Windows 7 Video crapping out - dual monitor driver issue

yarano

New Member
NOTE: I placed this in hardware, but I have a feeling this is a software issue... And yes, updated drivers WERE used.

Alrighty, I guess I'll get this started off with what my issue is in it's most basic form. I have a dual monitor set-up on my system, a 24 inch widescreen dell LCD monitor, and a westinghouse 32 inch LCD tv, using it as my secondary (movies, etc).

My issue is that when I'm playing a game, like WoW on my main screen (24 in) and I have a video or movie playing FULLSCREEN on my secondary monitor (32 in tv), My video will completely cut out on both monitors. My system isn't locking up, because i can continue to hear the sound from the movie and game. It is random on the amount of time before it cuts out, I may be able to watch a whole movie, or it may cut out after 5 minutes, it just varies, and when it does I have to hit my reset button to do a hard reset on my computer and let it reboot. I have no idea why this is occuring.

More background info: I've always been an nVidia fan, and was using a geforce 8800gtx in my system, windows xp, running dual monitors, NO ISSUE like the one described above. I could full screen and never have an issue at all. Since then I upgraded to windows 7, and the issue started happening. After rebooting and checking the event log it stated that my video driver stopped working. Well, I assumed maybe my card was starting to die, and this was the cause. I wanted to buy a more powerful card anyway, so I decided to purchase an ATI Radeon HD5850 OC edition (thinking that even if it wasn't my old card maybe nVidia just couldn't make a windows 7 driver to run dual monitors well). Put that in my system, and even REFORMATTED my pc and put a fresh windows 7 install on it just to make sure there was nothing messed up in the OS. Well it seems that it wasn't a video card issue because it's doing the same thing with this card as well. When I rebooted after this "blackout" I checked the event log it stated that the driver stopped working. So both the nvidia card and the ati card have both been dropping video due to the driver not working.. But not when I was running winXP....

Is there something i'm missing here??

My System:
Windows 7 Professional x64
ASUS P7P55D Motherboard
Intel Core i7 860
8 GB DDR3 memory
ATI Radeon HD 5850 OC 1GB GDDR5
1000W Power Supply


Thanks for your help.
 
I'm having this problem on my secondary monitor only. ATI 4350. Don't have a clue why. Never did it with XP or Vista. So, it's related to 7 somehow.
 
I've read of similar problems with users monitors and one of the solutions was an actual update for the monitor itself. Windows Update might have something although if not try the website of the monitor manufacturer and see if any updates can be found there..
 
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