Really bad CTD-like crash

Toonces · December 26, 2012, 03:26:37 PM

Hey guys.
I got a new G27 racing wheel for Xmas that I hooked up last night. I've been playing a few games with it, but I am getting a weird crash on multiple games that I've never seen before.

I'll be racing along and then the game will crash, but instead of CTD the screen goes completely black. If I wait a minute the screen will come on and I'll have a pop up saying the game has crashed, but then the screen goes black again and the monitor actually will go to sleep. Pressing ctrl-alt-del or removing/replacing my monitor plug might get the screen to come back on, but then it will hard lock black and require a restart.

This happened three times with 2 different games, and it seems to happen after I've been playing for about 10-15 minutes, not right away.

I'm thinking drivers for the wheel, but could it be anything else? I did a virus scan and it came up clean and I've never experienced anything like this before.

Toonces · December 26, 2012, 03:29:29 PM

I'm going to update my graphics card drivers, too, just to be safe.

Bison · December 26, 2012, 03:33:04 PM

I'd update it's drivers an see if that resolves the issues first. If it's happening in multiple games, it'd be hard to imagine it being something not directly related to the wheel or it's software.

Toonces · December 26, 2012, 04:00:53 PM

The wheel driver software is from 2010 so I don't think that made a difference. The computer crashed again while I was in the middle of updating my graphics drivers, so I had to restart and I'm reinstalling now. I unplugged the wheel from the USB to see if that makes a difference.

Having the crash while not even playing a game scares me a bit.

Toonces · December 26, 2012, 05:33:20 PM

Ok, after extensive troubleshooting I am 99% sure that the problem is actually the DVI output from my graphics card to my monitor, of all things.

I switched out my VGA cable for a DVI cable (long story) yesterday as well. After updating my graphics and wheel drivers I was happily racing along when I had the crash again, except I could still hear the game running in the background and pressing the mouse was making things happen so I knew the game was still running.

I finally swapped out with the VGA, did a restart and got it running and then googled some and figured out that my problem might be DVI related.

So, I switched my monitor to not auto-switch inputs and also updated its drivers, so hopefully I'm good to go now.

What a pain.

LongBlade · December 26, 2012, 07:17:58 PM

Hope that fixes it.

Toonces · December 28, 2012, 01:45:12 AM

The problem is definitely DVI related. I'm not getting that crash anymore, but now about 1/2 the time when my computer comes out of hibernation the monitor doesn't "see" the computer and I have to unplug/replug the monitor cable to the graphics output a couple of times. I'm going to have to figure out if it's a cord incompatibility or something worse.

I don't want to fool around with the BIOS as I have no idea what I'm doing so if it comes down to it I'll just pick up an new DVI to VGA adaptor for my cable and be done with it.

Toonces · December 28, 2012, 08:26:51 PM

Just for closure, I figured this out finally.

It turns out that I was using a DVI-D cable (supplied with the monitor) with a DVI-I output from my graphics card. Apparently this makes a difference.

I couldn't find a DVI-I cord at Best Buy, but I did find a DVI-A to VGA adapter, which is compatible with DVI-I outlets, so I appear to finally be good to go. I couldn't get my monitor to work at all this morning, which inspired me to make the painful drive to Best Buy (after surfing for a couple of hours of course).

8)