Black screen in game and had to alt tab and end the application from task manager

[Michael Withstand 10]

Sometimes I get black screen in game that forced me to closed the game through task manager

When ArmA 2 is closed I received the following message

System specs

Vista x64

Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz (I know this is my weakest link in the game)

4x 2Gb DDR 2 800MHz

9800GTX+ 512Mb

Latest Nvidia 9 series driver 197.45

Does anyone know what could have caused this?

I updated my GPU driver and the problem seemed to be gone for a while then it returned and once return it happens a lot more frequent.

I only get this problem with ArmA 2 and not with any other games.

[Arma-2-Guru 55]

I've just had this like two minutes ago, I changed the graphic settings and then 5 seconds later the whole screen went. I also had that icon in the lower right corner, does anyone know what it is?

[Michael Withstand 10]

Someone suggested a failing GPU which I doubt very much because I never had any problem like this with any other games I play.

I now try to set the Video memory to default and see whether it helps.

[Michael Withstand 10]

Setting video memory to default doesn't work I still get a black screen today.

---------- Post added at 03:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 PM ----------

Edited May 14, 2010 by Michael Withstand

[Azza FHI 50]

its definitly the GPU, dont know why tho. its not very helpful advice but im just letting u know not to bother troubleshooting with your other hardware coz the GPU is the problem.

- system lockup (BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH) = cpu or ram faliure

-sys lockup (screen freeze) - cpu or gpu faliure

- screen faliure and somtimes recovery = gpu issues

[Michael Withstand 10]

I see so it's the GPU either hardware or software related.

Just had it again. I'm getting annoyed.

[11aTony 0]

Oh yes, I remember this. Was getting this in ArmA 1. It seems it depends on drivers. I see you have newest drivers so I dunno how it works with your GPU. In ArmA1 I had 9800GTX as well (just not +) and was getting this more or less, depending on drivers. It was never constant though. It happened once per 5 long sessions lets say. However, display driver always managed to recover so it was just loss of image for like 10-20s (enough to make your A10 crash:(). Now I have GTX260 and I think I only got it once or twice in ArmA 2.

Overall I encoutered this on 4 different GPUs and 3 different PCs. I think all of the GPUs were NVIDIA Im not sure anymore. I havent found any solutions in this years for this and I dont think your GPU is demaged either or anything like that. I havent got such problem in other games either. Try reverting to older drivers if it helps. So 197.13 is the previous one I think, you can try that or even older.

[Arma-2-Guru 55]

So it's more to do with the game straining your GPU than your actual hardware failing, because I don't want to buy a new GPU anytime soon.

[Michael Withstand 10]

I have an idea that since the GPU is the problem I tinkered with non local VRAM setting in ArmA.cfg in the documents folder.

I set it lower than my actual paging file in that drive. Before it turned out that I wasn't using any paging file which may explain the blackscreen since Arma.cfg set my non local VRAM to 25Gb!!!.:rolleyes:

Right click on My computer>Advanced setting>Performance tab to change paging file setting