Lee Chapman Posted July 4, 2006 Report Share Posted July 4, 2006 Hi, I have a Sony Vaio FS315M, which has an NVidia GeForce Go 6400. I'r running Windows XP Pro (SP2). If I have any sort of hardware acceleration enabled, my screen will go black for a couple of seconds during normal application usage. (Typically this is when Alt-tabbing between applications or, more commonly, scrolling in applications like the Microsoft Document Explorer.) Reducing the hardware acceleration setting under the display's troubleshooting tab reduces the frequency of the problem, but the problem still happens unless I disable hardware acceleration completely. The black screen effect is like a resolution change or some sort of reset: it looks exactly like when you adjust the hardware acceleration setting and click on Apply: the screen goes black for a couple of seconds and then returns; well, this is what is happening when I scroll in an application like the .NET SDK documentation (Microsoft Document Explorer). The problem doesn't happen predictably, but if I find a long document and scroll up and down using the arrow keys, then I can usually get the problem to reproduce in a couple of minutes. I've updated to ForceWare v87.25, but the problem still happens. I don't think it's a screen problem as I get black screens when using an external monitor too. Can anyone help me? Has anyone had similar problems? Thanks, - Lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fabrice Roux Posted July 5, 2006 Report Share Posted July 5, 2006 Do you have the same problem with the old driver Sony offers? Do you use some sort of eye candy add on that fancy up the look of your windows desktop? If it does, switch to a more conventional driver such as the 84.25. Give us the temperature readings... some 2D apps stress the GPU. Since you probably have a unique fan for both the CPU and GPU. The heat generated by your GPU is not properly evacuated. This can lead to a slight thermal throttling of your GPU hence the black screen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Chapman Posted July 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2006 Do you have the same problem with the old driver Sony offers?Do you use some sort of eye candy add on that fancy up the look of your windows desktop? If it does, switch to a more conventional driver such as the 84.25. Give us the temperature readings... some 2D apps stress the GPU. Since you probably have a unique fan for both the CPU and GPU. The heat generated by your GPU is not properly evacuated. This can lead to a slight thermal throttling of your GPU hence the black screen. Hi, and thanks for helping out. Yes, I have the same problem with the Sony driver that came with the laptop. No eye candy. Maybe it is an overheating issue: I've just turned my laptop on, and I can't reproduce the problem at the moment. I'll look into how I go about getting temperature readings this afternoon. Would thermal throttling actually cause completely blank screens? Or are you suggesting that the GPU is shutting down due to overheating and then coming back a couple of seconds later? Thanks, - Lee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Chapman Posted July 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2006 Well, I've installed SpeedFan. I'm just not sure what temperature it's showing me. There's one for the hard disk, but I don't know if the other one is CPU or GPU. (It's coming up as, "Found ACPI temperature (34.0C)".) It's been this temperature since I switched the laptop a moment ago (or perhaps it started at 32 / 32; either way it's hardly budged since I turned the laptop on). And I've just been able to reproduce the problem. :-( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Chapman Posted July 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2006 oI don't think SpeedFan is updating properly: I've just rebooted and "Temp1", whatever that may be, has shot up to 47C. (The hard disk temperature seems to update though.) ForceWare 87.25 crashed on me, so I'm trying 84.25 now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Chapman Posted July 5, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2006 84.25 didn't fix my problem, and it also crashed after 5 minutes of 3D usage, so I'm back to the original driver. "Temp1" is now 52C. I can still reproduce the black screen by scrolling Microsoft Document Explorer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fabrice Roux Posted July 6, 2006 Report Share Posted July 6, 2006 Smells like bad overheating. When the heat is too high the GPU switch his frequency to a lower value to prevent more heat generation. Each time you change the frequency of the nVidia GPUs you have a slight change of backlight intensity to a black screen. I bet the temp SpeedFan gave you is the motherboard temp. If the laptop is still covered by the waranty you might want to return it for repair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Guest Posted July 29, 2006 Report Share Posted July 29, 2006 Hey Guys. I have a Sony Vaio notebook and my screen does the exact thing, i just guessed it was a glitch with the software or something, but it doesn't effect the actual running of the computer. Just wonder if anyone can help me, my copmuter plays DVDs but it never gives them the right proportons anymore, I have always used the player problem free but recently it will only display about 1/3 of the actual image, regardless of what player i'm using or whether it is on full screen or just standard, or small, any suggestions?! thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Lead_Factor Posted July 29, 2006 Report Share Posted July 29, 2006 Try a few different drivers and then get back to us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
®®® Posted July 31, 2006 Report Share Posted July 31, 2006 Well, I've installed SpeedFan. I'm just not sure what temperature it's showing me. There's one for the hard disk, but I don't know if the other one is CPU or GPU. (It's coming up as, "Found ACPI temperature (34.0C)".) It's been this temperature since I switched the laptop a moment ago (or perhaps it started at 32 / 32; either way it's hardly budged since I turned the laptop on). And I've just been able to reproduce the problem. :-( SpeedFan's 'ACPI' readout are in my experience always CPU temperature. If there is a second temp it'S likely to be Mainboard. The HD temp is already named by the author. If you want to doublecheck use Everest (Computer | Sensor) and then takeover the readouts there to SpeedFan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caudillo Posted October 17, 2008 Report Share Posted October 17, 2008 A very old topic... Because I have the same problem, I didn't want to start another similar topic so I wrote. It's said that this problem cannot be fixed. It's a production problem, not related with drivers or any other software. VGN-FS315M is a nice model, but this "black screen event" really annoys you. But there's no solution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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