Hi Everyone, iv just set up my new machine that my dad has gave to me, well formatted & re-installed everything again all seems to be working fine apart from this small problem with it, sometimes during boot up after the windows start up screen has finished & just before it loads the desktop it will display just a blank screen (this usually happens as it will go blank for a couple of seconds then it will load the desktop) but when the problem occurs the screen will just stay blank, i still notice though that the floppy drive is trying to operate and the mouse light comes on, everything seems to load apart from just the screen going blank and there is obviously a load of activity on the Hard Drive too as the HDD light is constantly on, the thing i usually do is to restart the machine and then it will start windows normally again, this only happens roughly about once or twice a week, when my dad used to have this comp i remember him saying that he used to have the same problem too but he never got it sorted, i know its not a serious problem really but it bugs me a bit and i would like to get it sorted, here are my PC Specs; AMD Athlon 3700+ @ 2.2Ghz, Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI, 2GB Kingston RAM, Dual NVidia GeForce 7800GT SLi Graphics cards.
Hope someone can find an answer to the problem, Thanks - Liam
I get the same problem sometimes, I just reboot and it works. I seem to remember there being a program that will analise whats happening during the booting process but I cant recall its name.
If this is only happening from cold boot I would suggest that something is a little flaky on the motherboard and only works when its warmed up a little and expanded.
Very rarely my machine gives me grief when I boot from cold as I leave it running all week otherwise. A quick reboot normally fixes it.
yeah I get that sometimes - like Clockd said - mines generally fine if I just keep the old girl running.
Could it be a psu issue? I spotted you have a fairly powerful sli setup, just wondering if your psu is powerful/good enough quality?
Quote from: ShakeyCould it be a psu issue? I spotted you have a fairly powerful sli setup, just wondering if your psu is powerful/good enough quality?
Yeah i wondered that it might be a PSU problem, but this comp which my dad had before he got it professionally built just around a year ago now from this computer shop he used to use, but i doubt if its professionally built then they would of fitted an undergraded PSU with SLi graphics cards. Well as other people stated on here that its happened to them before and its nothing to worry about then i might just leave it at that.
Quote from: LiamQuote from: ShakeyCould it be a psu issue? I spotted you have a fairly powerful sli setup, just wondering if your psu is powerful/good enough quality?
Yeah i wondered that it might be a PSU problem, but this comp which my dad had before he got it professionally built just around a year ago now from this computer shop he used to use, but i doubt if its professionally built then they would of fitted an undergraded PSU with SLi graphics cards. Well as other people stated on here that its happened to them before and its nothing to worry about then i might just leave it at that.
you might be surprised what some "professional" builders will do, I couldnt count the number of rows a colleague of mine and I had with our manager along the lines of "that cooler will never keep an Athlon 1400 stable" or "a 250W PSU in that machine are you insane?" back when I used to work in a local computer store.
IIRC the 7800GT uses a floppy connector for the additional power it needs.
Check to see if this is on a separate line to the floppy drive.
It may be that the 7800 GT is taking all the power & the floppy is not getting enough or the other way round.
Just a thought.
Well now i have leveled out that its not the floppy disk because i disconnected it and the problem still occurred, but last night when i had to do a restart because of an update the blank screen after windows loads now happens every time i boot! iv tried endless times now trying to boot the machine and all i keep getting is this blank screen after windows has loaded it will never seem to load the desktop at all now, but i can always get into safe mode every time without any problems. i left the comp on last night for 5 mins when it was on the blank screen and it finally loaded the desktop but the screen display was not right, the co lour seemed a bit faded and the screen size was not displaying right, so it makes me think that it could be a graphics problem, but still every time i try and boot now it will just display this blank screen and sometimes after a couple of mins on the blank screen the system will restart its self, any suggestions? Thanks - Liam
update - btw i have found the model of my PSU: http://www.hipergroup.com/English/products/hpu-3s350.html
350W seems a tad low to run an sli setup, have you tried it with just one gfx card or a bigger psu?
Quote from: Shakey350W seems a tad low to run an sli setup, have you tried it with just one gfx card or a bigger psu?
I agree.
After a quick search it appears that a 7800 GT SLI setup uses about 320w load so the PSU is running nearly flat out .
Sorry to hijack but Im wondering whether this could be similar to my problem.
Steve, where/how do you search for PSU requirements ?
I have a setup that randomly reboots when playing back video. I have run memcheck and tried all combiniations of driver versions but the problem still persists.
I am using:
PentiumD 935
2 * 512mb Kington DDR400 \ PC3200
nVidia FX5200 AGP 8x
1 * DVD-ROM
1 * SeaGate SATA HDD
running on a 200W PSU ??
Both the BIOS and PCMonitor show that the PSU is supplying the required voltages but they are on the underside (rather than spot on/over). Is it likely to be PSU ?
1 *
Useful tool:
PSU calculator (http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp)
I searched Anandtech for an old article on SLI , they do check for power usage.
As for your rebooting problem i would load the system up running 3DMK whatever version & see if it falls over.
If you can monitor the voltages @ the same time you may see a dip in the voltages which will certainly make the system unstable.
Clean stable power is very important with the newer CPUs & that is why the newer PSUs have dedicated 12v lines to power the mobo.
Try to beg/borrow a larger PSU , a descent 300w should easily be man enough but beware of the "value" PSUs as these tend to be pretty poor @ power regulation.
You can buy a plug in mains power monitor(i borrowed 1 to check my rig) but asthese are nearly the same price as a 400w PSU not really an option unless you can borrow 1.
Well using the psu calculator your rig (Nimrod) requires 207w minimum , note as PSU,s age they do drop in performance.
Yours Liam is 415 w.
Quote from: bigsteveYours Liam is 415 w.
Yeah thats what i calculated it to as well, iv just took the RAM out of the comp and re-sitted it back and also took the graphics cards out and re-sitted them but still no luck, Dad said to me too that it might be a good idea to upgrade to at least a 500W PSU because this could fix the problem.
Liam
Sweet cheers.
Ill hook up the PSU in my main rig (450W) and see if that helps the stability. Bloody computers.