Blank Screen.

[Dave]

When booting up, Sometimes my display will go black for 2-3 secconds before Windows will reappear. After this i am able to carry on as normal.
I've had a look on the net and the finger seem's to be pointed at ATI in general. Has anyone else got this problem, Or better still, Resolved it.

I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate with the latest driver's for all hardware.

Specs:

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core i7-2600k Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8P67k USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, CrossFireX SUPPORT
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1GB ATI RADEON HD5870 - 2 DVI,HDMI,DP - DirectX® 11, Eyefinity 3 Capable
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W TX SERIES (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£99)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi Xtreme Audio (£32)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Monitor
IIYAMA E2271HDS 22" LED WIDESCREEN, HDMI/DVI-D HD 1920x1080 (£139)

 

[pengipete]

Exactly when during the boot sequence does the screen blank - e.g. is it after the screen with WINDOWS written in large white text and before the desktop appears or does the desktop appear and then the screen goes blank before reappearing?

 

[Dave]

Just after the desktop appear's.

 

[pengipete]

I've had that - mostly with laptops but sometimes with desktops - and it happens with NVidia and onboard Intel graphics too so I doubt it's GPU specific.

On the laptop, I found the cause was related to having previously run an external display. The "cure" in that case was to reconnect the second display then de-activate it before removing the connection.

If you've never connected multiple displays, I'd suggest a couple of places to start.

Firstly, see if your monitor is set to automatically select and input port or signal. If it is, change it to match your connection as it maybe that the monitor is blanking rather than the PC.

If that gets you nowhere, you may have something (or somethings) running at start-up that is hogging your CPU or other resources. Do you know how to check what is running at start-up and disable/remove unnecessary ones? If not, post back and I'll talk you through it.

Do you have any add-ons installed including system/CPU/temperature monitoring apps (especially the ones from Asus that will have been included on the motherboard support disk)? If so, try removing them all.

Do you have any "tweaking" apps running - the ones that claim to speed up systems? If so - remove or disable them.

Do you have any graphical tweak apps running - the sort that offer transparent menus or other non-standard effects in Windows? If so, remove or disable them.

Finally - and probably the most common cause of problems when initialising the desktop - what security software are you running? If you are running more than one anti-virus application - don't.