blank screen at boot up 4850 could it be voltages?

[GoonerUK]

Hello everyone
I've been getting a blank screen at cold boot up the first time i turn my pc on until it gets to desktop also if i leave it off for a couple of hours or leave it idle at desktop for more than a couple of hours it goes blank again,with all these i get a flashing green power light on my monitor. I was looking at the voltages in RBE in the clock setting and see at boot [clock info 00] the voltage is blank, that includes brets bios's and the default bios as well, as well as being blank in 03 06 09. Ive looked at bios's for the 3800 series and they all had voltages of 1.3 in the boot clock.

Could this be why i get a blank screen on a cold boot or after a couple of hours of inactivity,would it be safe to put a voltage value of 1.084 or something similar in the boot clock info 00?? Would if cure my blank screen problem?

 

[JrRacinFan]

First and foremost, welcome to TPU! Second, could you please give full system specs, and/or fill them out in user cp with making them visible.

Third, not much experience with HD4850 bios editing myself but it sounds as though you are having issues in your motherboard's bios powersaving settings. Check out those first.

 

[GoonerUK]

Thanks for the reply, done my system specs in usercp . Yes i thought it was the mobo's power saving features to mainly hpet but if i disable it vista gives me a bsod stop error, so i've formatted drives disabled hpet and tried to install vista again but still got bsod straight after the the grey installation screen, so installed xp with hpet off which worked but still got the blank screen,so its not hpet.

 

[GoonerUK]

Well you can rule out the psu, just spent £80 ($150) on a new one, and still i get no output from gfx card from a cold boot, this is doing my head in now

 

[kyle2020]

hmm, im trying to think what could be wrong - everything has power? pci plug in? is it seated firmly? what about your ram - is that seated nice and tight too? A good thing to do would be to unplug everything, and re plug it all back in to check.

Also, clear CMOS, that seems the likely culprit to me, possibly a bad overclock.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Look and make sure the turn off monitor after 20mins power saving option is off too.

Can you try a differant card? if its ok with a differant card,i would say the 4850 might be faulty.

 

[sneekypeet]

Is this followed by any sort of GPU recovery?

 

[GoonerUK]

Thanks for the reply's , before i had the 4850 i had a x1950 and never had a problem, like i said this only happens when left turned off for a couple of hours or the pc is inactive for a couple of hours, all setting for power savings in vista are set to never. The monitor has both vga and dvi connection so i'm going to try the option on the amd website and connect both connections to the card. The other thing i get is a pulsing crackling sound from the monitor speakers when the screens blank even though the speakers are not connected and volume is at 0.

Like i said once i'm in desktop the monitor comes to life and if i'm active on the pc without being inactive for a couple of hours its fine, i can reboot and see the post screen and everything, it only when the pc is inactive for a couple of hours or more be it either in windows or turned off that this problem occurs.

 

[sneekypeet]

so it seems its a wake issue. Set the Pc power management to not allow it to sleep...then just tick the power button on the screen when you want to leave the Pc...asuuming its running all the time?

 

[JrRacinFan]

I also was thinking resetting CMOS may help. May be getting a BSOD while inactive with a no post restart. Very peculiar indeed.

I have only one thing you could TRY and that is to bump your northbridge/pci-e voltage up one notch.

 

[GoonerUK]

Woohoo. well after days of trying to find out the problem i finally found it. Its not the pc at all or the gfx card, its the monitor, i borrowed a samsung syncmaster 172v 15" and i got a picture straight away, plugged my hanns g hc19d 19" and got the dreaded blank screen and crackling through monitor speakers.

So now the question why? Hanns g has speakers built in but are never used or plugged in the Samsung doesn't. The hanns g has both dvi and vga connections the samsung only vga, tried vga on hanns g only but still got blank screen.

Any idea guy's??

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Maybe the hanns g monitor is faulty? have you tried dvi to the hanns g monitor?

 

[GoonerUK]

yeah using dvi as i write. Same problem with blank screen at cold boot. I've checked to edid in the monitor with powerstrip and its not corrupt, i get all the right info from the edid plus when i go to update edid it doesn't come back with a corrupt one.

Edit:
Well i bit the bullet and swapped my 19" hanns g for me m8's 17" samsung, aint got dvi and maybe a tad smaller but as a short term fix i can live with it, games actually look better but the text in windows isn't as good as dvi.