Random crash/freeze with dual monitors

Smiler said:

But now I can't get my computer back to normal. I tried BCDEDIT /SET VGA OFF, but it doesn't seem to do anything. I still can't turn my second monitor back on.

Did you reboot after running that command?

Yes I did. Everything was still the same. I have no clue what to do now.

Smiler said:

Yes I did. Everything was still the same. I have no clue what to do now.

Can you run BCDEDIT by itself and paste back the output please.

Nevermind. After trying the command again everything is back to normal.

I'll start testing whether turning displayfusion off does anything to stop the crashing.

Okay, I've tried drivers from 9.4 all the way to the 9.10 beta. None of them stop the crashes from happening. The crash doesn't happen every time, but it still happens when I don't expect it when I'm not trying to make my computer crash.

I'm out of ideas. Could my directx drivers be messed up? This did start after I played Crysis Warhead for the first time with this graphics card (my old one died), and Steam said that it was installing Directx, even though I had it fully upgraded at the time. I did try installing Directx through the program on Microsoft's website, but it doesn't find any new updates. It could have been a coincidence, but this crashing problem seemed to start after I played Crysis Warhead

Smiler said:

Okay, I've tried drivers from 9.4 all the way to the 9.10 beta. None of them stop the crashes from happening. The crash doesn't happen every time, but it still happens when I don't expect it when I'm not trying to make my computer crash.

I'm out of ideas. Could my directx drivers be messed up? This did start after I played Crysis Warhead for the first time with this graphics card (my old one died), and Steam said that it was installing Directx, even though I had it fully upgraded at the time. I did try installing Directx through the program on Microsoft's website, but it doesn't find any new updates. It could have been a coincidence, but this crashing problem seemed to start after I played Crysis Warhead

If I understand correctly, it's not actually a "crash" - it's a lockup preceded by graphics artefacts? If it was a crash, it'd be somewhat easier to troubleshoot. Lockups are almost impossible to diagnose over a web forum. It usually comes down to just trial and error.

How did the old video card die exactly? Was it in any way linked to similar issues?

The old graphics card was 2 years old, and it fried. It died while I was playing Battlefield 2. It usually ran at about 80C when I played games. It was a NVidia 8500GT, if that helps.

The one I have now idles at 44C and gets up to 60C when I am playing a game.

Okay, so what the crash is, is when I move the mouse from the 'show desktop' button on the taskbar to the right so the mouse cursor is on the bottom left corner of my second monitor, the cursor will suddenly have the top portion of the cursor repeated in a vertical line. If the computer doesn't lock up, the cursor will still change according to what's happening (if the loading circle pops up, there is just 5 tops of the circle stacked on top of each other). If I move the cursor back and forth between the screens, it will eventually go back to normal.

If the computer does lock up, the cursor will soon turn into a square that is usually a few different colors, and then each screen will turn a solid color. If I have music or a video playing, there might be some studdering still going, but the computer is mostly locked up. I can't get it to respond to keypresses or anything.

Nothing is overheating when this happens. This first started happening while I was using HW Monitor, but I have stopped using it after I figured out that this wasn't due to overheating.

Edit: This problem actually started happening about 4 days after I installed my new graphics card, and this didn't happen with my old one.

I am having literally the exact same problem. I recently upgraded to a second monitor running Windows Vista SP2 and Radeon HD 4870. If you have figured out what was causing the problem help would be greatly appreciated.

Posting again to say that I still have this problem. When the cursor goes from the bottom of one monitor to the other can make my computer crash.