DVI No Signal or Screen Freezes when trying to play any game.

[Jagdpanther]

First let me say that the computer works fine when not trying to play anything game-related. It can sit here at my desktop for weeks and be completely fine. The second I try to play any video game it leads to trouble. Also, Please read the whole post before answering just so you know what I've tried and the situation.
Thanks.

I bought this computer in October 2009 and it worked like a beauty. Then this issue started to occur around April 2010. I've tried a number of things now and I am completely at a loss as to what could be wrong. The issue that has been occurring is when I am in any game, no matter what game it is, after a completely random amount of time(could be 20 minutes - could be 5 hours) the monitor will display "DVI No Signal" and the amber light will appear on the monitor as if the computer has been shutdown OR the monitor will turn a solid color depending on what color was dominate during the time of the freeze. When this occurs I can sometimes still hear sound in the background from whatever was happening and I can still talk over the program Ventrilo to friends. Other times the sound will freeze completely and just loop and I cannot hear sound from the game or talk over the program Ventrilo. The only way to fix this issue and get the monitor to display anything again is to hold in the power button on the computer and shutdown the system and then restart it. After this is done the computer acts as if nothing is wrong. If the reset button is pressed then one beep and three short beeps comes from the motherboard. In the motherboard manual this claims that these beeps mean "No VGA detected". This doesn't make any sense because everything that has to do with the Video card has been replaced or swapped out.

So far I have tried:
* Replacing the Graphics Card
* Replacing the Motherboard
* Replacing the Power Supply
* Different Monitor
* Different DVI Cables from Card to Monitor
* Different Wall Outlets
* Different Power Cords for Tower and Monitor
* Updating drivers of the Graphics Card, updating the BIOS, updating Sound drivers
* I've probably tried other things but I can't think of them right now

The only few things inside the computer that haven't been replaced are the RAM(I've done multiple RAM tests with MemTest86 and nothing has been found), Hard Drive(Multiple CheckDisks have been run and it claims the Hard Drive is clean), Processor, and the CD Drive.

The EventViewer Application and System logs show nothing in them at the times of the crash, there's not any Errors or Warnings. There was an error entry about something to do with WMI every time my computer was turned on that someone else was having an issue with but after fixing this I'm still have issues.

I've also been looking up this issue on Google and it seems to be an extremely common issue that many people are experiencing but I cannot find an actual solution to this problem. Multiple people have listed solutions that have fixed their problem but none of them have worked for me. So I turn to multiple internet forums and discussion boards in hopes that someone else has experienced this problems and knows of a fix for it.

Games that I've experienced this problem with:
Minecraft
World of Warcraft
Starcraft 2
Mafia 2
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Killing Floor
Left4Dead 1 & 2
Team Fortress 2
Many others

My System Specs:
Intel® Core™ i7 960 Processor (4x 3.20GHz/8MB L3 Cache
3 GB [1GB x3] DDR3-1866 - Kingston HyperX
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 - 2GB
ASUS P6T SE
Corsair CMPSU-1000HX (I played to go SLI with the 285s but changed my mind)
320 GB HARD DRIVE -- 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s
250 GB External USB Hard Drive

Temperatures seem to be fine when running and are all recorded in Celsius.
Temps according to SpeedFan 4.41 while idle:
GPU: 48
System: 41
CPU: 37
AUX: 32
Core0: 43
Core1: 40
Core2: 41
Core3: 38
Core4: 43

Temps according to SpeedFan4.41 after 15min of World of Warcraft and 15min of CoD:MW2:
GPU: (65) (66)
System: (48) (49)
CPU: (49) (48)
AUX: (32) (31)
Core0: (53) (50)
Core1: (56) (54)
Core2: (52) (53)
Core3: (51) (49)
Core4: (52) (53)

I'm sick and tired of this issue and just want to get it resolved.

DxDiag can be uploaded upon request if needed.

[kes166]

If you have one, try using a monitor with a VGA connector right after the monitor crashes, but you can still hear the PC sounds in the background. It sounds like the monitor or the video card. Try onboard video if you have it with a different monitor.

It doesn't sound like the PC is that old, isn't it still under warrenty?

[Jagdpanther]

If you have one, try using a monitor with a VGA connector right after the monitor crashes, but you can still hear the PC sounds in the background. It sounds like the monitor or the video card. Try onboard video if you have it with a different monitor.

It doesn't sound like the PC is that old, isn't it still under warrenty?

I've already tried using a different monitor with DVI but I haven't tried it with VGA yet. The video card has been replaced already and this is the second card that it is experiencing the same issue on.

And ya, it's still under warranty, that's how I've been sending every component back and getting them replaced by the company. The company is to the point where they want to have my system sent in for repair and to see if they can figure it out.

[Jagdpanther]

UPDATE1

There goes the DVI connection & Overheating as the offender. The issue happened again while in a Starcraft2 game, screen turned a lovely purplish color as I was looking at my Terran buildings.

With the house fan blowing inside the computer the Temps didn't really got past 40ish. GPU pushed about 50 but that was it.

That leaves RAM, Hard Drive, or the CPU on the hardware side and drivers on the software, I think. I'm think that either the current drivers are incompatible with something else in my computer or the hardware it self is for some reason incompatible but that really doesn't make sense because it was fine when I purchased the computer.

UPDATE2

The problem occurred again last night but it occurred when I didn't even think it was possible. I was playing Runescape with a friend and my monitor displayed the "DVI No Signal". Now I think this limits a lot of possible issues like overheating for good and possibly puts more issues in the front like sound drivers or the newer graphics drivers.

[Jagdpanther]

I was instructed from a Microsoft Support Engineer over at Microsoft Answers to try something and do a Clean Boot on Saturday. After doing that today is the first day that I experienced any issues.

Today while playing Team Fortress 2 my game froze and the screen turned black. I was ready for the DVI No Signal to appear but it didn't for about 5 seconds so I hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete and I could get into the Task Manager. After I got in there I was able to kill the hl2.exe and forcefully close TF2. After this I looked in the EventViewer and this is the first time that I have seen this about the display driver.

Log Name: System
Source: Display
Date: 10/4/2010 2:21:40 AM
Event ID: 4101
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Display" />
<EventID Qualifiers="0">4101</EventID>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-10-04T06:21:40.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>487452</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer></Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>nvlddmkm</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Now this may narrow the problem down to this, but the question is how to fix it?
This is the latest driver version and everything else driver wise has been updated.

[Jagdpanther]

So I decided to order the last few remaining parts and upgrade them instead of RMAing them so I ordered a new hard drive thinking that maybe that was the problem. It wasn't. The only thing that hasn't been replaced yet is the RAM, Processor, and CD Drive.