Screen Blacking out

lately. my screen will just black out.. and freezes the whole comp... making it so i cant even use the alt+ctl+del to reboot.... i havent really had to many probs,up till now.... besides ( the normal crashes, lags etc) ....... soooooooooooo ! has anyone else been having probs like this ?. and if so.. is there a fix?. Oh and im using a fx 5500 apg nividia, and have the updated drivers.
ty. for any info anyone has !.

Does this only happen when playing SL or does this happen in other games too?

no. just playing SL......... everything else is good. no probs. it just seems to be random when im inworld. i have checked everything. updates . settings etc.everything is great except that !.and the nividia card is only a few months old.... so.... im at a loss..... to what it is......lol.this has just started since the update..... "maybe need a better card?.. " dunno.

The screen is blanking out? It's possible the whole system's browning out from too little power. The 1.10 update may be pushing the graphics card hard enough that it draws too much power and everything goes downhill. It does look like this graphics card was added to the system later on, which makes it a bit more likely.

Do you happen to know the wattage of your power supply? Inside the case, the power supply is the large metal box that the AC cord plugs into. The wattage is generally listed on a sticker on the side. I'd recommend having the computer off while you take a look, and don't stick a screwdriver in there or anything; parts inside the power supply can still carry a nasty charge. Just read the sticker on the outside.

I'm having this problem too... not just SL crashing out anymore, now my system will overheat and either a. black screen and freeze have to hit the restart button on the case... b. shut itself down... or c. restart itself. (and I'm not always getting the crash report after each time, but generally I do... guilty of not sending it *every* time though)

I only have this issue with SL and only since the last patch. my drivers are updated and I've tried various graphics settings in preferences. Some places and sims seem to do it to me more than others.

system: athlon xp 3200, 2.5 gb ram, radeon 9600se 128mb agp, sucking juice from a 500+ watt modular power supply... 5 fans, but still running hotter than ever. intake on front, exhaust on back and side, and a slot cooler below vid card as well.

aside from my video card, I know there are a couple things I should replace/upgrade... my soundcard's an old turtle beach montego "quadzilla" running on the latest aureal chipset drivers for said card (which are years and years old)... and my winXP isn't even SP1, but it's a buggy version and windowsupdate won't let me update it to either sp1 or sp2. without some extra cash, I'm kinda s.o.l. there for now though.

I too am having problems with my screen blacking out and then the system freezes up entirely causing me to have to reboot my computer. I play other games like World of Warcraft and Lineage 2 and have no problems with them. This only happens in SL. I have send in the crash report when it comes up upon loading SL back up.

Win XP Professional SP2
Athlon 64 3000+
1GB of DDR RAM
NVidia Geforce 6600 PCI Express x16 with 512M DDR2
ForceWare Version 84.21

its a 350 watt. power supply which is new.. the card is only a few months old as well.. this just started to happen after a few days of the update.... and i only run Sl with no other programs on. i can run 3-4 different programs when Sl is off .....and run them all day and nite . and no probs. its just happening with Sl .
Also.. i have most my graphics settings turned off. lighting etc. only the basics!.
So will a better card maybe fix this?...

okeey my pc dont black out but it does "hang" SL now and then without any reason, can close it but it stops responding out of the blue suddenly, pondering if its the heavy flexi head i got doing it ;q

This happened to a friend of mine last week... graphics card.. needs a new one..

I would say thats why you are having problems.. not cause of SL...

Yes, as Tya said mine did that exact thing the other night, every time AI logged in... poof it would freeze up or go black. It progressevly got worse and finally it wouldn't boot up at all and just stayed black.

Dell did their diagnostic and said that the graphics card went out and had to be replaced. Oh, and btw I have a kick butt Dell XPS laptop with the best graphics card available so it isn't an issue with the graphics card not being good enough or the system not handling gaming. Fortunately I have in home service for 4 years, looks like that decision is paying off.

Oh, the other possility was that the moniter was going bad but that was not the case with mine.

Shara: A new card might actually make it worse...

I have a desktop with a Antec 400w power supply and a Geforce 5900. The second SL starts drawing graphics, the computer turns off. Quake4 does the same thing.

The problem is that the system doesn't get enough power when the graphics card tries to run big 3D applications. It's not every program, only SL and a handful of higher end games. The only solution I've discovered is to use an Antec 450w power supply I borrowed from a friend.

ok ! Lee. thanks very much for the info!. : ). i'll try a higher watt powersupply. and hopefully it will do the trick!. thanks again everyone for all the input and help : )

If it is the power suppy that made my graphics card blow, what is the solution for a laptop? I don't know anything about power supplies.

Graphics card replaced today, problem solved. I am not saying that is everyone else's problem, but mine was doing the exact same thing and is now fixed.

ay!... sighs! : (..... i think i just might need both!. what size is your power supply Billy?. Now im getting little coloured cones that appear. over scripts when ever there activated... when i click a script. the lil cones appear and if the script is always on. it just sends out these lil coloured cones. lol....geeez!. with all this lighting and flexi prims. iwould rather see that you can play Sl. as it seems most peeps cant use the stuff anyways. i love Sl. but do i have to invest a zillion dollars to make it run?. i dont have the greatest comp.but i dont think i should have to have a "NASA " computer to run Sl!..
i have an athlon xp2000
1.66 GHz
1 gig ram
Nividia fx5500 agp
and a power supply of 350 watts
soooooooo sighs ! lol. dunno ! .. maybe some one can suggest something?.. and not to get a new "nasa computer". lmao!.

I already have a 450W power supply in my computer and still have the same issue I mentioned before in earlier posts. So far ever since upgrading to 1.10 in sl, it has been causing the screen to go black and then freezes up the computer. Maybe it might be the new features in the video drivers that sl is using that is causing it and another driver update could help but that is up to the chipset vendor of the video card of when to have updates. So far, I know I can fun heavy 3d gaming programs like Lineage 2 which is a very graphical game which gives me no problems.

Win XP Professional SP2
Athlon 64 3000+
1GB of DDR RAM
NVidia Geforce 6600 PCI Express x16 with 512M DDR2
ForceWare Version 84.21

I'm sorry Shara, I have no idea about what my power supply is. All I can tell you is that I have a Dell XPS Notebook with whatever comes with it. I do know that SL taxes the graphics card quite a bit, you need a good one. Might be time for an upgrade! Sorry I can't be more help.

Billy: Notebooks generally don't have power supply issues. They do, however, have some nasty overheating issues from time to time. My best friend managed to damage his graphics card (even the startup DOS screens were corrupted) by running Doom3 at a higher mode than he should have.

Shara: Go to Debug and turn off "Show Updates" to deal with the cones.

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ty. Lee. : ). so a 450watt antec power supply ! hear i come lol.