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Every now and then, my computer screen will turn blue with white horizontal lines. I thought the original reason was my overclocked GPU (300 MHz oc'd). However, when playing games (mostly BF3) and when testing through few loops of Heaven Unigine, this doesn't happen. However, it has happened twice when browsing the internet. Once using stumbleupon with a few tabs open, and another time using facebook.

As you know these tasks require little to no graphics power, so what could be the reason this is happening? It has only happened twice, but I want to get this fixed asap.

The computer was built less than two weeks ago and have not downloaded anything that would be unsafe for the computer. So unless a virus miraculously was downloaded through game downloads/7-zip, chrome, game booster, or vlc, I don't think a virus is the problem.

The problem is my entire computer changes to this blue screen with horizontal white lines in it, however I could still hear sound coming out of the speakers, so it seemed to purely be a display problem.

EDIT: I did a fresh install, and the problem still persists. It happened once when updating the WEI and once when just browsing the internet. During games (Mass Effect 2 is the only one I've tried on the fresh install) this doesn't happen.

Computer info:

Asus H77 motherboard

HIS IceQ 7850

650 Watt Antec PSU

intel i5 3450

Windows 7 Ultimate N

6 case fans (4 in, 2 out)

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  • 2
    Reset your GPU to the default speed just to rule that out and try disabling Game Booster. I remember reading something about that program causing problems with some games.
    – ZippyV
    Aug 5, 2012 at 8:47
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    I'll bet your overclock failed. During heavy usage, the GPU overheats and backs down to a stable speed. Remove the overclock to rule it out.
    – David Schwartz
    Aug 5, 2012 at 9:06
  • Well none of this happens while playing games. It only happens while I'm in chrome when this happens, with my graphics card around 32 degrees C....
    – nathpilland
    Aug 5, 2012 at 15:50
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    Suggest that you follow the advice given by @ZippyV, as I don't think that anybody in his right mind will try to analyze a monitor problem with an overclocked GPU and active Game Booster.
    – harrymc
    Aug 14, 2012 at 7:43
  • Are there any firmware updates from the card's manufacturer?
    – Force Flow
    Aug 14, 2012 at 15:00

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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+100

FurMark Put it through it paces with FurMark and see what pops up.

Your noted indication point to the graphics card (you probably noticed the recurrence during wei as it was updating the GPU test portion.) and I would call the vendor. They will likely walk through some troubleshooting scenarios (plug unplug, check driver version, power supply questions and so on) that will confirm if the card is defective or not and if so will prep for an RMA.

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    I'll do that ASAP. I did stress test the GPU using Heaven, ran it through two times with no issues. It seems to happen only when doing easy tasks, possibly not even using the graphics card at all (except for WEI)
    – nathpilland
    Aug 14, 2012 at 16:08
2

It might be overheating( if the card does something strange like only turn its fan up when doing something intense) . I'd try to RMA it regardless . It doesn't appear that you can do anything else( aside from maybe upgrading the drivers ) .

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  • I actually manually control the fans, and I have never seen the card get above 50 Celsius. Sounds like RMA might be the way to go...
    – nathpilland
    Aug 14, 2012 at 21:19
  • Yep, everynow and then cards just are defective . One last option would be to install Ubuntu and see if you can reproduce the issue . You can just run Ubuntu from a USB stick for this test . Of course this proves nothing since even if the issue doesn't re-occur in Ubuntu its still a problem for you in Windows( although this would point to something like a poorly coded windows driver)
    – Keithsoulasa
    Aug 15, 2012 at 22:45

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