Weird problem (Computer freezes on boot screen)

Hi

If you have access to another PC test both your vga cards individually in another system, if one or both of the cards ammit the same issue while the Forceware driver is loading into windows you may need to raise another RMA; if this is the case, before sending them off make a note of the serial numbers on the card/s that you are sending in, go as far as taking pictures.

+1 the54thvoid
"1) Your cards were not replaced (despite the shiny film) and are both borked - highly unlikely" I would add to this; although unlikley it is not impossible! you will be able to eliminate this by using the aforementioned test to rule this out.

atb (all the best)

Law-II

 

I already tried that when I uninstalled both my Revo and sound card on my spare HDD.

I'll try and borrow my friend's copy of his Windows 7 disc and give it a try when I see him on Monday to borrow his video card to help me troubleshoot some more.

EDIT: I just realized that it can't be my Windows installation disc because I used it to format my cousin's computer about a week ago, he has an MSI N480GTX Lightning video card and I was able to install the latest nVidia GeForce drivers for it without any issues.

 

I just tried installing the nVidia GeForce drivers in Safe Mode, and on restart, it still froze on the Windows 7 boot screen. But this time I heard the Windows Start Up Sound and the clock display on my Logitech G19 keyboard was fully working, it's usually what I look at to see if my system is locked up or not. I also tried using a VGA to DVI cable instead of my HDMI cable to see if that'll work, but nope.

 

So the display is locked up but the system appears to boot? If you enable RDC can you connect in when the screen appears to be frozen? Is it possible only the display locks up and the rest of your rig doesn't?

 

Long shot. Which HDMI port are you using on your Bravia? I found a forum post elsewhere that says only PORT 3 on that model will accept a PC input. If you're already using that, I'm shit outta ideas again.

 

havent read through the 3 pages of thread but first impressions are a memory issue

 

Ofcourse it's RAM ... that's the first thing you should be looking at, most of the time it's the most obvious cause as it's the most fragile and most unstable of all of the hardware, PSUs come in second, but only if you have a crappy low-cost brand however.

You've wasted your time RMAing everything else, the most funniest thing, they've actually sent you back new hardware, it is ridicolous how RMA works, free hardware


I think those companies know lot's of people have no idea but they just make good RMA for PR and company image purposes, i think that's probably the case.

 

Well, he's used memtest which as we know isn't perfect. Furthermore he's tried the installs with each stick of RAM separately. It failed with each stick? That implies every stick of RAM he has is faulty. Which is possible but as mentioned, highly unlikely.

 

That is your first problem. He has swapped out a lot and if it were ram, it wouldn't suddenly act up when you install forceware drivers. If ram was faulty, he would be having issues even before we installed forceware drivers.

So when are you getting your hands on a different video card to test out that doesn't use forceware drivers, because it seriously sounds like a device conflict.

 

Did he changed the motherboard?

 

Yes, iirc he has replaced everything except memory and there are no indications of memory issues without the forceware drivers installed. It's not like the GPUs don't work either, they work just fine without drivers.

How much control does your BIOS give you? Have you disabled everything that you don't use to try and free up some IRQs?

I'm still very interested to hear that he still hears the Windows 7 start up chime, which means the system could be booting but the display is stuck, but only after installing drivers which would make this clearly a software issue.

If you really want to see the state of your desktop if it is booting with the GPUs borking out, install a VNC server and connect using a VNC client, because it could be something as simple as your display reporting the wrong DDC data or nVidia's drivers are reading your displays DDC correctly.

 

I just tried out HDMI port 3 and the same thing. But I've been using HDMI port 1 since I first got my Bravia and it was working perfectly fine before all this started happening.

My friend is coming by later today with his video card to help me troubleshoot, I'll post back the results.

 

What about selling everything except the hard drive and simply move to another hardware completely

I wouldn ever do RMAs in a situation like this, but i can pardon, there was no way to predict it.

Seems like GPU drivers are simply not compatible with this setup. There may be no point with trying the same model GPU with same drivers. I hope the GPU is another model completely or another vendor, latter is better.


This is the world of PCs here, that means all of the RMAs were for nothing, but that's what it takes to find the problem, it's the drivers, because it freezes when they are loaded.



2 Choices:
1. Move to another motherboard model completely, different chipset, different socket, or different vendor. If that doesn't work it's the CPU mismatch, then do the same for CPU.

2. Move to another GPU vendor to avoid forceware completely.

 

You're asking him to replace his 980x setup. Are you insane or are you just out of touch with how much equivalent hardware on X79 will cost? I think that is a little extreme before we even figure out what is wrong in the first place.

Flava: Seriously, you said you hear the Windows 7 chime. Find a way to use a remote connection to get into your computer after your display locks up, I'm not convinced that your entire system is actually locking up but rather just the video output. I don't recall but have you tried using a display other than your Bravia? Some HDTVs don't play well with video cards out of the box because once forceware drivers are installed, nVidia will try to configure the resolution and everything to work with the display and it could be misreading your displays DDC if it is even available, I'm assuming it is.

 

Long shot, but thought I'd just register to ask this, since you've pretty much tried everything and would deserve to finally get to the bottom of this...

Have you tried installing NVIDIA drivers without the HDMI Audio driver?

 

Nope, but I'll give it a try and post back with the results.

BTW, welcome to the forums!

 

I just tried to install only the graphics drivers, without the HD audio drivers and 3D drivers, and my system still froze on the Windows 7 boot screen on restart.

 

So, I was able to try out my friend's EVGA GTX 480 on my rig, and it works perfectly fine after installing the nVidia drivers. I was even playing BF3 for a good 2 hours, finally! I've been dying to play it again. LOL

But now I have my messed up N580GTX Lightning XE's back in and everything looks like shit again. LOL

I guess it's my video cards that's been causing all this.

 

Good that you found the problem!

 

Pretty expected result, the drivers just don't work for that model, report the critical bug to nvidia.

 

Have you tried beta drivers? The latest is 301.24.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-301.24-beta-driver.html

 

No, I haven't. I'm worried about trying Beta drivers, because the last time I did on my old rig, my GTX 275 got messed up.

 

That's silly. Even if it does it's fixable no prob. , and it surely won't destroy hardware, if it were broken and causin overheating for everybody they would have removed them by now.

Just try it, if it messes up your PC, come back for help.