Video signal cut-off and/or system shutdown

[peter_spy]

My PC is having some weird symptoms lately: suddenly monitor indicates no video signal, and the system just stays like that until powered off or reset, or it shuts down on its own, without any logging off message or anything. Do you know whether that's a sign of RAM or HDD problems, or maybe something with PSU or video card? The CPU / mobo / RAM combo is pretty old by now, HDD isn't super new either.

Edited April 27, 2018 by Judith

[OrbWeaver]

Oddly I was looking for a solution to pretty much the same issue a few minutes ago, because I experienced the same on Linux. The monitor turned off while I was away from my desk, and was impossible to turn back on no matter how much I pressed keys, moved the mouse or turned the monitor off and on again.

 

I think it must be something to do with either the video card or its drivers, perhaps not correctly detecting the monitor state or sending the correct command to turn it back on. I've only ever experienced it when actually switching graphics modes in some way (resuming from monitor sleep state, logging in to a new session etc); I don't recall ever seeing the monitor spontaneously turn off by itself while there was a regular image on the screen.

[Bikerdude]

Are you guys referring to the monitor shutting of or the PC..?

[OrbWeaver]

In my case it's just the monitor. The PC continues fine, although I obviously can't see what it's doing.

 

It seems in Judith's case the PC did shut down by itself, although I guess this might have been a consequence of some operation he performed when trying to get the monitor to come back (e.g. pressing the power button or Ctrl-Alt-Del).

[peter_spy]

That's good to know, I'll update the video drivers then.

 

(On a completely different note, is it possible to change user names of the forums? I don't want to lose the profile, but I'm kind of tired of this nick, it's misleading and I haven't been using it outside Thief forums for decades.)

Edited April 27, 2018 by Judith

[Bikerdude]

@Orbs/Judith

 

What gfx card are you guys running, I ask because the latest nvidia driver has been causing widepsread issue for GTX 1060 owners and maybe effecting other cards.

 

Also how do your respective monitors connect to the gfx card?

[peter_spy]

Oh, that would explain it further, I have GTX 1060 6GB (Asus ROG Strix and all that shit). I use reference drivers and HDMI cable, the monitor is Dell U2713H.

[Cambridge Spy]

It sounds like you might have an ageing power supply. This has happened to me a couple times, even on my current computer.

[Bikerdude]

Oh, that would explain it further, I have GTX 1060 6GB (Asus ROG Strix and all that shit).

I use and HDMI cable, the monitor is Dell U2713H.

nvidia is recomended rolling back to previous driver for now.

Nice.

 

[kano]

@OrbWeaver, is the system going into suspend mode? Some Linuxes have trouble waking up on certain hardware.

[peter_spy]

Now I'm starting to suspect it's actually an incoming RAM / mobo failure.

 

I turned my PC on after I went back from stroll in the park, it was off for like an hour. When it started booting, for a second I could actually see the numbers for RAM check rolling (when was the last time when you saw that, these days?). What was even worse, it got stuck after a second, went a few bytes more, and froze. Everything is was OK after a reset. I just ordered a new PSU and HDD, but now I'm afraid I might need a whole new CPU/mobo/RAM setup...

[Bikerdude]

I turned my PC on after I went back from stroll in the park, it was off for like an hour. When it started booting, for a second I could actually see the numbers for RAM check rolling (when was the last time when you saw that, these days?). What was even worse, it got stuck after a second, went a few bytes more, and froze.

That sounds like the PSU is failing, just out of curiosity how old is it..?

Edited April 27, 2018 by Bikerdude

[peter_spy]

It's OCZ GameXStream 600W. I was trying to find the order date, and it looks like I bought it in 2008, jeez... I should feel lucky that it still works

[Bikerdude]

I should feel lucky that it still works.

And doubly so as its an OCZ, a few of their product lines had a rep for unreliability,

[AluminumHaste]

Have you checked Event Viewer to see if anything was recorded during the power off event?

[STiFU]

Yes, Event Viewer often offers valueable information. Also, in case of monitor issues, always try to physically unplug the device and plug it back in. The hot-plug capability of the graphicscard can reinitialize the graphical output.

 

If issues happen during POST/boot, the PSU is unlikely to be the reason for that because power consumption is very low at that stage. Once your system is bootet, you can easily test if its the PSU. Run something hardware intense for some time and see if its stable. I recommend to run Furmark (for GPU) and maybe HeavyLoad (for CPU) simultaneously. However, if that test fails, that could mean anything: faulty RAM, failing PSU, GPU problems.

 

Some other things to try:

-Regarding the hdd, have you checked SMART-values? Are they ok?

-Verify that your RAM works properly using memtest86.

[peter_spy]

I replaced PSU with new BeQuiet 600 W. For now it looks like all the symptoms are gone. No problems with video signal, tried playing a few games for a while, no problems here as well. Hopefully that was it.