Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of TodBuilt
TodBuiltFlag for United States of America

asked on

Black screen sometimes when booting on new build computer

I have just finished putting together a new computer.  Asus Rampage II Extreme MOB, SLi BFG nVidia 280 Video, 6 Gb Corsair DDR3, Corsair 1000 watt PSU, WD Velociraptor HDD, 500 Gb Maxtor HDD.  1st Boot went into bios and set to default settings and seemed fine all hardware found properly.  Saved and exited.  Screen went black and never came back up even though computer continued to boot.  After a couple of minutes I shut off computer.  On next reboot screen came up and went into installing OS seemed to be going fine got to last reboot of install and screen went black and did not come back up, even though computer continued to boot, even heard the sound when going into windows.  Waited a few minutes and nothing.   Shut off computer and tried to reboot and same thing.  Cut power and waited a few minutes and rebooted, loaded fine into vista.  downloaded latest drivers for video installed all fine it ask to reboot after install and did it again, black screen but computer still loading.  This has no rhyme or reason to it or maybe i am just tired.  Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this.  Thanks in advance,

Todd
Avatar of _
_
Flag of Bahamas image

Video card in the 1st pci-e x16 slot?
SLI disabled in bios?
Video card fully seated in slot?
Try a different power plug in video card. See if you can get it on a different rail.
Avatar of TodBuilt

ASKER

Card is in 1st slot.
I cannot find anywhere in bios that refers to SLi.  Goin to go through Bios again now to see if I can find it.
I had already checked seating of cards.  They are seated.
Made sure when putting together to put on different rails. (the 2 cards that is)

Thanks for your effort
Hmmmm...  round 2...   ; )

Latest mobo bios installed?
What kind of temperatures are you getting? Try SpeedFan and GPU-Z if you need them.
Check the video fan for a tight fit and correct rpm.
Might be a wanky card, do you have another system you can try the card in to see if it is the problem?

-random-
Is the 6GB ram 3 x 2GB or 6 x 1GB

I just reread the Q again:
Try setting the system up with just 1 video card to start with. You might need to unstall the drivers and start from scratch.
Once it is running OK, add back SLI

Latest bios is installed.
temps are good.
RAM is 3 x 2GB  (and yes they are in the blue slots)

I am gonna try the single card next.  However what is confusing about this is I dont think this is a OS prob or heat becouse once up you can run as long as you want with no problems.  It is when you reboot that you lose the picture.  The computer is running fine and will boot everytime you just cant see it.  You can hear it boot up and even go through the restart or shut down routine--windows key, then 3 arrows to the right and 3 arrows up to restart.

Thanks Again
>> It is when you reboot that you lose the picture.

Now that I got it through my head you were running sli, I think it is getting confused about which card is 'primary'. Probably a bios setting, since that is where it seems to be loosing it.
A cold boot seems to be OK, but the warm boot is where the setting is getting buggered.
Sometimes even a cold boot doesn't do it.  Thats why it is so wierd.  Its like a crap shoot on wether the picture will come up or not.  But it will fully boot everytime.  I type my password in when I hear the sound that comes at login screen wait about 3 minutes and I can shut down blind or reboot blind.

Gonna go to bed, been at this for about 20 hours now.  I will check in the morning to see if you or anyone else has anymore ideas.

Thanks again
Sleep is a good idea.
Other than running the cards one at a time to see if one of them is the problem, all I can think of is that the mobo or bios is flaky.
I will check back tomorrow, late afternoon/early evening.
Ok..I took out the second video card and tried booting acted the same way.  Replaced the first card with the one removed earlier and started working fine....Bad 1st card right?  Not sure.  Put the card that was in 1st slot back in as second card and still worked fine, SLi enabled and worked fine 2 boots later the res changed by itself to 640x480.  So I went to device manager and there it was for some reason the second card is being recognized as a GTX 295 instead of a GTX 280.  Shut computer off to take a break thinking I had figured it out.  So just for the heck of it decided to try rebooting and it comes back up correctly.  Went to device manager to check and sure enough both cards recognized as GTX 280's.  SLi was even still enabled.  Any thoughts or do you think I should just RMA the second card for a replacement.

thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of _
_
Flag of Bahamas image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Ok.....coral47,  Thanks for you help.  Turns out it was the card after all.  RMA to BFG who promplty sent me a new card and it is working great.  Thanks again for the assistance.  Just in case anyone sees this that is building a rig with SLi.  Install only one card till OS is loaded and working correctly.  Then install second card and activate SLi.
Thanks coral47 for your quick responses.
Thank you much.   : )

And don't forget to turn up the eye-candy.   ; )