Videos causing display to crash

Factual Questions
1

I’ve run into a problem that I’ve never seen before. Unfortunately I have no idea what is causing it or how to begin fixing it.

When I watch videos on the computer they will crash the display. The computer itself stays on but the monitor loses the signal and will not get it back after being shut off and turned back on or even after being unplugged and plugged back in.

This could be related to any of the following factors

Windows Media Player

The codec (I thought this was what it was but I uninstalled the codec pack I was using and just used Divx- same deal.)

The monitor itself. Although it has been reliable and hasn’t randomly shut off for any other reason, it has also worked hard since I got it and may be nearing the end of its useful lifetime.

A virus perhaps? One of those just to annoy you type viruses?

Specs:
Windows XP Service Pack 2 and all the latest updates
Intel 6420 Core Duo Processor
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card with latest drivers

Any advice is appreciated!

2

Strange. But my WAG would be graphic card or monitor. Definitely something in hardware.

3

Could you give us some specs on the monitor and how it’s plugged in?

4

Are you watching in full-screen mode? If you are, does the same thing happen if you run it in window mode?

5

I wouldn’t say “definitely”; the software could be changing the scan rate of the video signal to something that’s not compatible with the monitor.

6

The monitor is an Acer AL1916W. It’s connected via a VGA-DVI connector since the monitor only has a VGA plug and the video card only has DVI connectors. However, this has been a reliable setup until recently.

I believe the problem is only occurring in Windows Media Player as I have been unable to reproduce the crash with VLC Media Player. It seems to happen regardless of the window being full screen or not.

I “rolled back” from WMP 11 to 10 to see if that would make any difference but it happens in WMP 10 as well.

I also checked for viruses and didn’t find anything, so that’s out.

So, I’ve narrowed it down to any of the following:

Drivers (ATI’s drivers can be… unpredictable at times)
The monitor itself
The video card

Edit: If I have time I’m going to reformat and install Vista to see if it happens in there. If so, it’s most likely the monitor or video card.

7

Is your display set at the monitor’s native res of 1440 x 900? If not, change it to that and see if you are still getting crashing problems.

8

Yes, I’m running it at 1440x900.

9

Try removing the video card and drivers and running off the mobo’s onboard video (if possible). This will at least tell you if it’s a fault in the radeon card.

10

I don’t have onboard video on this mobo… unfortunately no spare video cards I can try either. I suppose the video card is probably new enough that I could ship it back to ATI if necessary… but hopefully it won’t come to that.

11

I was recently having a similar sort of problem. Playing portal would cause the computer to freeze with the monitor sometimes going blank after playing for a few minutes. I am pretty sure that the problem was the video card overheating because there was too much dust on the heatsink and the special duct work those cards have. Things are working fine now that I removed the dust.

12

But I can play an hour of C&C3, which I would imagine puts a lot more strain on the video card than divx encoded video and it doesn’t crap out on me. Some of these videos run for about a second before the display shuts down. So I don’t think it’s the card overheating.

Is there any kind of utility I can run that will tell me exactly what my computer is doing up to the time it shuts down? Maybe I can narrow it down that way.

13

It’s a DX10 card and might be having issues with you running XP (shot in the dark).

I looked around the knowledge base at ATI/AMD and I see a few things that are similar to your problem, but they all involve downloading the latest drivers to fix.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=xp/radeonx-xp]The latest 2600 drivers for XP were released on Feb 13, 2008. I’d try downloading those to the desktop, unistalling the card, reinstall with new drivers. If that fails, try just swapping the card for a new one if you can do it for free. I’m stumped.

14

Fixed Link

15

“Doctor, it hurts when I do this.”

“Then don’t do that.”

Windows Media Player is the most bloated resource hungry piece of nonsense. It does mystifying things like you’re experiencing, hides settings that will make it operate the way I want, and has generally been an endless nightmare every time I’ve used it. My advice is keep away.

VLC is an excellent player, and is better in almost every respect. It’s particularly good at playing files that other players can’t seem to manage.

Media Player Classic is also very good and I recommend it too. Assuming you have the appropriate codecs installed, you can play every file you have on either of those two, much more manageable, media players.

16

I hear what you’re saying and that is good advice. Nonetheless, although it is possible to simply avoid the problem I’d really like to know what is causing my computer to lose all of its functionality due to simply playing a video that it was happy to play at any previous time.

In any case, I’ll probably reformat the computer and see if that fixes it. The last time I reformatted I set things up a little differently than usual and probably borked the works somewhere along the line. So I’ll do a careful reinstall and plenty of testing along the way. And if it crashes on a fresh install of XP with the latest drivers I can be reasonable sure it’s the monitor or the video card and I’ll go from there.

17

Ok, now back with a fresh format of Windows XP. So far I’ve installed the very basics (chipset driver, network driver and some codecs) and run the videos that were crashing me before… no crashes yet. I’m now doing Windows updates and then various software installs to see if I can break this thing again.