Monitor loses signal to PC within minutes after booting

[xcas]

So I've recently begun having this issue... I can't say for sure what caused it but I believe it first happened when I tried to update my NVIDIA drivers through GeForce Experience (a process I've had terrible experiences with before) after not booting my PC for a while. I've had very similar issues before but this time it seems difficult to work around due to the nature of the issue.

What happens is the monitor just flat out loses signal from the PC after what started out as ten ish minutes after boot up, but now it occurs pretty much instantly or within seconds. It won't come back until I restart, and sometimes it doesn't come on at all after restarting until I've unplugged the system for a few minutes beforehand. The PC stays on and I am certain that Windows is still running. If I can get to the desktop before it conks out and then press the power button after the monitor dies I can hear it go through the shut down process as normal. No problems there.

The weird thing about the NVIDIA driver update thing is that, while I have had issues with the monitor losing signal during driver install before, if I recall correctly the driver wasn't even installing, it was just downloading, so there's a chance it's nothing to do with that at all. In fact, thinking about it now, it seems likely that it isn't.

I have done a system restore to the last point available (which was about a week ago, before a Windows update) just in case the driver started installing but didn't do it properly. Not fixed.
I tried to run safe mode with networking and uninstall/reinstall the drivers through that, same problem after a few minutes. Not fixed.
I tried just running in safe mode and not fiddling with the drivers at all, still happened. Not fixed.
I tried checking for boot issues via the "Repair" option you get when you jab F8 (is that the same as opening BIOS)? Not fixed.

So if my computer runs fine and the monitor is just losing signal, I'm disinclined to believe it's a power supply problem. If the same thing happens when running on the integrated card in safe mode, I'm disinclined to believe it's a GPU problem. I've been using my monitor to play PS3 these past few weeks and the same thing has never happened, so I don't think it's the monitor.

I've actually had problems with random signal losses for at least a year now, but it's never actually prevented me from doing anything. And since they've started I've had the PC go into Geek Squad for repair and they reinstalled Windows 7 and ran whatever analyses they do for other reasons. After that it was fine for a while, now it's started back up in a much worse way.

Sorry for the long post. TL;DR: Monitor loses signal within minutes, sometimes seconds of booting. PC keeps running. Any help would be sincerely appreciated.

Edit: BTW it's got nothing to do with my settings for monitor timeout/sleep. All the power settings are set to never go off/high performance.

 

[CZroe]

What happens when you power off the monitor and turn it back on after it does this? Could it be that the monitor is not tolerating this desktop resolution for long?

 

[xcas]

What happens when you power off the monitor and turn it back on after it does this? Could it be that the monitor is not tolerating this desktop resolution for long?

There's still no signal when I turn it back on. The only way to get the monitor to detect anything it seems is to restart the PC. I admit the monitor resolution is somewhat weird, it's a 2560x1080. But if there was a problem with it, what could I do?

 

[VirtualLarry]

There's still no signal when I turn it back on. The only way to get the monitor to detect anything it seems is to restart the PC.

I had this same problem, with my Q9300 and a Gigabyte GTX460 1GB card. I would, pretty-much always see the BIOS boot screens, but randomly, in Windows 7 64-bit, the screen would suddenly black out. Sometimes it would blink back on, and sometimes it would stay off until a restart.

Turned out to be a bad / poor-quality HDMI cable.

So, I would start by replacing the monitor cable.

 

[xcas]

I had this same problem, with my Q9300 and a Gigabyte GTX460 1GB card. I would, pretty-much always see the BIOS boot screens, but randomly, in Windows 7 64-bit, the screen would suddenly black out. Sometimes it would blink back on, and sometimes it would stay off until a restart.

Turned out to be a bad / poor-quality HDMI cable.

So, I would start by replacing the monitor cable.

Tried replacing the DVI cable I was using with an HDMI. I was able to boot into safe mode and dick around for a while, wasn't showing any signs of stopping. But I'm also having issues with NVIDIA GeForce experience throwing errors when I try to open it so I found some help elsewhere for a fix for that, which required a restart to work. So I did, and the splash screen came up and I managed to tell it to boot into safe mode, but the monitor went off again and now I'm back to square one.

 

[Ranulf]

No blue screens at all?

"I've been using my monitor to play PS3 these past few weeks and the same thing has never happened, so I don't think it's the monitor."

What port/connector/cables are you using to connect to the PS3? You've tried it on the igpu via the motherboards video out and its the same problem as the video card right?

Quickest answer is to try another cable like Larry said. Test each port and video out between the monitor and computer.

 

[xcas]

No blue screens at all?

"I've been using my monitor to play PS3 these past few weeks and the same thing has never happened, so I don't think it's the monitor."

What port/connector/cables are you using to connect to the PS3? You've tried it on the igpu via the motherboards video out and its the same problem as the video card right?

Quickest answer is to try another cable like Larry said. Test each port and video out between the monitor and computer.

No, there's no blue screen because the PC is fine. Still running and everything. Windows is still there. The monitor just doesn't seem to recognize that.

I was playing PS3 with the same HDMI cable that I've just tested my PC with. Like I said, no difference from the DVI cable I was using prior.
There's only one HDMI port out of my PC. It's a prebuilt alienware, I can't connect a cable to the onboard graphics.

Although something did just happen. I booted into safe mode and the monitor went out again, but as it did so, the PC started making weird sounds. Almost like the fan sped up, but it didn't get louder, just sort of changed the pitch.

Additionally, when I managed to get into safe mode, a Windows error reporting window came up telling me there have been 51 "video hardware" errors that it wanted to report to Microsoft. Never seen that before. Seems like it is a problem with the GPU.

 

[Ichinisan]

You have a second video output going to a TV or another monitor? Most systems will output to both monitors while booting. If you have your system set to single-display, one of them will go blank after the GPU driver initializes. Maybe it got mixed-up about which monitor was your primary display.

 

[xcas]

You have a second video output going to a TV or another monitor? Most systems will output to both monitors while booting. If you have your system set to single-display, one of them will go blank after the GPU driver initializes. Maybe it got mixed-up about which monitor was your primary display.

Well there's only one cable (HDMI) connected to the monitor other than the speakers and the power cable, and that leads to the PC. If this was the issue, how do I go about fixing it?

 

[LTC8K6]

Additionally, when I managed to get into safe mode, a Windows error reporting window came up telling me there have been 51 "video hardware" errors that it wanted to report to Microsoft. Never seen that before. Seems like it is a problem with the GPU.

Yes, possibly.

Power supply to the card okay?

Fans on the card working?

Remove and re-seat the card?

Run GPU-Z and monitor the video card if it will stay on long enough? Perhaps you can spot something in the GPU-Z sensor data?