blank screen when opening some games

[fffblackmage]

I first noticed this problem when trying Lost Planet and RE5 in DX10 mode. I would open the game, and all I got was a blank screen and it'll just stay like that. That wasn't a big deal, since I used DX9 mode and that continues to work fine. I tried Crysis a month ago when I had just reformatted and it worked alright, but now it also does the blank screen thing. TF2 and L4D2 demo both gives me a blank screen after trying to open them.

I've been googling for similar problems, but haven't found anything yet.

I'll be continuing to search for a solution, but any help would be great. Thanks!

Things that I have done:
--Reinstalled video drivers (using Cat 9.10)
--Used DirectX End-user runtime update

 

[mpilchfamily]

Has there been any software installed between the time it was last working and now? I had similar problems trying to install some old games in my system. Only game i was playing was WOW. Now i pull Oblivion and a couple other back out but they wouldn't run. Often the black screen like you had would be the best i could get. Turned out the problem was one of 2 other applications that where running on the system. One was software for my wife's Tablet pad and the other was sowtware that allowed me to use my iPod Touch as a mouse. Both ran in the background and one or both where the reason my games wouldn't run.

 

[daveybrat]

I'm assuming you've tried running the computer and graphics card at stocks speeds and voltages?

 

[fffblackmage]

I reformatted just a month ago (not months ago, as I originally stated). I installed a ton of random software I normally use, including games, so, I can't be sure which particular program I installed might be the culprit. I guess I haven't tried stock clockspeeds, though I did try starting a game with ATI Tray Tools closed (didn't work).

I have at least one note of success though. I got L4D2 running under windowed mode. The borderless window was pretty cool. Too bad the game was meh.

Anyways, thanks for the ideas and advice so far. I'm working on this pretty slowly, but if I don't get this fixed before winter break, I'll probably just reformat again.

BTW, it seems kinda weird having installed DX9 and DX10 and DX11. I mean, Windows 7 comes with DX11 (DXDIAG also reports DX11 installed, but doesn't mention DX9 installed), so I'm assuming it has DX10 support in that. However, I couldn't get DX9 games to work so I had to install DX9 separately. It just seems weird to have so many different versions of DX installed at the same time...