With Catalyst 12.10 and newer whenever my power-down time elapses the monitors power down, but then a moment later the backlights power back up again - though with just black screens and a mouse cursor.

This worked correctly in 12.8.

It's still broken in 12.11 b4 and b6.

Does anyone know of a workaround to make this work?

-Noel

Hi...you need to supply some basic information about your computer before anyone can try to be of assistance.
 
Please supply the following:
 
1. AMD graphics card(s)
2. Operating system
3. Processor
4. Power supply (make and model)
5. System RAM (amount)
6. If this is a laptop furnish make and model
 
Also, you could read  http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=440&threadid=160417&enterthread=y   for additional information.

Intel I7 960 @ 3.87ghz *Intel DX58SO *HIS HD6970 2gb *Corsair TX650M *2x4gb Corsair XMS3 *WD Black 1TB *Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit *Gateway HD2401 24" 2ms 1920x1200  ***Asus N71Jq laptop *Intel I7 720QM Processor *Mobility Radeon HD5730 1gb *8gb Ram *Windows 7 64bit  ***Acer 5750 laptop

* A clear conscience is usually a sign of bad memory *

Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Radeon HD 7850, dual Dell 2001FP LCD monitors connected to DVI and MiniDP.   The rest don't matter, but I'll list them anyway.  Power supply?  Really?

Dell Precision T5500 desktop workstation with dual Xeon X5690 processors, Dell 875 watt power supply, and 48GB of RAM.

It happens also to a friend with a 7750 and a completely different system.

It may not fail 100% of the time, but it's trivially easy to reproduce - set the Power Options to Turn Off The Display in 1 minute.  Then leave the mouse alone and wait a minute.  The monitor power will go off and come back on in less than another minute.

This is a distinct change between 12.8 and later drivers.  Reverting by removing the later version and installing 12.8 again restores proper operation.

-Noel

Do you have it plugged in ?

For reproduceable issues as you have, you have two options...and neither one requires posting in the gaming forum.

1. Use the "Issue Reporting Form" http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3F58 to alert the engineers at AMD so they can look in to it, or

2. Call them yourself http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=444&threadid=161716&enterthread=y 

Intel I7 960 @ 3.87ghz *Intel DX58SO *HIS HD6970 2gb *Corsair TX650M *2x4gb Corsair XMS3 *WD Black 1TB *Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit *Gateway HD2401 24" 2ms 1920x1200  ***Asus N71Jq laptop *Intel I7 720QM Processor *Mobility Radeon HD5730 1gb *8gb Ram *Windows 7 64bit  ***Acer 5750 laptop

* A clear conscience is usually a sign of bad memory *

Already reported.

Just looking to see if anyone's thought of a workaround, as originally stated.  Kind of a "if you've already seen this and fixed it, please share", hence the missing details.

And yes, I've already thought of the "punch the power button on the monitor" workaround.

-Noel

Just FYI, if anyone from the ATI staff is watching, this is still a problem with the 12.11 b7 driver.

-Noel

13.1 does it too.  It may be less consistent, and maybe it takes longer, but the monitors come back on.

I even used the new uninstaller to make very sure everything was clean before installing 13.1.

I also tried a "modded 9.003.3 FirePro" driver posted elsewhere, which seems like it's about equivalent to Catalyst 12.10.   The monitors came back on with that driver set as well.

Reverting to 12.8 completely solves the problem. 

I'd just stick with 12.8 but for the fact that there are a few glitches that seem to manifest with that version as well (e.g., some trouble with Photoshop 3D rendering).

AMD strikes me as a company in trouble.  The driver quality sure seems to have slipped as compared to, say, a year or two ago.

-Noel

Does your friend also have a dual monitor system?

Haven't you heard? They decided to not fix drivers and even cause bugs intentionally until everyone stops calling them ATI. You wouldn't like it either if you were called by the name of a dead person.

(JK)

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 810 @ 3250MHz | RAM: Kingmax 2x2GB DDR2 800 @ 833MHz| MoBo: MSI K9A2 CF v1.0 (BIOS: 1.D)| GPU: Asus HD 6850 1024MB (DirectCu) @ 850/1100MHz | Display: Chili Green Vision L24FHD | PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad | OS: MS Windows 95 x64 Edition

CPU: Pentium 4 Northwood S478 @ 3200MHz | RAM: 1,5GB DDR 400| MoBo: Gigabyte GA-8S661FXMP-RZ | GPU: Abit Geforce Ti 4200 | Display: Dimarson 19" CRT | PSU: Noname 400W | OS: MS Windows XP Pro, Fedora 18

>Does your friend also have a dual monitor system?

No, I don't think so.  I haven't seen his system physically.

Re the ATI comment...  Very funny.    In all seriousness, the AMD name improved on the already reasonably good ATI name for a while.  I'm not sure that's the case today.

All through the past few decades one or another graphics company has been "on top".  There was a time, many years ago, when I purchased only Matrox stuff for the engineering division I was running.  At a different time nVidia rose to prominence, but they went to crap around 2005 or 2006.  I recall $1,000.00+ workstation video cards that never worked right...  But that's another story.

Then ATI was purchased by AMD and AMD must have infused some real talent and discipline into the development process, because their work was absolutely stellar, peaking (IMO) around 2010 and 2011.  As I develop OpenGL accelerated software, I see more than the user's perspective, and there was real engineering quality in the ATI/AMD stuff, while nVidia seemed to have the smarts but allowed their Marketing people to influence the designs too much (leading to things like OpenGL functionality advertised as supported, but implemented in software instead of the GPU).

Now it seems that ATI/AMD must have lost some seasoned expertise in the software development area, or has allowed their engineering processes to slip into disarray.  It's a real shame to see an organization who were able to deliver ever-improving quality while keeping up with the state of the art to now be unable to deliver new versions without breaking things, then be unable to fix customer reported problems across multiple major versions releases.

-Noel

The 13.2 beta fixes this.

-Noel