Black Screen of Death

[groundedzero]

So I'm back playing BC2.

I reset my laptop to factory settings yesterday because I felt I had waaaay to much crap on it, and the first thing I did was to update my drivers (thanks to Crunch's very helpful-helpfulness).

Installed BC2, ran all the updates, and playing on everything High was oh-so-beautiful. Until today. Today I started getting a black screen flashing on and off for like 5 seconds and then disappearing. This would happen maaaybe once every two rounds. But it's gotten worse.

At first when I went to close down the game I would get a black screen, which wouldn't go away. Alt + Shift wouldn't work, neither Alt + F4, and Ctrl + Alt + Del would freeze the thing entirely, and the only way to rid myself of this curse would be to hold down the power button on my laptop untill it shut itself off.

Now this happens in-game. I can barely play 10 minutes and then all of a sudden I have a black screen (sometimes I can see the BC2 cursor) but I can hear the ambiance noises of the battlefield and then it doesn't freeze until I press Ctrl + Alt + Del (I check if it's frozen by hitting the Caps key to see if the light turns on)...

For the life of me I can't guess what's going on. My laptop is as clean as a whistle, and I literally only have about 5 programs on it (Avast, Spotify, Steam, Winrar and BC2). Could something be conflicting? Possibly Avast?

Maybe it might be driver driven? (whey) As Crunch gaves me a list as what to do but that was a couple of months ago?

Alienware M17.
Vista 64-bit Ultimate.
Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU Q9300 @2.53Ghz
8186MB DDR3 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 Crossfire-X (so 2 of them)
DX10

I hope that's enough detail for ya, and all help is appreciated! :salute:

[CptainCrunch]

Re: Black Screen of Death

The video could be overheating or a setting is too high. Both those would cause the flickering you are describing. You can also check the latest video driver yourself, its no big deal to go to the site and see.

Are you using the laptop monitor or an external one? If its your laptop monitor, when it blacks out, move the display up and down and see if it comes back on. You may have a loose connection to your display.

Crunch

[groundedzero]

Re: Black Screen of Death

OK, I'll mess around with the in-game settings and see what works and what doesn't.

I'll also check for updates (driverwise).

Laptop monitor. And I forgot to mention that when the screen flickers black, I can still see my HUD, and there is a lighter shade of black where the text box would be - if that makes sense.

Why would it freeze up when I click Exit Game though? (this just happened, btw - Main Menu of game, clicked Exit Game, and the black screen came up with the in-game cursor, background music on. Had to shut down manually.

Thanks.

[Basil.]

Re: Black Screen of Death

If you are on 10.6 you might want to try 10.5. people are have problems with 10.6 and crossfire, me included. Use crossfire profiles

It does sound more of heat problem. Make sure your vents are nice and clear of dust.