LCD "just goes black" after a few hours of usage

[carteriii]

I have a Silverstone GD02-MT case with the LCD Touchscreen. I have an ASUS M4A780TD-M motherboard which has the onboard Radeon HD 4200. I'm running the latest & greatest 8.690.0.0 video driver from ATI as well as their latest 10.1 Catalyst Control Center. I'm running the latest iMON 7.84 beta (the test version after 7.84 came out).

Every since I got this case and set it up, including earlier driver versions, the LCD touchscreen simply "goes black" after some period of time ranging from a few hours to a day or two. At this point, no software modifications can bring it back, and rebooting has never helped. However, completely shutting down the computer and leaving it off for some period of time will sometimes bring it back. I say "sometimes" because it's probably less than 25% of the time.

When I say the LCD "goes black", I can see that the back light is still on. Additionally I can unplug the VGA cable from the motherboard and use an external monitor which displays the screen just fine. This tells me that the motherboard and VGA output are just fine and that the problem is specific to this LCD touchscreen.

I thought the problem might be the cable or connector to the back of the LCD screen itself, but I've played with it and tested all the pins with a multi-meter and that doesn't seem to be the issue. It seems that the LCD simply stops displaying images after some period of time, almost as if it overheats or something like that. I have checked my CPU & case fans which are both fine and the case is generally pretty cool & well ventilated.

Silverstone (so far) has no idea. I'm starting to think I simply have a bad LCD screen. It's frustrating that it may work fine for a few hours or a day or two, but it ALWAYS stops displaying images, and an external monitor ALWAYS displays them just fine so I don't think it's a driver issue of any sort. I hate the thought of blaming the hardware, but it really seems to be a hardware problems.

SoundGraph, do you have any ideas? Anyone else experienced this? Does it sound like a hardware problem?

As I said, I can see that the LCD is getting power because I effectively see a back lit black screen. During boot up, I can even see the back light flicker on then off again as a normal monitor would, but nothing displays except black pixels. I don't know what to do except return the entire case and let Silverstone deal with it, but I hate the idea of starting my build all over again.

[carteriii]

I have a quick update. At the suggestion of Silverstone, I tried setting the television resolution to the same 800x600 resolution of the touchscreen. Combined with the latest video driver (which I just installed this weekend) the touchscreen remained the 2nd monitor! This was a first. Normally Windows would take over the touchscreen, changing the resolution and making it the primary.

THEN, after a while, the touchscreen went black again. I thought for sure it was just dead like I described in this thread, but for the first time I touched the screen and it woke up! The black screen was not the result of a Windows screen saver, so this makes me think the iMON software/drivers actually sleep the touchscreen display, independent of Windows settings. This makes me think that perhaps my black screen has been a function all along of an iMON software/driver problem.

Having said that, there is still one thing that puzzles me. Does it make sense that even after rebooting, the touchscreen could/would remain black as it has everytime in the past? I'm not just talking about after Windows starts. Even the green ASUS bios screen would not display when this happened. Could it be that the touch screen retained some capacitance that kep the setting that told it to remain dark even after rebooting? Since the screen would occasionally come back after I shut the computer completely off, perhaps something with a capacitance gradually drained?

This also doesn't completely explain why touching the screen never woke it up before either. Perhaps that had to do with the different resolutions, that the "touch" signal wasn't making it to the iMON software since the resolution was off? I'm only guessing. I'm also not certain my screen will continue to work, since it sometimes took a day to go black, but I do feel this clue may help SoundGraph figure out what's going on.

[carteriii]

I woke up this morning to find that the LCD touch screen was still on, which leads me to a question for Johnny/SoundGraph . . . What controls whether or not the touch screen "sleeps" or goes black?

I ask because twice yesterday evening the screen went black, yet "woke up" when I touched it as I described in the previous post. Each time it seemed like it went black after about an hour or two. I assumed it would be black again this morning and I was hopeful that it would wake up when I touched it, but now that I see it's still fully on, I'm thinking part of my problems may be in the logic or code which actually puts the screen to sleep (making it black) and the code which attempts to wake the screen.

As far as I can tell, this must be code or a setting which is different than the Windows 7 power management options for having a monitor go to sleep. So, what controls whether or not the touch screen "sleeps" or goes black? Johnny, would you please look at that code for some potential problems? If I'm right that the setting might "hold" even through a reboot, then you might want to reconsider how it works.

[carteriii]

OK, new update. I came home from work today to find the screen was black again, but touching it did wake it up. That's good.

Now for the bad. I rebooted the computer and now I'm back to the problem that when the television is turned off, the touchscreen monitor becomes primary again and flashes as it changes resolution, completely messing with the clean display of the FrontView. I've tried setting the resolution of the television & touchscreen to be the same, thinking that's what first got me the more desireable behavior, but now it's not changing anything. Now when I turn the TV off, FrontView gets all messed up and becomes unusable.

I don't know what happened or I did to get Windows to ignore the turning off of the television, but for 24 hours it was nice. Now I feel like I'm starting over again.

[carteriii]

I have some new observations which I think offer more insight into the problem.

I installed VNC on my computer so that I could remote into it With my television off, when the computer makes the touchscreen the primary monitor, and it was "all screwed up". By that, I mean it looked like the screen shots that others have provided in different threads. In my case, there was an 800x600 size blue box (same blue as set by iMON HD) in the upper left corner of my screen, and my screen saver was running around (to the right & below) the blue box. Touching the screen did absolutely nothing.

When I used VNC to connect to the computer, I did *NOT* see the 800x600 blue box, even though it was still being displayed on the touchscreen. This alone is interesting, because it says that the blue is not being displayed like it would with a normal application.

Now here is where it gets to be a little more fun. I lauched my ATI Catalyst Control Center and saw that the resolution of the touchscreen was 1024x768. This is consistent with what I could see on the touchscreen with the 800x600 blue area in the upper left corner. I don't understand why 1024x768 was used, given that the touchscreen is set to 800x600 as the secondary monitor. For some reason when Windows made it the primary monitor, it increased the screen resolution. Is that because this touchscreen believes its native resolution is 1024x768, and not 800x600 (as I thought was indicated in some documentation somewhere)?

Now it gets more interesting...

Using VNC, when I clicked anywhere within the upper left corner, no mouse click was registered by whatever window was displayed there. It was as if the blue 800x600 box was consuming all mouse clicks and doing nothing, even though I couldn't see the blue through VNC. So I turned off the FrontView application and then magically I was able to click with the mouse through VNC anywhere on the screen. So it appears that when FrontView is running at the wrong resolution, it does not properly display but it still consumes all mouse clicks and does nothing with them. This could also explain how/why my touchscreen always seems to be completely "disabled" when the resolution is wrong.

So repeating my question from above, what really is the native resolution of this touchscreen on the Silverstone GD02-MT? Is it 1024x768, since that's what Windows used when the touchscreen became primary? I may try setting the resolution of my touchscreen to 1024x768 when it is the secondary monitor with the hope that it doesn't cause so many problems when it becomes primary.

Related to that, why doesn't FrontView display "full screen" when the resolution is 1024x768? Related to that, why doesn't it at least display completely in the 800x600 area in which it does display the blue background? Also, why doesn't VNC see & display the blue which is being displayed on the touchscreen itself?

I'm also going to see if ATI's Catalyst Control Center can remember to use 800x600 whenever the touchscreen becomes primary. I'm not familiar with how their profiles work, so can anyone tell me if it's possible to force ATI to use that resolution when only the touchscreen is on and primary?

I had to leave for work so I can't do more until tonight, but I think these observations do offer insight into how iMON/FrontView and the touchscreen operate.

[carteriii]

Well, all bad news at this point. I rebooted the computer and the screen "went black" again and I could not get it to ever display again for the rest of the night. This is what prompted me to start this discussion in the first place. I suspect that leaving the computer off all day may allow it to turn on again tonight, but no amount of rebooting or settings change or shutting it off and leaving it off last night would bring the display back.

At a minimum, this tells me that the latest beta test version from SoundGraph and the latest ATI drivers have not "fixed" anything. I was hopeful that things looked like they worked for a while, but only until I rebooted. Last night I was back to having a completely worthless touchscreen that only caused me frustration.

Since others have offered screenshots of the problems they have when the primary & secondary monitors change (due to turning off the television connected via HDMI), I would like to ask/beg of SoundGraph to please deal with that. Several of us appear to have that problem with different cases, different motherboards, and different graphics cards/drivers. I realize Windows 7 may be complicating things for you, by switching the touchscreen to become primary, but you're not handling it well. Please, please, please put some time into helping us.

[carteriii]

Hey Johnny/SoundGraph, have any of you read this thread? Can/Will you please do something? This touchscreen is completely useless when it only displays black and doesn't respond to any touches.

[carteriii]

More data for this situation. First, it appears that the overwhelming majority of the time that the touchscreen goes black is when I turn *on* my television and the touchscreen tries to switch from being the primary monitor to the secondary monitor.

Second, I opened my case and tried disconnecting wires from the touchscreen when it turns black. I found that by pulling the 4-pin power connector from the touchscreen when it was black, then reconnecting the power, the screen always came back to properly display the VGA signal. Something about power-cycling the screen caused it to display properly.

So would someone from SoundGraph please reply and let me know what signal causes the screen to go black (presumably some power-saving signal?) that would be reset when powering on the screen again? It must be some signal the retains state and waits for another specific signal, rather than simply seeing a valid VGA image and displaying it. It appears that the screen improperly receives that signal when the monitor is flashing between primary & secondary (possible also changing resolutions at that time?) and simply never comes back.

[carteriii]

Would anyone care to place any bets on whether anyone from SoundGraph *EVER* replies to this thread? If any prospective customer comes and reads this thread and doesn't see a reply, you should run far, far away from anything that SoundGraph makes. As you can see from this forum, lots of people have problems that never get resolved. If your SoundGraph product works "out of the box", then you may be happy, but otherwise you're screwed. The case manufacturers don't seem to be able to put any pressure on SoundGraph, and this thread makes it pretty clear that they don't care enough about the end customer.

[johnny.hur]

Dear carteriii,

I’m really sorry for your inconvenience. We’ll try to keep eye on this thread as well.

For LCD black out issue, we need more information. Please check the followings and let me know.
1. FW version. You can check FW version in iMON Manager>Options>Version/Update.
2. When Touch LCD turns black, open Windows’ Display properties and check if this monitor is shown in Display properties.
3. When it happens, try to reset Touch LCD with “LCD Reset” button in iMON Manager>iMON Utilities>FrontView>Common tab.
4. If you have additional VGA cable, try change VGA cable with it for Touch LCD.

And we checked that when TV is off, Touch LCD is changed to primary monitor and its resolution is also changed to 1024x768 in some system and it can be different according to the connection and the connected graphic card and TV. We’re trying to find the solution.

Regards,
Johnny Hur

[carteriii]

The firmware version is 0x3504. I'll check the other things you listed.

[carteriii]

2.) When the LCD turns black, WIndows *does* see the monitor. It shows as "SG43" with a resolution of 800x600.
3.) When I pressed the LCD Reset button, I could see that the LCD screen flickered as if it was powered off, but when it came back, it remained on the black screen.
4.) I do not have an additional VGA cable with the proper connector for the LCD screen. The connector to the back of the LCD screen in my Silverstone GDMT-02 is not something I have seen on a VGA cable before, nor can I easily buy.

Related to #4, when I plug ANY other monitor into the VGA signal from the computer, the display is just fine. When I re-plug the touchscreen into the VGA cable, it displays only black.

[carteriii]

I see that ATI just released a new version 10.3 of their drivers for Windows. It lists the following issue as resolved for all version of Windows:

"Hotplugging a HDMI display while Catalyst Control Center is open no longer causes the HDTV Standard Modes box not to appear"

It also lists this as a fix for Windows 7:

"Displays no longer goes blank on some of the ports after display is hot-unplugged and then hotplugged back"

I don't know if those are related to my problem, because the VGA signal works when I connect any other monitor, but I will try to upgrade and see if that changes the behavior. Perhaps you can work with ATI to ask if there is something similar to those fixes which might be useful to learn.

[carteriii]

I just installed the latest ATI 10.3 drivers and still have the same black screen on the touchscreen after turning my HDMI-connected televsion off and then on again a few times.

Is there updated firmware that I can try? What else might be the problem? I am willing to run a version of software with extra debugging information to help diagnose this problem.

[johnny.hur]

Dear carteriii,

I’m sorry for my late reply and your inconvenience.

The LCD black screen problem has not been reported from other Touch LCD product users and it didn’t happen in our test lab as well. Touch LCD doesn’t have Power saving code turning black by itself.

I think it is little bit vague to say it comes from Touch LCD itself or Graphic Card driver. In order to check that LCD has HW problem, I need more information. Please let me know the following, even though it may disturb you.
1. Let me know all cases that make LCD turn black.
(You said it happens on turning On/Off TV or just staying on without any action, …)
2. If possible, connect TV with DVI or D-Sub. (I want to know if it is related with HDMI)
3. Check again after disabling Screen Saver and TV is on. (I want to know if it is related with Screen Saver)
4. If possible, check again after connecting other monitor instead of TV.

Regards,
Johnny Hur

[carteriii]

I'm happy to give all the new information that might help us debug this.

1.) At least 95% of the time it happens when the TV is turned On/Off. I do remember that it happen once or twice after the TV was already off, but I have not seen that in a while and at a minimum have not been able to reproduce it.

2.) This television (Samsung HP-S4253) has two HDMI connectors and does not have a separate DVI connection. I'll try the VGA/D-Sub connector and let you know what I see.

3.) I will disable the screen saver. For what it is worth, I already changed the power settings to "Never" turn off the display and "Never" put the computer to sleep.

4.) I will check again.

[carteriii]

Did you check to see if I have the latest firmware version?

Related to #3, I believe that I changed the power settings after thinking that the LCD screen was going into power saving mode when it turned black. Please remember that when I say it turns black, you can still see that the screen has power, showing a hint of light behind the black pixels. Perhaps you can tell me if the touchscreen has a power saving mode in which the pixels turn black, but the screen itself maintains power. Perhaps that is the mode I see which happens inadvertently when the screen flashes between primary & secondary, changing resolutions.

[johnny.hur]

Dear carteriii,

When LCD turns black, LCD back light is still on but display signal may be not processed properly. I think that it may come from bad cable, LCD HW problem or Graphic Card.

Did you check with other monitor instead of TV?

If it still happens with PC monitor, it seems that your Touch LCD may have some HW problem. Please contact with SilverStone and request the replacement.
Otherwise, this problem may come from Graphic Card driver rather than Touch LCD.
After this check, please let me know it.

Regards,
Johnny Hur

[carteriii]

I hooked another PC monitor up to the D-sub connection which is normally used by the touchscreen. I've turned the television on and off many times, yet the PC Monitor remains stable. In fact, the PC Monitor doesn't even blink or flash when the television is turned on or off. Even when the touchscreen works, and doesn't remain black, it always flashes multiple times whenever the television is turned on or off. The only question is whether the touchscreen remains black or functions properly again.

So would you please tell me, should the touchscreen flash at all when the television turns on/off, or should it remain a perfectly steady picture like I have on the PC Monitor?

Also, you still have not said whether or not my firmware is current or is old. Please tell me, is my firmware old or new, and how can the firmware be updated? That would certainly be easier than removing and returning the entire touchscreen.

[carteriii]

OK, ignore the comments about the other PC monitor not flashing when the TV turns on/off. That appears to have been an anomoly, because now it flashes just like the touchscreen.

Just tell me whether I have the latest firmware and I'll post another update a bit later.

[Phantomatz]

Hello, I have the same or similar problem.

The LCD turn black after a while.

In my case its not a problem of win7 (which I am running) switches 1. and 2nd monitor.

I should have to do with the LCD driver.

When I am connected with TeamViewer and see both screens. Both video signals are ok (TV signal via HDMI and the VGA signal for the LCD screen). However, the LCD on the front panel stays black.

Please fix the issue in the drivers, its not that usable this way.

I am running a ZOTAC ATOM 330 mainboard with HDMI and VGA output on board wird Win7.

[shiney2512]

[QUOTE=carteriii;8640]2.) When the LCD turns black, WIndows *does* see the monitor. It shows as "SG43" with a resolution of 800x600.
3.) When I pressed the LCD Reset button, I could see that the LCD screen flickered as if it was powered off, but when it came back, it remained on the black screen.


i had the same problem as above on a thermaltake dh102, the screen would have 'no sync", even though windows detected the screen. i tried re-installing the drivers to no avail, i tried reseting the lcd and the screen would flash, and still no picture.

l ended up finding at loose connector behind the lcd panel, (i think it was the usb connector) pluged it back in, and now it works as it should!

[carteriii]

For what it's worth, I still have the problem of the touchscreen going blank until power has been completely removed. In one tech support phone call with ATI, they suggested that the EDID information from the touchscreen may not be properly being communicated with the computer. Does anyone know enough about EDID communication to say whether this seems feasible?

Of course ATI does not think this is their problem, but no one does. So far Silverrstone, ASUS, ATI, & SoundGraph all want to blame each other and no one will help diagnose the problem further. I just got the latest iMon v8.00.0408 and we'll see if it makes any difference.