling
Boot normally now. Go to Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers, Download 314.22 WHQL. While installing, Select Custom (Advanced) install. In the next page, follow this settings:

Test for thermals and stability:

Download HWinfo (64Bit) and upload a Screenshot of the Sensors window, one at idle and another while putting load on the PC using Prime95 for the CPU side and Furmark for the GPU.
- Before running Prime95 make sure to enable Round-off checking (see 1st post under the tutorial).

Testing the RAM:

koolkat77 said:

Test and Diagnose RAM Issues with Memtest86+:

RAM - Test with Memtest86+

Tip

Pay close attention to part 3 of the tutorial "If you have errors"
Test the RAM with Memtest86+ for at least 7-10 passes. It may take up to 22 passes to find problems. Make sure to run it once after the system has been on for a few hours and is warm, and then also run it again when the system has been off for a few hours and is cold.

When done with the testing procedure take a picture and upload it here.

Let us know!

xiiliea · 14 Nov 2013

Hi, thanks very much for trying to help :)

I don't remember any stable Nvidia graphics driver version, it's been the same no matter what update I used. I also tried that clean reinstallation method before but it didn't help.

HWinfo idle sensors

HWinfo loaded CPU sensors

HWinfo loaded GPU sensors

I ran MemTest86+ but after 7 passes there weren't any errors.

I don't overclock my computer. I even underclocked it one day after someone reported his similar problem fixed when he did so, but my computer froze and blacked out again while underclocking that day.

So I guess my suspicions of the PSU being the culprit still stands I think.

YoYo155 · 14 Nov 2013

Hi thanks for the update :) .
Yes that might be the case, try a different slot on the motherboard,
but don't forget the fact that it can simply be the card itself as well.