Help
Basically, when he plays games like World of Warcraft, the visuals are rendered all messed up. Flickering, stretched, or missing geometry; the whole nine yards. Alt-tabbing also tends to make the game crash (and worse, which I'll explain below). Basically, the game performs perfectly, but it's all messed up looking and alt-tabbing is unstable.
I've tried uninstalling the display drivers that came with the computer and installing the latest version (and yes I made sure I chose the correct model on Nvidia's website). I also made sure his operating system was up to date. None of that fixed it, and according to him it got somewhat worse after I updated his display drivers.
But anyway, the worst part of all of this is that he's been forced to do a system restore twice within a couple of days. According to him, on both occasions, he alt-tabbed out of World of Warcraft and when he tried to alt-tab back in, the screen would go black and his monitor would say "Entering Power Save Mode" and basically it doesn't display anything after that. He's tried turning it off and turning it back on, and unplugging the cable and plugging it back in, both to no avail. Trying to alt-tab back out has no effect either. So he's forced to shut his computer down via holding the power button down (which we all know is not good) and booting it back up. It would ask him how to boot Windows up since it was shut down incorrectly, he'd choose "Boot Windows Normally" but it would go to a black screen. After doing another hard reset, it told him he needed to do a system restore. This has happened twice now.
He contacted Dell's support but it wasn't helpful at all. He was put on the phone with an Indian man who did the remote assistance thing. My friend said all he did was reinstall the display drivers and install some useless security program and it didn't change anything at all. The guy basically followed his training to a T. Don't ask how much they charged him for it either...
As I said, I can't figure out what the source of the problem is, let alone whether it's hardware or software related. I've heard of issues with monitors going in to "power save" mode before, but I figured it was mostly a driver issue.
His system specs are as follows:
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600 3.4 ghz
RAM: 8GB DDR3
GPU: 2x SLI Nvidia Geforce GTS 450
Any information would be greatly appreciated. I've Googled like crazy trying to find a solution but I've come up dry. If you need any more information about his system then I'll try and relay it to you as soon as possible.
This post has been edited by nubblecakes: 10 December 2011 - 08:52 PM
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