First of all, thanks in advance for anyone willing to look into this. First time poster, long time visitor as the solutions to my problems were always readily available here on the forums. While my current issue may be heavily present as well, I'd like to have an additional insight as to what my best possible action should be.
First of all my system information (nothing OCed):
- CPU: i5 3470
- RAM: Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR (2x4GB)
- Mainboard: GigaByte Z77P-D3
- GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD6870 1GB
- OS: Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1
- SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB
- All drivers are up-to-date, relatively fresh install since the addition of my SSD on August 2, 2014
Today after having installed the game Borderlands 2 (via Steam) and having played it for a couple of hours my display started to act up, showing signs of artifacts and tearing. Occasionally it would lock up the video feed while sound continued to play but no actions were possible, e.g. the numlock toggle would not respond, nor would it respond to alt-Tab or Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Eventually after a few seconds it would pop back into action and perform all those actions accordingly. This would happen a few times until it reaches the dreaded black screen or a screen with grey lines, after which the sound completely hung, and the system became completely unresponsive. Note that there were never any BSODs, at any given point.
My first hunch was an overheating issue of the GPU, so I decided to give it a few minutes, pop off the side and give it an indirect feel but it was nowhere near hot, not even warm, it was actually pretty cool. After rebooting into safe mode I ran GPU-Z and SpeedFan to check for the temperatures and they were all in the 28-46°C region while the system was on. What I did next was try and boot back into normal mode but that's where the real problem started. I am able to get past the Windows 7 logo, sometimes I even get to see the desktop for a few seconds before it returns to a completely black screen without a cursor and stays completely unresponsive. The only fix is a hard reboot, even the reset button doesn't work at times.
I then decided to head back into safe mode and have a look at the reliability history, as well as event viewer. I couldn't find anything in event viewer, other than reports that Windows was shut down improperly. I checked dxdiag (64-bit as well) but nothing wrong was reported there either. Reliability history however showed 3 events regarding a video hardware error alongside the improperly shutting down of Windows. I decided to look into this and saw numerous topics of people with a similar issue where trying out a different driver version would fix it for them.
I've tried the following releases for my Radeon HD6870:
- 13.12
- 14.4 (These were originally installed)
- 14.7 (Beta)
I ran each of these after doing a clean-up using Display Driver Uninstaller/Driver Sweeper. The issue persisted after each install, even installing just the display driver and nothing else. The thing that boggles my mind is that, whenever I uninstall the driver (including ticking the delete files tickbox) and reboot after, Windows will boot perfectly fine in normal mode. The graphics card obviously shows up as a Standard VGA Graphics Adapter, but it'll work perfectly fine. Whenever the driver is installed it won't get past the black screen after seeing the Windows logo. Occasionally you can see the desktop for a few seconds but then it blanks out and locks up. It will however boot perfectly fine into Safe Mode (regular, networking and cmd) and show up in device manager as Radeon 6800 Series.
My last bit of hope was in the hands of system restore, going back to the point before I installed Borderlands 2 and everything was fine, but alas, to no avail. Just for reference I'll post the entry I found under reliability history. I ran the FixIt tool Microsoft provides to increase the TDR timeout, but this didn't help either. This was a suggestion made for the BCCode 117. The weird thing is I have never experienced a BSOD with this issue, just black screens.
Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2067
Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: FFFFFA8009C21010
BCP2: FFFFF88004451DAC
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1
Bucket ID: X64_0x117_Tdr:2_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys
Server information: fe0bdb63-7738-41b0-b580-84c8f247b443
Thanks again for anyone looking into it. I'm mainly posting this to verify whether the card is actually dead before ordering a replacement, as well as providing others with the same issue a possible solution.
Will
First of all my system information (nothing OCed):
- CPU: i5 3470
- RAM: Kingston HyperX 8GB DDR (2x4GB)
- Mainboard: GigaByte Z77P-D3
- GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD6870 1GB
- OS: Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1
- SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB
- All drivers are up-to-date, relatively fresh install since the addition of my SSD on August 2, 2014
Today after having installed the game Borderlands 2 (via Steam) and having played it for a couple of hours my display started to act up, showing signs of artifacts and tearing. Occasionally it would lock up the video feed while sound continued to play but no actions were possible, e.g. the numlock toggle would not respond, nor would it respond to alt-Tab or Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Eventually after a few seconds it would pop back into action and perform all those actions accordingly. This would happen a few times until it reaches the dreaded black screen or a screen with grey lines, after which the sound completely hung, and the system became completely unresponsive. Note that there were never any BSODs, at any given point.
My first hunch was an overheating issue of the GPU, so I decided to give it a few minutes, pop off the side and give it an indirect feel but it was nowhere near hot, not even warm, it was actually pretty cool. After rebooting into safe mode I ran GPU-Z and SpeedFan to check for the temperatures and they were all in the 28-46°C region while the system was on. What I did next was try and boot back into normal mode but that's where the real problem started. I am able to get past the Windows 7 logo, sometimes I even get to see the desktop for a few seconds before it returns to a completely black screen without a cursor and stays completely unresponsive. The only fix is a hard reboot, even the reset button doesn't work at times.
I then decided to head back into safe mode and have a look at the reliability history, as well as event viewer. I couldn't find anything in event viewer, other than reports that Windows was shut down improperly. I checked dxdiag (64-bit as well) but nothing wrong was reported there either. Reliability history however showed 3 events regarding a video hardware error alongside the improperly shutting down of Windows. I decided to look into this and saw numerous topics of people with a similar issue where trying out a different driver version would fix it for them.
I've tried the following releases for my Radeon HD6870:
- 13.12
- 14.4 (These were originally installed)
- 14.7 (Beta)
I ran each of these after doing a clean-up using Display Driver Uninstaller/Driver Sweeper. The issue persisted after each install, even installing just the display driver and nothing else. The thing that boggles my mind is that, whenever I uninstall the driver (including ticking the delete files tickbox) and reboot after, Windows will boot perfectly fine in normal mode. The graphics card obviously shows up as a Standard VGA Graphics Adapter, but it'll work perfectly fine. Whenever the driver is installed it won't get past the black screen after seeing the Windows logo. Occasionally you can see the desktop for a few seconds but then it blanks out and locks up. It will however boot perfectly fine into Safe Mode (regular, networking and cmd) and show up in device manager as Radeon 6800 Series.
My last bit of hope was in the hands of system restore, going back to the point before I installed Borderlands 2 and everything was fine, but alas, to no avail. Just for reference I'll post the entry I found under reliability history. I ran the FixIt tool Microsoft provides to increase the TDR timeout, but this didn't help either. This was a suggestion made for the BCCode 117. The weird thing is I have never experienced a BSOD with this issue, just black screens.
Description
A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Locale ID: 2067
Extra information about the problem
BCCode: 117
BCP1: FFFFFA8009C21010
BCP2: FFFFF88004451DAC
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 256_1
Bucket ID: X64_0x117_Tdr:2_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys
Server information: fe0bdb63-7738-41b0-b580-84c8f247b443
Thanks again for anyone looking into it. I'm mainly posting this to verify whether the card is actually dead before ordering a replacement, as well as providing others with the same issue a possible solution.
Will
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