Help Geforce 7950gx2 screen goes black..

[Kinag]

Hi there,

Two days ago I was heading to my friends house to hang out and when I got there he was complaining about how his computer lagged during gameplay of different games which shouldn't lag. I tipped him to update his gfx driver, and he said that other people had said the same thing.

I downloaded the newest nvidia driver for the card, and we uninstalled the old one. After the reboot we installed the new driver and the screen gave a bsod saying Driver_Corrupted_MMPOOL and Dumping Physical Memory.

We ended the BSOD and logged on again, this time we got a black screen which flickered between gray and black, and eventually the screen went on and off (the LED I mean). We formated the computer and it all was well and good. We installed another driver and the same crap happened again. Black screen. This happened for ages and nothing seemed to work, no drivers or anything. We tried older ones, and newer ones, nothing..

He has an XFX GeForce 7950gx2 1gb with 2GB Corsair RAM as well as a Asus P5B (P965, Socket-775, ATX) Mobo. It has worked for two years previously with no problems what so ever, and the PSU has worked fine. It's currenty a 600W Fotron Source PSU which is quite good.

He's also running Windows XP SP3 btw.

Anyone know what we can do to fix this? Searched all over the web and where people experienced this, noone had the answer

You're all I got! Save me!

Thanks

 

[Gahn]

OmegaDrivers.net - Home of the ATI & NVIDIA Omega Drivers. Home
Try these drivers 1st (uninstall the NVidia ones).

 

[Mr_Grumpy]

Check card in another computer first. If that works then go from there but id suspect youll find the card has worked slightly lose or some of the ram has corrupted on the card hence different drivers accesing various parts etc.

But try card in another comp first and check that

 

[Kinag]

I fixed it (do'nt know for how long though -_-).

I went safe mode, uninstalled the gfx drivers, ran driver sweeper and removed every single display driver that was there, and then installed some old drivers from May.

Logged on to a black screen, but when I rebooted it worked.

He's playing CS as wel speak -_-

I'll take a look at the omega drivers if the computer turns off again. I'm in no mood to mess with more drivers on his computer atm as I don't want it to og boom again

Thanks for the tips

 

[Kinag]

Not fixed afterall

Came home yesterday after being out, and the computer was in wait mode. We touched the mouse and the screen still went black and blinked... I'm lossed.. tips? :-s

 

[Kryten]

Card that age - it's quite possibly suffering the same fate as many of the 7600/7900/7950 gpu's and giving up the ghost.

However, that's one of the last resorts. There's a few alternative reasons for this happening.
1. Monitor - sure it's not just that causing problem rather than the card?
2. PSU - regardless of how big it is, what make it is or how new it is, it doesn't mean they can't go wrong. However, I don't think this is the issue with these symptoms.
3. Software - not so much drivers however the card's firmware/bios. Might be worth flashing it and seeing how it goes. If it's a factory overclocked version, it might be worth trying to run it at stock speeds.

 

[Kinag]

I don't know if it's OC'ed from the manufacturer. It's a XFX Geforce 7950gx2 card, but I don't know if that tells you anything?

the PSU is a 600W Fotron/Source, but it's only 2 years old so I don't really know why it would go down under already? :-s

About flashing, I tried resetting the BIOS and it didn't really work that well.

How do you go about flashing a asus p5b P965 mobo?

I've never flashed any bios in my life so I'm a bit skeptical about doing such a thing as I've heard it can make or break stuff :-s

However, about the screen, We tried it on his old computer and worked. Why would we get the bsod with the DRIVER_CORRUPTED_MMPOOL and Dumping Physical Memory errors? It sounds to me like the gfx are struggling alot :-/

I'm not much of a computer wiz though, I know the basics and some of the intermeddiate stuff, but that's it.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Kinag]

Tried another LCD screen now.. Same thing, the on/off LED kept blinking

Black screens are no fun!

 

[Kryten]

As I said about things failing - anything can cause electrical failure very easily, just because something is "only" 2 years old doesn't mean it's not faulty. I've had brand new pieces of hardware that have just rolled off the manufacturers production line come to me entirely faulty.

If you're not very comfortable I'd not risk flashing the bios of anything - certainly can be a dangerous process. Id not imagine the motherboard bios would be involved in this issue.

The card could very well be faulty - in honesty the best option might be to find another computer to try it in - it will confirm either a hardware fault of the graphics card or the computer itself, or a software/driver issue.

 

[Kinag]

The card could very well be faulty - in honesty the best option might be to find another computer to try it in - it will confirm either a hardware fault of the graphics card or the computer itself, or a software/driver issue.

Yeah, I guess you're right, but since no driver work I Can't see how it's not the card which are malfunctioning.

I'm going to contact the store where I bought it from (komplett.no) and ask them to check it out for the guarantee.

Thanks for the tips though