It isn't sleep or hibernate, because it is impossible to wake up 
I have a homebuilt PC (quad core 6600 in a gigabyte P35-DS3P, running Vista32 Ultimate SP2, 4GB Ram (even if it isn't using the last .5...))
After a couple of years with no problems at all, now I'm having an intermittent problem with video, where the LCD monitor will quit getting signal feed, screen goes black. Power cycling the monitor results in a "no signal source" message that is built into the LCD. Power cycling the PC brings it right up, so it isn't a cable issue. When the screen goes black, the PC lights are all still on, and I can hear the HD spin sometimes; the DVD drive opens and closes no problem. I'm wondering if it might be a driver or windows update issue, since this only started happening in the last month or so.
I've set every Vista setting I can find to no sleep, no hibernate, high performance all the time.
I checked the bios (Award CMOS), and couldn't find any settings that looked like they might be video sleep related (and even if it were a bios setting, I'd expect it to wake back up when the mouse or keyboard provided input).
I downloaded what I think is the most recent drivers for the 7900GS (4/3/2010 driver version 8.17.11.9745), to no effect.
The only item in device manager with a yellow alert is the SM Bus controller. I used the Intel website tool to look for updates, but apparently it couldn't tell that the SM Bus controller was having problems, because it didn't come back with any recommendations.
I'm usually not in front of the PC when this happens, but a little while ago the screen went black and I grabbed the mouse fast, and it came back on. A little while later it happened again, I was a few seconds slower, and I couldn't get it to come back on.
This is really irritating because I always have to hard reboot, which means I also get the "windows did not shut down properly" alerts, etc.
Any ideas what else I can/should check? Are there any hidden logs somewhere that might give me a clue, and if so, where/how would I find them?
Thank you!!
I have a homebuilt PC (quad core 6600 in a gigabyte P35-DS3P, running Vista32 Ultimate SP2, 4GB Ram (even if it isn't using the last .5...))
After a couple of years with no problems at all, now I'm having an intermittent problem with video, where the LCD monitor will quit getting signal feed, screen goes black. Power cycling the monitor results in a "no signal source" message that is built into the LCD. Power cycling the PC brings it right up, so it isn't a cable issue. When the screen goes black, the PC lights are all still on, and I can hear the HD spin sometimes; the DVD drive opens and closes no problem. I'm wondering if it might be a driver or windows update issue, since this only started happening in the last month or so.
I've set every Vista setting I can find to no sleep, no hibernate, high performance all the time.
I checked the bios (Award CMOS), and couldn't find any settings that looked like they might be video sleep related (and even if it were a bios setting, I'd expect it to wake back up when the mouse or keyboard provided input).
I downloaded what I think is the most recent drivers for the 7900GS (4/3/2010 driver version 8.17.11.9745), to no effect.
The only item in device manager with a yellow alert is the SM Bus controller. I used the Intel website tool to look for updates, but apparently it couldn't tell that the SM Bus controller was having problems, because it didn't come back with any recommendations.
I'm usually not in front of the PC when this happens, but a little while ago the screen went black and I grabbed the mouse fast, and it came back on. A little while later it happened again, I was a few seconds slower, and I couldn't get it to come back on.
This is really irritating because I always have to hard reboot, which means I also get the "windows did not shut down properly" alerts, etc.
Any ideas what else I can/should check? Are there any hidden logs somewhere that might give me a clue, and if so, where/how would I find them?
Thank you!!
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