Graphics Win 7 problems coming out of sleep mode

Little bit of a history here...

My original PC was an Athlon64 one with an Asus A8N-SLi motherboard, running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

3 months ago I bought an XFX 5770 for it, and sometimes when coming out of sleep mode the screen would freeze, then a few seconds later it would recover and a tool tip from Windows would appear in the notification area saying the graphics driver had crashed and had to be
restarted.

I think this also happened when I was just using the PC too (so not just when it came out of sleep mode), but I'm not 100% on that, so might be worth disregarding that.

Before I upgraded the graphics card to the XFX 5770 it had an X1950XT graphics card and had no problems.

As the motherboard was a PCI-E 1.0 board and the card was a 2.0 I thought it might be to do with that, and as games still ran fairly slow I built a new PC.

My current PC is an i5-750 with a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 (basically the enthusiastic overclocker from the main site), with the same XFX 5770.

With this new PC, when I come out of sleep mode I find that the Windows login screen sometimes freezes (Windows is set so it asks me to enter my password when coming out of sleep mode), and when I log back in I get the same driver crash/restart message.

On top of that, I'm also increasingly having a problem where after I put the PC to sleep, when I click the mouse button or press the power button to power it back up, the monitor stays in standby mode (as though the PC is still asleep) and the numlock key light (which is usually on) stays off.
Also there is an audible loud fan noise, and as the CPU fan (a Gelid Tranquillo) and case fans (Xigmatek Utgard) don't make that much noise when full on, I suspect it's the fan on the GFX card as it's similar to the noise it makes when first starting up before settling down to normal speed.

When this happens, the PC stays like this, and I have tried leaving it for about 5 mins with no changes.
Usually if I force it off (by holding the power button), wait a few seconds then try switching it back on, the same thing happens.
In this case I have to switch it off and wait several minutes before it will start up. Sometimes it can be just 2 mins, other times I have to wait 10-20 mins.

To me, it sounds like the card is acting as though it overheated and is refusing to start until it cools down.
However, when I press the power button once (which if windows is acting normally would put it to sleep), it doesn't do anything, so I don't think Windows is responding either.

I think I also used to have this second problem with my original PC as well, but again I'm not 100% on this, but it does seem to happen more often with my current i5-750 PC, 1 out of 5 times it comes out of sleep mode.

The only things that the original and current PC's share are the graphics card and a DVD writer. They also connect to the same power strip/surge protector plugs, but I don't think that's relevant.

So far I have tried completely un-installing the ATI drivers (using Driver Cleaner.net to clean it out) and reinstalling them to no avail.

According to Device Manager, the driver I am using is:

Driver Provider: ATI Technologies Inc.
Driver date: 04/05/2010
Driver version: 8.732.0.0

Operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, which is the same as was on my original PC.

My original PC has been donated to my Dad, with my old x1950XT card in it; it seems to be running fine with no problems (though he has only had it for a few days).
That is now running 32 bit Win 7 because of an old modem he uses for sending faxes.

I suspect I have a faulty graphics card; is there anything else it might be, or is there anything else I should do to try and determine what the cause is?

Happy to post any additional info or perform tasks required.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

I had two problems that have similar elements to yours;

1. Under Vista I had problems trying to come out of sleep mode - no graphics, mainly. This was fixed with a bios update for my motherboard. That was with a Gigabyte GPU and Asus motherboard.

2. Also under Vista I had random screen flickers and crashes (display would die then after a few seconds recover, with windows telling me the ATI driver had crashed/recovered etc). I think it was overheating GPU ram; I tweaked the cooling setup to make sure the chips stayed at a reasonable temperature and the problem went away. A few months later the card died, so I RMA'd it. Not sure if the problem I "fixed" was related in any way.

I think your suspicion is probably correct. It sounds like the card is generally unstable, and it's the only common component between two problematic systems. As it's XFX and a 5770, I assume it's still under warranty?

Yslen

ps. forgot to say, several people have reported that it's windows "2.5d" (as in half way between 2d & 3d) graphics that cause the driver crash, or at least it was with me. the card detects some 3d elements and changes clock speed. you can try disabling ATI's powerplay completely, see if that helps, though I'd say if that's enough to case a crash, chances are there is something wrong with the card too, because it should be able to cope.

 

As a side note, I had 3 out of 4 XFX cards die or become mortally wounded. I also had a mate that had one die as well. For me, XFX are very unreliable.

 

I wouldn't take it too seriously - PC hardware has always been fussy about Sleep/Hibernate - for whatever reason it's often a complete PITA to get working right.

 

I can put my internet pc, Win7 Pro x64, to sleep and a waggle of the mouse wakes it. Yet my games pc, Win7 Home x64, will not wake up, and I have to do a hard reset. No idea why.

 

Just an idea but try making sure the advanced setting 'Allow the computer to switch off this device to save power' is ticked. It just shuts the GPU down instead of just cutting it's power and making it hang on start-up.

 

I had this same problem with my setup. I have a 5970 and whenever my SSD/HDD would go to sleep and then recover, any 3D programs I loaded caused the graphics drivers to initiate a bluescreen.

I simply disabled sleep mode. Not sure what's going on, but it fixed it!