Hardware Weird display problem

[cymrych]

Hi all, thought I'd bounce my issue off of you folks before venturing into the mysterious realm of the graphics card forum.

I have a 5 month old computer rig, with an AMD Phenom II 6-core processor clocking 3.2Ghz, 8 Gb RAM, 1 TB HD, Win7 64 bit, and an AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series graphics card with 1 GB dedicated memory. The computer thus far has been used primarily for checking email, watching DVDs, and around a dozen or so installs of Orbiter almost exclusively. In fact, I upgraded to this from my laptop in great part to improve my Orbiter experience with much improved graphics and ridiculous framerate!

All was well until about 2 weeks ago. I now get a random display error, which shifts the screen to the right 25-40 percent, with the remainder of what ought to be on the right-hand portion of the screen wrapped around to the left. What's more, the mouse behaves as if this isn't just a visual artefact, and to get to the expand or close buttons, for example, I have to scroll the mouse to the right; if I try to scroll the mouse left, it hits the edge of the window and won't go any further.

This issue generally pops up only when doing something more graphics-heavy than simply checking email or using notepad, such as watching video or, sadly, playing Orbiter. Most of the time, it's a hands-off event, meaning I'm certain it's not a weird keystroke or something like that. Sometimes, but not always, exiting whatever app and going to desktop will let the display return to normal after a random amount of time.

A possible related issue is that my machine seems incapable of returning successfully from Sleep mode; nothing is outputted to my monitor to wake it up, and as near as I can tell based on the NumLock light on the keyboard, the computer locks up.

Any advice on things I can check would be greatly appreciated. Be easy on me, this is my first foray into something better than intergrated graphics! But as you can imagine, it's a collosal nightmare when diddling around in the G42 and suddenly the right side of the cockpit wraps around to the left, and the runway is no longer center in the field of view.

Cheers, and thanks

 

[Keatah]

What is the random display error?

 

[Ripley]

@ Keatah

...I now get a random display error, which shifts the screen to the right 25-40 percent, with the remainder of what ought to be on the right-hand portion of the screen wrapped around to the left...

For me, it sounds like a corrupted gfx driver.
You could give it a shot, upgrading/reinstalling them...

Do you run something else which could screw monitor refresh/resolution up??

 

[cymrych]

Do you run something else which could screw monitor refresh/resolution up??

Not to my knowledge. The only thing I could remotely think of is a message I got from Facebook when I logged on last week for the first time in about a year. To be honest, I was only paying semi attention to the computer, but FB flashed some compatibility warning about the resolution ... but I couldn't read the whole thing, nor get FB to throw the warning again. But it was around the same time that the display error first occurred.

I've updated the driver package, but the issue persisted. However, I wonder if my 2nd issue (the failure to return from sleep mode) might have something to do with the wrapped display. I changed my settings yesterday to never have the computer go to sleep, just stop outputting display signal after an hour of inactivity, and so far, no display foul up when watching video or Orbiter. Wonder if there's a memory dump from the gfx card that's getting messed up when returning from sleep ... Then again, that display issue popped up even after a full reboot, just not as frequently. Curious.

 

[Hielor]

What monitor do you have?

 

[cymrych]

23 inch ASUS VH238. Connected to computer via DVI. 1920x1080 max resolution at 75 hz. Incidentally, 1920x1080 is what I've always set my resolution to ... may have to try a lower resolution and see if the issue persists.

 

[maquil]

Hello, It looks like the same error occurred to me. Recently I've bought Asus Radeon HD 6670. After putting it into my PC, I simply run l4d. After ~20 mins of playing, my screen got wrapped (like in cymrych case).

At first i thought, that maybe something went wrong, but when that error occurred 2nd time, I got nervous. I've checked if I had latest bios version, drivers etc, but everything was up to date. Well without thinking much, I packed that card and went to the shop where I bought it, to have them check it in their service. Today I got my graphic card back (or I should say new one, since they replaced previous model) and that error still exists. So just to be sure, I reinstalled windows, but that didn't change anything.

My PC: W7 Professionall 64 bit, Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33Ghz, 2GB RAM, motherboard: Gigabyte GA P35 DS3R, HDD Samsung 400GB
The only thing that I can think of is my old motherboard. Any ideas how to deal with it?

 

[cymrych]

Thanks all for your suggestions. After contacting the tech dep't at the manufacturer of my machine, we concluded that the video card itself is the culprit, including the lock-ups during boot-up of the computer.

Getting my warranty info into the pipeline now, hopefully will have a new gfx card in and my 'puter up and running again shortly.

Cheers