ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics

[Bubba Euler]

This is version: 8.632.1.2000 of ATI software.

INFO:  ACER Aspire 5517; Windows 7, X64, Enterprise (no surprise!); No other problems that are observable.  4GB RAM and 250 GB HDD (25%);

Symptom:  Screen randomly goes dark (becoming more prevalent);  Takes many multiple clicks of the Fn and F6 keys (back-light) to restore the back-light;  Using the ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics driver (8.632.1.2000);  Using built-in properties and their website, I have latest driver; 

Is this a software problem or a driver problem?  Hopefully, that's all it is!  Is it hardware (I doubt it, due to the ability to restore via keyboard (Fn/F6);  Again, I have the latest driver edition. 

Have you all any idea???? what might be causing these outages of screen presentation from ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics?  I've done my on-line research and have found nothing commensurate. 

I'm very nervous about this and have NO backup computer. 

Thank you for your interest and assistance from an old retired engineer.

[Boggin]

It could be the power settings as if it was hardware and the backlight or inverter were on their way out, no amount of button pressing would restore.

Does this occur on AC as well as on Battery and do you have the laptop Power Options set to High Performance/Change plan settings so it is set to never dim the display or if the dimming coincides with whatever it's set at.

You can also go Start Orb - type ccc then press enter or you could access it through All Programs.

You may have to wait a little while but the Catalyst Control Center will come up where you can adjust various settings.

[Bubba Euler]

Howdy, Boggin!  Thanks for replying so fast.  Yes, I do have Power Options set to set to High Performance and never to dim.  It's one of the things I check on prior to posting to the blog. 

I never run on battery, only AC.

Thanks for the tip on CCC and the control center.  I'll definitely check that today.

 

[Boggin]

When did you upgrade to the latest driver and did this dimming problem coincide with that ?

Going into Device Manager and rolling back the driver may sort it because I have the HD3200 in one of my Tosh laptops and when using the auto detect, it only ever gives the legacy drivers for it. http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/auto-detect-tool

I think I installed a similar v8 for the HD6310 drivers on here and that gave me a red hue that was only resolved by rolling back the driver.

[Boggin]

I've run the auto detect on both laptops and the newer version for the HD6310 is 8.0.916.0 and that still gave me the red hue, so had to roll back on that one again.

The one for the HD3200 was and still is after doing the Custom and Select All is for the 13-9 Legacy Vista_Win 7 ver. 8.970.100.1100 - so it's possible there could be a compatibility problem with you having installed the 8.632.1.2000 version.

[Bubba Euler]

Checked for CCC and there was nothing found.  Hmm?  Anyway, I downloaded the newest CCC and now my driver is Version 8.970.100.1100.  So far, no problems.  (knock on wood!)

[Shane]

Normally this isnt the video driver. The monitor itself controls the brightness of the screen and on laptops the bios in the motherboard lets windows control the brightness. Which is supposed to be used for when the system goes on battery it windows will lower the brightness of the monitor to save battery life.

The video card normally doesn't do anything with brightness, normally that is. I am also thinking more of normal desktop monitors. Laptop monitors might be more controlled by the video drivers since they actually could have access to the monitors chips where on external monitors they cant, I haven't ever looked into it enough to see if that is the case.

As a test you could hook up a external monitor to the vga port and have the 2 screens going, have them set to clone each other. Then if it happens again see if it only happens to the laptop screen and not the external monitor.

Shane

[Boggin]

Checked for CCC and there was nothing found.  Hmm?  Anyway, I downloaded the newest CCC and now my driver is Version 8.970.100.1100.  So far, no problems.  (knock on wood!)

When you downloaded the other driver, did you click on the link for the latest Win 7 drivers ?

The one I get for the HD6310 is what the auto detect gives as the most suitable, but causes the red hue for some reason.

When this first happened, I Googled and found this had happened previously with other AMD GPUs without any solution offered.

However, I've only ever gotten the one you just have for the HD 3200 so assume that one is no longer supported, but it's always best to run the auto detect so that you (should) get the correct driver.