Strange behaviour at the startup

I have a decent system. Nothing fancy but not bad:
Processor - Intel CORE I5-4670 3.4GHz
Motherboard - Asus Z87-C
RAM - 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3/1866
GPU - Gainward GeForce GTX 760 Phantom
System HD - Plextor 256GB 2,5 SATA SSD
OS - Windows 7
Something strange happens when I start it up… I get welcome logo for about 5 seconds then the screen goes black and the monitor power light flashes for another 5 or 6 seconds and then the picture returns and the process finishes successfully. Any ideas about the cause?

The Windows welcome logo, you mean?

Yes, should have been cleared about that.

Check Event Viewer (search for it using the Win7 search bar). See if your video drivers are crashing at startup.

Sounds like your monitor is adjusting to a change happening at that point, which could by anything from refresh rate and resolution to something driver-related like Drithius suggests.

However, if you're using a modern version of Windows - it should tell you if any drivers crashed during boot.

No drivers crash. Is there a way to check for monitor adjustments?

Originally Posted by zahratustra
No drivers crash. Is there a way to check for monitor adjustments?

After the screen goes black during boot, and it comes back - what's on screen? Because obviously the resolution changes when it switches from the BIOS and command line sequence to Windows Desktop.

Windows welcome screen…blank…wait screen and logon

Originally Posted by zahratustra
Windows welcome screen…blank…wait screen and logon

What do you mean by "wait screen"?

So "starting Windows" screen then blank and than this http://www.nsfwd.co.uk/?attachment_id=1806

Originally Posted by zahratustra
So "starting Windows" screen then blank and than this http://www.nsfwd.co.uk/?attachment_id=1806

Ok.

Going from "Starting Windows" to that Welcome screen means changing from what I call "DOS" resolution to whatever resolution you're running in Windows. It's perfectly normal for your monitor to adjust itself during this change, though the amount of seconds you're talking about is kinda unusual. For most monitors, it takes a couple of seconds - though I've seen it take more time.

You could try changing resolution in Windows and take note of how your monitor behaves. If it takes a similar amount of time - with a blank screen - then I don't think you have much to worry about.

Maybe your display is starting with the integrated GPU from your Intel CPU and then switches to the dedicated GTX 760 GPU during boot-up? Have you checked in the BIOS? If you are using a dedicated GTX 760, you might want to change the corresponding BIOS setting (should be under 'boot options' or maybe 'advanced features') to use the dedicated GPU as the primary GPU.

Thanks for your replies guys. A trip to BIOS sorted it out

Glad to hear it

What does this red "N" mean ?

Originally Posted by zahratustra
I have a decent system. Nothing fancy but not bad:
Processor - Intel CORE I5-4670 3.4GHz
Motherboard - Asus Z87-C
RAM - 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3/1866
GPU - Gainward GeForce GTX 760 Phantom
System HD - Plextor 256GB 2,5 SATA SSD
OS - Windows 7

Nothing fancy?
That not fancy "baby" runs everything flawlessly except 6Gb ultra textures irrelevance in antiTolkien nonparty game released recently.
Oh and… Thief will still have bad FPS performance. But that's because of Square Enix bad code optimization, that game has problems even on hardware that doesn't exist yet.

I have almost the same one (another SDD in my case, i5 is K version).