Solved Display goes blank

[triplemaya]

Hi.

The display always goes blank for about 3 seconds when I:
plug in a usb stick
add a second monitor - by switching a kvm attached to the second video card output

The display sometimes goes blank for about 3 seconds when I:
start a movie playing from a virtual drive or change which iso is mounted on a virtual drive.

This problem started when I installed the 64 bit version of win7 to be able to use all of my 4 gb memory, with a view to adding some more on top of that in the future. Wtih the 32 bit version there was never a problem.

I have reinstalled the driver for the video card - nvidia 7600gt - downloading the latest version, but this does not change the problem.

When I remove the video card and use the onboard vga there is no problem.

I found this quite old thread about the same kind of problem
http://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/114539-screen-goes-blank.html
but I have swapped out the memory for different memory with no change in the symptoms, and besides, the problem occured exactly when I changed from 32 to 64, so the 64 bit driver for the nvidia card seems the prime suspect.

I've done a lot of googling but I can't find anything about this kind of problem with this symptom so I don't know what to do next.

 

[Maguscreed]

My guess is a driver is having an issue.

Without more information no one is going to be able to be specific.
The on/off the display is pulling is more than likely the resetting of a driver occurring though. In older versions of windows this would have resulted in a full crash, fortunately windows 7 is able to reset the faulting driver sometimes.

That sounds like the behavior you are experiencing. Without creating some minidump files to scan for the offending driver anything I said would be total guess work right now.

If you are willing to go to that effort (it will take a bit of doing)
I suggest activating driver verifier as a first step.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/101379-driver-verifier-enable-disable.html

The ideal is to create a minidump or crash report with some more specific information.

 

[triplemaya]

Thanks. Done that. BSOD on boot, so now I can't start up.

What next?

 

[triplemaya]

It's gone into startup repair, and its offering to restore computer to an earlier time. Do I do this?

 

[Maguscreed]

You should be able to boot safe mode and simply disable driver verifier following the same instructions.
That shouldn't have actually damaged boot up, though it does seem we've found a bad driver on the system.
Once you disable driver verifier again it should boot up properly for you.

Once that is done follow the bsod posting instructions that can be found by clicking on the picture in my signature.

I am going to have to leave the house here shortly so it may be a bit before I can get back to you again. Don't worry I'll keep monitoring for new posts though.

 

[triplemaya]

Thanks. Back up.
Attached files as requested.

 

[triplemaya]

Having done all that, I have to admit, VERY sheepishly, that I solved the problem with a new download of a driver from nvidia. The report said clearly that a driver problem was likely, so I tried nvidia once again, and it worked.

In my defence, I have been living with this problem for nearly a year, and tried every varition of driver I could find, and I've been checking in with nvidia every so often and getting the latest version, so I had concluded that the problem was a bit more complex than a simple problem with the driver. WRONG! Clearly whatever it was is now fixed at source.

Many thanks for all your help, and for your excellent walkthrough on how to get help with Windows 7 BSODs. Great work, and much appreciated.

 

[Maguscreed]

Glad to know for future reference whenever trying to get rid of a problem you have reason to believe may be video driver based it's best to use this tool to completely remove the old driver before installing the new one.
Phyxion.net - Driver Sweeper

As just updating may not remove the problem because of shared components/registry entries and the like.
This actually works out as this laptop I'm using right now doesn't have the windbg on it and it will most likely take another hour to finish installing it and the requisites.

 

[triplemaya]

Good to know.

Thanks again.

Best wishes for a happy and productive summer.