Help! Constant crashes to black screen.

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dreadloch

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So I just built my first PC as of yesterday and I love it.

Everything is running fine except for one thing.

While web browsing my PC just crashes to a black screen. This only seems to happen while web browsing. I've played several hours of graphically taxing games already with no crashes at all, and the GPU temperature never exceeding 55. In particular it seems to happen when attempting to log in to websites or opening pages, as in actively doing something.

PC Specs:

I3 2120
HIS 6850
ASRock Z68 pro3-m
2 x 2gb Corsair Vengeance RAM (1600)
530w Rosewill PSU
Windows 7 home (64b)

I'm sort of baffled here to be honest. My graphics drivers are the newest version of the 68xx series from the AMD website. My RAM timing is 9-9-9-24 as its supposed to be.

Also I'm making this post in safemode at the moment, and I've yet to crash to the black screen. Could it be some sort of issue with Flash or Java or something?

 
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Raiddinn

Raiddinn

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Download and install some other browser like Chrome or Firefox and see if the problem persists.

It could very easily be a bad install of Flash or Java like you said.

It wouldn't hurt to reinstall these things as a future troubleshooting step.
 
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dreadloch

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The crashes were mostly in Firefox, IE too. I've reinstalled Flash and Java now and back in normal mode, I'll go browse around and see if i can cause it again.
 
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dreadloch

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Yeah youtube is fine. Hardware acceleration is enabled.


Also last crash happened when just scrolling down the page on craigslist...
 
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dreadloch

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Done.

Its been almost an hour now since the last crash, they're becoming less frequent... today at least. If its not something flash/java related what are the other things could it be? And what does it mean that its isolated to web browsing?
 
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Raiddinn

Raiddinn

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Do you have all the windows updates installed? All the critical ones and all the recommended ones?

It could potentially be a bad windows install, but it is probably some setting you can change somewhere if you just know where it is too.

Let me know when your next crash is and what webpage you were on if you can.
 
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dreadloch

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Just crashed while scrolling down the page for the E-Blast deals on newegg.

http://promotions.newegg.com/neemail/dec-0-2011/Holidaysale13/index-landing.html?cm_sp=Homepage2011_Top-_-neemail/dec-0-2011/Holidaysale13/img/banner-_-http%3a%2f%2fpromotions.newegg.com%2fneemail%2fdec-0-2011%2fHolidaysale13%2fimg%2fbanner%2f696x288.jpg


So I restarted, clicked firefox and It crashed again. And then a 3rd time when trying to respond to this post, its gotten quite bad again.

This MOBO has something called Lucidlogix Virtu on it which has something to do with 'Hybrid Graphics' however I uninstalled it and have the VGA cable installed to my 6850. Could it be trying to switch to the onboard GPU for web browsing or something?

I appreciate your help so far.
 
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Raiddinn

Raiddinn

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That does sound possible.

Do you have a monitor cable that will work in the onboard graphics adapter?

It is possible that if you do and you plug it in there that it will be on.

You could also try to find out how to disable that hybrid graphics stuff in the BIOS but then you would have to sit there and wonder if the graphics would have been on for the onboard card for eternity.

If you can test the onboard graphics, I would, then I would try to disable the stuff regardless.
 
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kristoffe

kristoffe

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if you have another hard drive, try to reinstall a vanilla win7 with nothing special, just win7, no updates, no drivers, nada. Try to set your BIOS to default settings, no overclocking at all. If your lan is built into win7's driver listings, try the web. If it works, add one driver for video (ati's newest real non beta) and then restart and check. if that works, then your motherboard drivers. also, if there is a bug even in vanilla, try to check for a bios update on the site for it and compare it to your current bios level.

When strange things happen that are in simple gpu use in win7 I also bump down in display settings to win classic, and it can solve some problems going from gaming (dx stuff) back to the drawing surface of the os interface.

since it is an i3, you might certainly check vanilla, then web if its ok. Then those motherboard drivers. I am thinking it is that or a situation dealing with the need to use Win7 Classic for the OS skin style. It uses a lot of DX 3d to 2d surface stuff in win7 which can crap out unbalanced driver series that each company can cause conflicts. good luck.
 
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dreadloch

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I couldn't find anything related to the 'Virtu Lucid' stuff in the BIOS, however I've disabled everything I could find related to my onboard GPU and I've plugged in an extra VGA cable I've had into it now.

I hope I can fix this soon, or at least identify the problem. Getting sick of hitting the reset button.
 
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dreadloch

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Yeah I did disable the iGPU multi-monitor that I found under a 'northbridge' menu in advanced mode.


Also whats that about pausing a game?
 
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dreadloch

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I don't have another HDD unfortunately, You might have hit the nail on the head with the theme settings, when I first went to change it to Win7 basic I got the black screen crash again, after a reboot I managed to change it to classic, hoping that was it.
 
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Raiddinn

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A lot of times if you pause a game and downsize it then the computer will think the game is still playing.

It would continue to use all the resources and so on.

If your computer always works when the game is playing just leave it playing is what I meant.
 
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dreadloch

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I'll go give it a shot, was in safe mode earlier and never had a crash.

- Edit - Can't seem to crash it by going to any of the previous sites that caused a crash, while in safemode, also the windows photo viewer isnt available.

Its pretty easily reproduced in normal mode by just opening and closing photos in windows photo viewer until it happens.

The last time i happened i briefly saw some vertical lines, GPU related maybe? I feel like this is all caused by ATI's drivers... The 6850 has so much muscle for its price but maybe I should have gone Nvidia heh.
 
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dreadloch

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Just found this in the notes of the driver i'm using:

Java Control Panel: Fixes black screen corruption seen on single and multi GPU configurations when Anti-Aliasing is forced on through the Catalyst Control Center

Is that only pertaining to gaming? Because that seems to be the only thing I CAN do with stability.

I guess it might be a known issue with AMD drivers? I've disabled forced AA that I had on for some of my games and yet I'm still crashing to black screens.
 
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Raiddinn

Raiddinn

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I have a 6850 myself and I never crash when playing anything. Mind you I don't have all the newest games, but I have never crashed once doing anything. Not on photos or webpages or anything.

I don't remember off the top of my head what my version of the drivers is, but I don't think they are the new beta drivers. I am travelling atm so I can't check that, but you might try scaling back in versions and see if that helps.

It is possible that the driver did only fix it for gaming, but I have a hard time believing that your computer would try to do AA when surfing the internet or looking at pictures.

However, if you cannot crash it in safe mode then it is almost certainly a driver issue for some thing or some other thing. Safe mode uses really old and really stable drivers for things and if things work in safe mode and not elsewhere its a safe bet its a driver thing.

I would start trying to roll back drivers beginning with the video card drivers if you already have the best drivers of each kind. If not, start by getting the best drivers of each kind, then start rolling back.
 
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