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Thread ID: 90031	2008-05-20 08:51:00	Why does my screen suddenly go black? And then I have to restart the computer	paulb (1103)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
671068	2008-05-22 09:25:00	Thanks guys for all the suggestions. I just can't believe it's dust on the graphics card as the problem is so intermittent. And the power supply has done well for about 4 years so why would that suddenly not be sufficient? Any other options? Thanks	paulb (1103)
671069	2008-05-22 09:29:00	You'd be surprised at how many strange problems can be caused by a failing PSU. Getting a replacement is a good logical step, because even if it's not the problem you'll at least have a backup. You can get a decent priced unit from DSE.	Greg (193)
671070	2008-05-22 09:52:00	I bought one of these. www.dse.co.nz :)	Trev (427)
671071	2008-05-22 10:49:00	I have Vista at work and had a similar problem. Sometimes when I went to hit the calculator button on the keyboard I would get the sleep button instead( appointment for eye exam coming up), and no way could I get it to wake up except by rebooting(which gave me an error message..."Windows shutdown unexpectedly"...or similar. After a bit of googling it seems Vista sucks on the sleep side of things. I now have it set to never hibernate or sleep. Possibly a bios or software setting is sending it into sleep mode.	bones (10257)
671072	2008-05-22 10:53:00	Hope that eye appiontment is soon. Now see it was PCgirlie with Vista not paulb. My bad.:o	bones (10257)
671073	2008-05-22 13:38:00	Thanks guys for all the suggestions. I just can't believe it's dust on the graphics card as the problem is so intermittent. And the power supply has done well for about 4 years so why would that suddenly not be sufficient? Any other options? Thanks All PSUs contain aluminum electrolytic capacitors which are notorious for bad behaviour. This isn't helped by the fact that cheap PSU brands use capacitors which are underrated for the task (notibly in heat tolerance) and which over time and with high loads in current/temperatures can change value in capacity and ESR rating and can even start leaking electrolyte (all 3 generally come as a group deal) While the PSU may still work, it's overall capacity is reduced and can no longer supply the same amount of power it did when it was new. The other problem with PSUs when they go bad like this, is that the capacitors start being unable to filter ripple as well as they used to, and this can cause problems with the rest of your hardware (and is a very good candidate for intermittent or random problems) 4 years is quite a while for most PSUs	Agent_24 (57)
671074	2008-05-23 01:40:00	I have Vista at work and had a similar problem. Sometimes when I went to hit the calculator button on the keyboard I would get the sleep button instead( appointment for eye exam coming up), and no way could I get it to wake up except by rebooting(which gave me an error message..."Windows shutdown unexpectedly"...or similar. After a bit of googling it seems Vista sucks on the sleep side of things. I now have it set to never hibernate or sleep. Possibly a bios or software setting is sending it into sleep mode. Has your work installed SP1, that was one of the fixes that was (supposed to be) included.	feersumendjinn (64)
671075	2008-09-24 16:27:00	My screens (I have 2 monitors connected to my computer) started going black right after I updated my nvidia video card driver. It happened 4 times in 3 hours just this morning. So I rolled back my driver and it has now been 2.5 hours without my screens going black.	jammer (13766)
671076	2008-09-24 20:53:00	I also had a similar problem of the screen suddenly just going black, but could see the pc was still humming along nicely. So I replaced the 7900GS in there with a new Gigabyte 9600GT 512HP silent card. Now it works sweet. I know I should have done a bit more (did update to latest Nvidia drivers) in trying to eliminate other possible faults in order to find culprit before replacing card, but wanted to upgrade anyhow, and this gave me an excuse.	Nyuuji (5460)
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