Need help! Black screen

[NextgenerationX]

This is my pc's description:
model: acer aspire M5100 ( M5100 - AM5100-U5300A )
S/N: PTS870X05274802C532702
SNID: 74801134727
AMD athlon(tm) 64x2 dual core processor 4400+ 2.30GHz
I added a thermaltake TR2-550W power supply
and running a GeForce9600Gt graphics card
the pc came with 2 gigs ram. I tried adding another 2 gigs but screen came up black during restart. After doing reasearch and running a performance test on crucial.com I found out I could put up to 8 gigs ram but I had to match up the cards, so I went out and bought 4x 2gig ram cards,... Screen went black... I reinstalled windows 64 bit, everything was ok, booted up and ran fine. Till I installed the latest version of the geforce software. When It rebooted after installation the screen went black again. I've been getting the runaround for months now,.. Some say my processor can't handle it when all the tests I perform tells me I can run 8 gigs. Another person told me my power supply wasn't capable of supporting the 8 gigs ( that's when I installed the newer 550w one. Some say it has to do with my graphics card when others say it has nothing to do with that... Now I'm stuck with 6 unused ram cards and a pc that only runs max at 3 gigs. I tried removing card by card, at 4 gigs I get a picture but sound is really static, at 3 gigs my pc runs perfect.. But anything more then 3 gigs and something doesn't work,... Pls help

motherboard serial# is M/B MBS870900174702A67EK02

thanks for you time!!

 

[Puiu]

can you give us more details about the black screen? does the monitor turn black or does the computer freeze with the monitor turning black?
You should try updating your bios.
Also what windows are you using? XP, vista or 7?

 

[NextgenerationX]

Reply

The Os is vista ultimate x64, I'll try updating the bios

this is what I did and what happened:

when I got the 4 2gig cards in the mail, I pulled out the 2 cards I had in the comp.
And replaced them with 4 2gig cards. When I turned the pc on, I could see the Acer setup screen (normal) then the windows loading bar (normal) as soon as the loadup bar goes away, usually the big windows symbol pops up but instead the monitor goes black but stays on, and from what it sounds like, the pc is running like it usually does. So I turned off the computer. I waited 20 sec. Then turned it back on and when I get to the acer setup screen I pressed F12 to reboot pc while I have the vista 64bit installer cd. I reinstalled windows 64bit. When it's done installing the pc reboots, and goes in windows vista without a problem. It recognizes that I have a total of 8gigs ram and runs smoothly. But the problem starts when I install the latest driver to run the g-force card, I do get the option of eather installing the 32 bit or 64 bit version, so I chose the 64bit one, after it's done installing it, it says to run this program I have to reboot pc, once I reboot it, the screen goes black and I'm right back to where I started, I repieted this process twice... When it dint work the second time, I took one card out at a time to see when it would stop giving me issues. After taking out 2 2gig cards ( only 4 gigs installed ) the screen doesn't go black but the sound cracks really bad and after about 5 min the screen goes black.

I'll take you advise and update the bios..

But what I think is weird is after reinstalling vista64 with gigs the pc runs great till I install the graphics card driver. Thats when the problems start...

 

[NextgenerationX]

I don't know if this can help but I did record what it's doing

youtube.com/watch?v=qxl04wa3Iyo&feature=youtube_gdata

 

[Puiu]

This looks to be more and more like a driver problem. Uninstall the video driver from safe mode.
First you install the chipset drivers (if you haven't), then you update windows. After that install the video driver(normally you' install the driver before updating, but since you can't). Try an older version of the driver if it still doesn't work.

If nothing works then try to update the bios.

PS: do you have another monitor you can test? or another video card?

 

[NextgenerationX]

Well, I've tried everything... And I'm to a point were anybody would say "screw it "( pardon my French ) so I'm sending this one to the graveyard (eBay) and buying me a new i7 860 quad core with 1gig gforce graphics card running at 8 gigs ram. It'll save me alot of agravation, but I wanna thank you 100X for helping me finding the cure. I'll make sure to bookmark your website just incase I run into some difficulties in the future ( hopefully not ) thanks again for taking the time. Wish everybody a merry Christmas!

 

[Puiu]

buy the radeon 5850 video card or another dx11 card. it's best to get a dx 11 card now.
sorry i couldn't help you.

 

[NextgenerationX]

It's ok... It gave me a good excuse to go out and buy me something newer and much much faster... As far as graphics cards, see I'm a huge fan of flight simulatorX. From reading alot of reviews, it looks like the Nvidia gforce card is better for design for that game. But how bad can the 1gig gforce gts240 be? It'll already be at least twice as good as what I had. Thanks again!!

 

[Puiu]

at what resolution do you want to play? and how much money do you want to spend?
Don't jump the gun and buy a card blindly. On the internet you can find a lot of good deals in you region if you search.
here are some recommendations(all should work fine with simulatorx):
Radeon HD5770 1GB ~ 150-160$
gts250 1GB ~130$ after rebate (i would have recommended the GTX 260 in stead of 250 but it's 190$ and it isn't much better than hd5770)

Anything lower than this and you'll waste off that processing power of the i7 CPU and those 8GB of RAM.
Normally for this CPU i'd recommend something like the HD5850(if you aren't rich) or the 5870(if you are rich).
If i were you i'd go for a core i5 and put the rest of the money in a better GPU since that's what matters most in a gaming rig.

PS: go read some benckmarks, not rumors.

 

[NextgenerationX]

Hey thanks! Ill make sure I take this into account when I order it later on today.
I'm actually looking at the preview of what I would get and turns out it's a gts240
can you tell me if this lookalike a good deal? ( looking for about 40fps in very dense mode.. Not sure if that's possible with this setup )

studio xps 8000, intel core i7-860
64 bit windows 7
8GB dual channel DDR3 sdram at 1066mHz - 4dimm
nvidia geforce GTS240 1024mb DDR3
500 GB SATA hard drive ( got another 500 Sata at home I'm going to install)

total: $1200 from Dell.com

$1200 is within my budget range, I could go another 100 or 2 but they don't give me a big veriety of other cards for the xps 8000
there is a radian one aswell ( not sure what model )

 

[Puiu]

why are you buying a premade rig? try building one yourself and see how much it will cost you compared to what you selected.

But if you really must buy from dell, then go for the XPS 9000 for $1359 (go for less Ram -3GB- if you can't afford it and buy more latter)
core i7 920
6gb ram (you don't need more than this and it's best to keep it in triple channel)
HD5870 1GB
500GB HDD

Your setup is good for games at 1680 but not at max settings and it's only dx10 capable. It has a really good CPU and lots of RAM but the video card will bottleneck your system. The GTS 240 is a re-branded 9800GT (9800gt is a re-branded 8800gt ^_^ ).

My setup has the best single GPU video card you can find on the market and the i7 920 is very good in games. You'll be able to play even future games at max settings at 1900 resolution (even 2560 for some game). Also you'll be able to upgrade you're cpu to the upcoming 6 core i9 from Intel in the future.
Too bad i can't buy either one of the 2.

 

[NextgenerationX]

Just to give you an update,... I took your advise on picking the studio XPS 9000 with the i7-920 processor ( 8mb L3 Cache, 2.66GHz )
with the ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 with 8 gigs ram
total tax plus 3 day shipping totalled $1557.09

you where asking, "why not build your own?"
I did some intense research on how much it would cost me for buying all the parts and building it myself,... Came out to about $1300 ( without tax or shipping )
my primary concern was that I would be in this same situation cuz i'm sure murphie's law can come up alot of times in the computer world.. Lol it would save me alot of agravation + with this model I get a one year warranty, so anything goes wrong I'm not stuck with a broken down pc.

So with this said,... ETA for my XPS9000 is before 1/20/10... I'll make sure to post an update, I'm 110% sure I made the right move by following your recomendation. Thanks again! I'll keep you updated!

 

[NextgenerationX]

So by reading the specs of the computer I got from above with that graphics card it tells me I'm able to hook up 6 monitors max, I want to hook up 2 hannspree 19" widescreen LCD monitors to it. What screen resolution will those perform best with and can I hookup an hdmi cable to both monitors? ( the monitors have 1 dvi cable and one hdmi cable capable of running 1080p ) I noticed on that card there is only one hdmi output ( but when I read it said 1 radion card can display up to 6 monitors ? )

 

[Puiu]

read more about amd's eyefinity. with it you can use up to 6 monitor as if they're just one. google it and youtube it.

 

[NextgenerationX]

Thanks, I'll do that!