Strange Problem: Black Screen, Freeze, Intermittent

[knightbridge]

Hello everyone,

I have a strange problem which i have yet to find a solution. Sometimes i can go days without the program, when others i can go not even into windows before it happends.

Symptoms:

-It is as if the DVI cable from both of my monitors (runnign dual screens) is simultainiously unplugged. No error message or BSOD or anythign which would help me identify the problem.

-As i have a G15 keyboard with mini screen and rescource monitor. I can see that the CPU continues to work as normal for about 10 seconds before freezeing.

-Everything is non-responcive and a hard restart is required.



About my PC

Its very nice, as an IT professional i take good pride in my rig .

Windows Vista 64bit

4GB 800mhz ram

4 Hard drives. A raptor 80GB drive dedicated to windows installation. 300gb, 150gb and 250gb drives for other uses. (All programs are distrebuted fairly evenly to increase throughput and performance.

Nvidia geforce 280 factory overclocked graphics card. It is currently the single more powerful graphics card available.

Two screens, a 26" and a 19"...

Creative X-FI fatal1ty titanium chamption edition sound card.

Bah ill just post the dxdiag:




edit : If you want to post the entire dxdiag please use Manage Attachments for that purpose.







Further information

Ive run all the anti-spyware/anti-malware programs and found nothing. I dont have a cheap anti-virus software either, its bit defender 2009 and thats found nothing. Ive even run in safemode and found nothing.

Im fairly sure this is software based. All of my drives are up to date and all connections in the pc have been double checked.

I dont have time for a format. Simple as, my yearly format is due in june and ill do it then. The reason why i dont have time is because this pc is dedicated to my final year degree project. In order to backup, format, reinstall and recover all data would take days and as an intermittant fault im sure there is a solution its just without identifying the souce of the problem, i cant fix it.

The problem occurs randomly, ive even tried swapping the system RAM without any success. The powersupply is also 1000w and sufficient to run the system. It can be within a game, just as windows loads or even worse as im writing my disatation up (agh!, thank god for auto recovery and dropbox lol).


Any ideas are much appreciated.
Knightsbridge

[pam123]

We need to know when this started and what you were doing at the time.
Any changes you made or programs that updated?

[shadowpr]

What brand power supply?

What mb, and what cpu?

Have you run diagnostics on your hd, and ram?

[knightbridge]

The problem actually begun about a month ago as a seemingly random occurance. No new programs instaled, no new hardware, no new drivers.

I had a problem with a sound card which had a problem fitting in to the antec 900 case, i replaced the card with the new creative x-fi hoping to fix the problem to no avail.

Things i can be doing when the problem occurs:
-Writing a report in microsoft word.
-Playing a game such as eve online, battlefield 2142 or civ 4.
-Surfing the web.
-Nothing at all, just loaded up windows.
-Leaving the PC afk - no screensaver or power modes activated. The pc stays as it is when left idol.

What as me confussed is that none of these seem to be related for me to pinpoint the issue. Its seemingly random. I did spend a short period of time swapping the hard drives at one point to my backup set to see if the fault was there to no avail.

There is no wired sounds from the pc, there is nothing to make you think the pc is restarting itself when the problem occurs. Infact apart from the failed DVI connection message on the screen (because it stops recieving input) there is nothing to make me believe that the system has stopped working until the keyboard screen freezes ten seconds later. I.E. i could be on teamspeak talking to friends, the screen thing happends and then for several seconds on teamspeak i can continue to talk to them as normal and all peripherals respond, before locking up of course.

[knightbridge]

DXDIAG attached.

RAM has been swapped and hard drives have been replaced by my backup components after cloning the drive accross. No solution found.

[glc]

What Shadow said, please.

[knightbridge]

Motherboard: Asus P5N-E SLI

Powersupply: Cant remember the exact make, and its not easily accessible in the case (i would have to remove it to see). I THINK its an OCZ powersupply, it wasnt a cheap one anyway as its just one of them components you dont want to cheap out on, its tri-fan 800w.

[glc]

If it's OCZ, that's good quality. Just trying to make sure you aren't trying to use a piece of crap like an Ultra.

[knightbridge]

Yeah i always either buy the OCZ or the antec ones so its one of them. In this instance i believe its the OCZ ones.

I did annother hard disk check. The primary drives had a few bad sectors but were fixed.

Interesting thing is, i cant boot safemode anymore. It freezes half way through the boot. However, i can boot normal vista.

The blackouts are also now increasing in frequency.

[glc]

Any hard drives with bad sectors should be replaced. You probably had critical OS data in the bad sectors, and now the OS is corrupt.

[pam123]

You can't fix bad sectors.
What happens is the OS routes around them but they will continue to grow.
Take glc's advice and get a new hard drive meanwhile it's back up time.