Monitor and HD4850 grey lines

[joshwill80]

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Acer X223w monitor
Radeon HD4850
AMD Phenom II x4 920

My problems seem to be slightly different than the common ones and after much searching I am having trouble finding answers. I have two problems, probably related...

1. I have always had trouble installing the HD4850 drivers correctly. If I just try to install them over the previous drivers then I get a black screen during driver install and I have to do a hard reboot. I always had to uninstall previous drivers, then run DriverSweeper in safe mode, then restart computer and install drivers. That works fine most of the time, but Windows 7 always detects the graphics card and installs a driver first, which sometimes still gives me the black screen during ATI driver install. Would be nice if I could install the ATI driver before Windows 7 installs a driver, but I can't seem to do that.

I eventually get the driver installed, but I always dread doing a driver upgrade because it turns into a huge pain. Now, I have read that many people get black screens upon booting up Windows Vista or Windows 7, which will rarely happen to me too, but a computer restart always fixes it. My black screens are usually in the middle of an ATI driver install.

2. The bigger problem for me right now is some faint grey lines that are now appearing on my monitor. My monitor was turned off completely for about 5 days, and when I returned home I noticed the lines for the first time (they could of been there earlier and I just never noticed). They are very faint and grey and run diagonally broken across the whole monitor. They are more recognizable on lighter colors, with being the most apparent on white. They are not too bad but still enough to be a distraction in Photoshop, etc.

At first I thought maybe they were streaks from cleaning the monitor, but I noticed that they all run in the exact same angle, and all across the entire monitor. Another thought I had was that since I have my monitor tilted down at the lowest possible angle, that the liquid inside the monitor was running downwards and causing the streaks, but I don't know enough about monitor technology to say. I read up about grey lines, but it seems most people have them horizontally or vertically on monitors, I could not find any info about diagonal lines. Here is a crude illustration showing the lines. On my monitor, the actual lines are thinner and more transparent.

http://i49.tinypic.com/1zlys6f.jpg



Sorry for being so detailed Just hoping to figure it out. Any ideas?

 

[wa1]

What about your PSU? brand? model?

You always can disable the auto install driver for your HD4850.
My HD4850 is automatically detected by win7 and after that i install it with the driver which came in the CD, it works fine...

 

[johnxfire]

At worse, those diagonal lines could be caused by dead LCD cells, which means the fix would be getting a new monitor. =\ How long have you had that Acer monitor?

For your first question, I cannot comment. I have an HD 4850 too, but I am still running good ol' XP. xD

 

[joshwill80]

Thanks for the replies. I have had the monitor less than a year, so it should still be working well. I will have to test the monitor and monitor cord on a different computer, it might be the video card. Was hoping someone might know something though, but I can't seem to find any information on these specific problems.

How do you disable auto installing of drivers by Windows 7? If I uninstall the video card through device manager, then restart the computer, Windows always detects the video card and installs a driver.

 

[COLGeek]

First, if you are overclocking. Stop and reset to default speeds. Second, the PSU question is a good one. Higher end GPUs (ATI and Nvidia) are pretty picky when it comes to power supplies. Make sure yours is up to the task.

Next, are you chipset drivers updated? If not, update them. BTW, what motherboard are you using? Does it have an ATI or Nvidia chipset?

It is common for your screen to flicker (go to black) during the Catalyst install. How long does your go black?

Please advise. HOOAH!!!

 

[joshwill80]

OK, some more details about my system...

- Prebuilt CyberPowerPC system has worked fine for 14 months now.

- I checked the overclocking thinking CyberPower might of overclocked it, but the speeds are at defaults. I did try setting default clock speeds in ATI Tray Tools to see what it would do. It caused a BSOD. Strangely, the BSOD did not display the grey lines (even though the BIOS screen and Biostar startup display does show them). So I am wondering why the BSOD did not show the grey lines.

- I also tried a video card information app called GPU-Z. It displayed that my clock speeds are set at defaults. However my actual gpu core clock speed is running at 125mhz slower than what the default is set to run at (default speed is 625, actual speed is 500). Is that normal?

- The PSU is the one thing I don't know a lot about. I don't know the make/model, but I do know its a 680w supply.

- The motherboard is a Biostar TA790GX 128M. It has an ATI chipset. The BIOS and chipset drivers are the latest.

- Yeah, I know that the screen usually flickers during ATI driver install, but mine goes black and stays black until a hard reset. Unless I completely wipe away the previous drivers thoroughly before a driver install, and even then it sometimes still displays the black screen.

- Does not happen very often, but sometimes I get a black screen after the Windows start logo and I have to do a hard reset. I noticed that when that happens, the graphics card seems to go into overdrive (gets loud).


It has been rather hot in the room the computer is in lately (no AC), so wondering if things are overheating. Still, would like to know why the BSOD displayed properly.

Also, still trying to figure out how to stop Windows 7 from installing video card drivers, would like to try a complete virgin driver install and see if that helps.

 

[joshwill80]

The monitor does not communicate with the graphics card if the computer is off does it? Reason I ask is because I tried turning on my monitor with the computer off. It displays a brief Acer logo and then a brief grey box with a "no signal" message, both of which also display the grey lines.

This is leading me to believe that the problem is either the monitor or the cord, unless the monitor does somehow communicate with the graphics card for a brief period even with the computer off.

 

[Userremoved]

Let me guess that PSU is one of those "Cyberpower" El Cheapo PSU? Open the case and go see.

 

[joshwill80]

Was finally able to get a clean driver install, but did not help my situation. Yeah, it appears to be a relatively cheap Sunbeam PSU.

 

[Userremoved]

Get a Antec, Seasonic, Corsair, ect. to replace that hunk of junk. The TX650 or EA650 should power this computer and run it.

 

[Jeffurn]

i have the same problem . . .diagonal grey line across acer aspire 5750 screen . . .can be clearly seen when working on white pages . . .it is very annoyed !!
any fixed ??