Monitor won't wake up - Displayport - ATI Radeon 3470

We are experiencing similar issues with our Dell machines.  We have about 80 identical machines:  Optiplex 960 SFF, ATI Radeon 3470 (with dual display port).  We have varying monitors, all Dell, that exhibit slightly different symptoms.  Several of the monitors have been replaced under warranty due to failing backlights (bad batch) so they should generally be on a newer revision.  All machines running Windows XP (except a select few).  Only about 10% of the machines have had an issue we've been made aware of.

Symptoms (may exhibit some or all of these):
 - display flashes off and on again, when moving the mouse or switching between programs (off for as short as 1 second up to 15-20 seconds)
 - display shuts off completely (even during use) and won't come back untl you unplug display port connector and plug back in
 - display goes blank except for message about video settings being "out of range"

Here's the kicker, I've been using one of these 960's for the past several months (long before our other users) and have never had the issue.  The only variables I can come up with are...
 - I never use any DPI scaling and always use the native screen resolution (I'd venture to guess that many, if not all, folks having trouble have adjusted one or the other)
 - I've been using Windows 7 the whole time

Either way, it does seem to be a driver issue.  :-(

Thanks for the notes.

I do know that once the problem occurs, it is 'remembered' in the hibernation file and not resolved by a power cycle. I also know that the problem is resolved by a hot restart of the PC, without having to unplug the PC or the monitor. So it looks like a real software (driver?) problem. My next step would be to remove the ATI Radeon video card and to use the on-board video, in order to see if it's really an ATI problem or maybe a general Vista problem. However, that's a big step to make and I really like the speed of the ATI card. Plus I paid good money for it... Next time the problem occurs, I will try to attach a second monitor via the DP-to-DVI converter and a DVI cable, and see if I can wake that one up.

It's been more than a month now since my previous post about this issue. In the mean time I've had only 3 occurrences of the "video does not come up" problem.  I did try to attach another monitor when the problem occurred, and the other monitor also stayed black. So it is really the ATI video card that stays inactive. I also tried forcing a driver reset using ATI Tray tools' hotkeys, at no avail. Once I was able to wake the monitor by starting a remote desktop session from another PC, while previously this didn't work.

What I didn't try yet is to work with the on-board displayport output. One of the posters above had similar issues even with the on-board video. 

Also, I am still at version 9.8 of the ATI catalyst driver. There is now a 9.9 version available at the ATI website, but the change log is unclear as to whether this issue has been addressed.

This morning I had another, possibly related  issue: the monitor came up,  but stayed very dim. However, when I opened the on-screen menu of the U2410 monitor, this menu was rendered with the correct brightness, so this also seemed a graphics card (driver) issue. In Catalyst Control Center I saw that the refresh rate was 29Hz instead of 60Hz. The drop-down list only offered me the possibilities of 29 or 30 Hz. So it appears that the monitor was not correctly recognized. After closing CCC and opening ATI traytools, the monitor brightness switched back to normal. After the following sleep cycle, the monitor again was "unwakeable". That was the 4th instance in 40 days time...

@jruz: I also always use the native resolution (1920x1200 pixels in my case), but Windows Vista (business) instead of Windows 7.

I have the exact same problem as this. I have XP, ATI radeon 8.263 driver and Dell 3008WFP monitor. It sounds as though there is no clear resolution for this yet.

Ahh, finally someone else that has the same issues.  We have 170 Optiplex 960 SFF PC's in our building connected to 2208WFP monitors and 2210t monitors (about 150 2208's and 20 2210's).  Each PC has an ATI Radeon 3470 card with Dual Display Port.  From our monitor we have a DVI cable going into a display port adapter which plugs into the card.  We have had the PC's since Late January, early Feb 2009.  I have been documenting each and everytime is happens since late April and have had about 60 people with the issue, and within that, about 25 people that have had it happen several times.  PC's all have Win XP SP3 on it.  They all use various screen resolutions. (i usually get about 3 help desk calls a week on average for these issues)

Symptoms
- display flashes on and off again when moving mouse or switching between programs (same as what happend with jruz).  Usually goes black for about 3-4 seconds and comes back and the input signal appears in the top left corner - this will keep happening until we reboot the PC or unplug the adapter and plug it back in.
- display does not come back unless I shut down the PC and turn back on

What i have done to troubleshoot
- Disabled C States control in BIOS
- rebooted PC, or removing the Display port adapter out of the card and putting it back in are TEMP fixes
- tried replacing the Display port card with a DVI card in a computer it was happening to alot - same issues happened
- replaced a bunch of 2208 monitors with the 2210's - didnt happen for a while, but then the issue started popping up again (thought the issue was the 2208 monitors)
- Updated video drivers
- Updated BIOS
- My latest one is removing the ATI card and using just the on board VGA card - My bet is that the problem will not happen again after this...
- I have actually coordinated with Dell to send 2 problematic desktops/monitors back to them to evaluate in their labs. 

All in all this has been a nightmare, as these are brand new systems, which doesnt bode well for Dell since people buy personal computers and think about these issues when buying a Dell (I have been told this by several users).  Needless to say, I have always been a Dell supporter and have confidence they will fix this.

Anybody have any other ideas?

....but we shouldnt have to be doing all this troubleshooting, especially since our systems are brand new - I have spent more time on these new systems than i did on our old 4 year old IBM systems we had previously.  Thanks for the reply though - keep me updated as you find things - i will do the same

Haven't checked in on this thread in a while - good to hear that another user is seeing the screen blanking like we are.

We're still having the issues.  I must retract my earlier thought that this was only folks using non-native resolution or DPI scaling.  It seems to happen regardless of these settings.  Our "fix" (if you could call it that) is to modify a setting on the display, doesn't really matter which setting, and it will be fixed for another couple weeks or so.

I'm still pretty sure this is a DisplayPort / driver issue, rather than hardware.  But I'm open to any ideas! 

jruz, have you guys contacted Dell support about the issue?  Just curious - we sent 2 units back to Dell to put in their "labs" - the "engineer" has stated the issue has not yet happened for her, after 2 weeks only - even though the issue can happen one day, and not happen again for another couple of months.  Since I have been keeping track in April, it has happened 90 times - an alarming 2-3 times per week.  I think the issue is also the Display Port card - This issue has not happened for those users who are using the onboard VGA card.  Dell has to figure this out, as it looks poor on them

Hi i just got the problem because i had to use my old pc with an old radeon 9600 and i think i have found a workaround which might work.

First i added shortcuts to the vpu recover option to turn it on and one to turn it off.

If you want to wake up your display just turn the recover option off and on again, that forces the graphics card to leave the sleep mode and the display starts.

I don´t know if this is possible on all graphics cards but in my case it works.

Thomas

If the user cannot see the Windows desktop, how can they turn the Recover Option off, then on?

Hi Chris

you can use shortcuts to do this i used alt + F11 to turn it off and alt + F12 to turn it on again.

Thomas

I believe it may be a displayport issue.  We are having the same issue with monitors not waking up from sleep mode on a few machines.  First, here is the setup we have on several machines experiencing this problem:

-T3500, BIOS A03

-Windows XP SP3

-Nvidia Quadro FX3800 with 1 DVI port and 2 Displayports

We connect two 2007FPs, one by DVI and the other using a Displayport->DVI adapter that came from Dell.  Both monitors are set to 1600x1200.  When the system wakes up from sleep, the DVI connected monitor comes back fine, but the Displayport monitor says "out of range".  Changing the display settings on the Displayport monitor to 1280x1024 brings the monitor back on.  After this the settings can be switched back to 1600x1200 with no problems, but this only solves the issue for a little while.  It is also hard to diagnose since it occurs intermittently.  The latest Dell Nvidia drivers are from June, but I will try the newest ones directly from Nvidia.  I hope this info is helpful in coming up with a permanent solution.

I just received 22 Dell Optiplex 780's.  I'm having the problem that my monitors (Samsung LCDs) and HP Laserjet M2727nf (USB) both go to sleep and don't wake up without a power reset.  I just went through all of the "Power Management" options and turned everything off so we will see if it still happens.....

Just checking in on this thread again, as our problem persist.

No - unfortunately I have not contacted Dell support, I just don't have that much time to devote to such a random issue.  I realize this doesn't help us get to a solution, but I also know what's its like working with support on something like this.  I do appreciate your effort on this - seriously providing them with 2 machines for testing is above and beyond what a customer should have to do.  ;-)

At this point we're no closer to nailing down the circumstances of when it happens.  I think I need to figure that out before I can bring it to support myself.  From what I've gathered it seems its not limited to ATI cards, and not limited to Dell monitors.  So it appears to be a Windows XP and DisplayPort-to-DVI issue.  We recently picked up a monitor with built in DisplayPort for one of our users.  I'll be sure and post back here if the direct DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort exhibits the same trouble.