[SOLVED] Black Screen at boot

[songoku619]

Hey guys,

My current PC components are in my sig.

So I thought my black screen days were over (previous GPU Death) but alas it has come back with a vengeance. I changed my GPU and everything ran fine for around 6 months.

A few days ago I get a black screen at boot. Restarted it a few times and everything came back to normal. It's been happening more often since then. So far I've removed all peripherals including the new GPU and the problem still persists. When it does work, there's no noticeable performance issues. I still play games and there's no frames dropping or overheating on the components (max 60 C)

1. I suspect motherboard is fine - Running solely on the motherboard/CPU the mobo beeps. I've also reset the bios a few times.
2. I suspect the RAM is fine - Memtest ran without any issues.

So I'm left with just the CPU. Anyone got any ideas before I decide to buy another one? If I do I'll probably have to upgrade the motherboard and RAM anyway. The motherboard/CPU/RAM have been with me for close onto 8 years now so I'm due for an upgrade I think.

 

[The Original Ralph]

mine did something similiar, it took me 2 months + to track the issue down. I'd also get black screens unpredictably, that might never come back forcing a hard reboot, or the display might come back in 3-10 seconds

ended up being a buggy Nvidia driver - at the link below to a thread on the GeForce forums, the mods indicate a lot (like in most) of the Nvidia drivers are buggy and they identify a couple of the stable drivers - 387.92 cured my black screen issues
but follow the instructions in the 3rd post down in the thread, about using DDU (Display Driver Un-installer) and run it in safe mode - be sure to select "Clean drivers for a new graphics card". Then when you download and open the driver, choose "Custom installation" and de-select everything but the driver, including GeForce Experience - if you install that, it will update your Nvidia driver automatically.

if that works, if you're running Win 10, disable "Updates" as it will also try to update your Nvidia driver

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1035287/nvlddmkm-sys-crashing/?offset=1

 

[songoku619]

mine did something similiar, it took me 2 months + to track the issue down. I'd also get black screens unpredictably, that might never come back forcing a hard reboot, or the display might come back in 3-10 seconds

ended up being a buggy Nvidia driver - at the link below to a thread on the GeForce forums, the mods indicate a lot (like in most) of the Nvidia drivers are buggy and they identify a couple of the stable drivers - 387.92 cured my black screen issues
but follow the instructions in the 3rd post down in the thread, about using DDU (Display Driver Un-installer) and run it in safe mode - be sure to select "Clean drivers for a new graphics card". Then when you download and open the driver, choose "Custom installation" and de-select everything but the driver, including GeForce Experience - if you install that, it will update your Nvidia driver automatically.

if that works, if you're running Win 10, disable "Updates" as it will also try to update your Nvidia driver

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1035287/nvlddmkm-sys-crashing/?offset=1

I'm using an RX580 not nVidia card. However I have swapped between different drivers and used DDU. As I said though the problem persists even without the GPU in (using onboard graphics).

 

[The Original Ralph]

whoops, sorry i missed that

still the folks over on the GeForce forums reference a lot of times conflicts between windows drivers and Nvidia, so i suspect that may be an issue with your drivers.

Like i said, i spent 2 months + chasing my issue down, i even sent my GTX 1070 back to Zotac and they checked and said it was fine. But i tell what led me to the GeForce forums - i used WhoCrashed (free download) and it pulled up the mini-dump files indicating one of the Nvidia drivers in conflict with a windows kernel, and back when, the free version would search the web for you for a solution - i don't think it still does, but you might download it and run it, it's pretty decent and may give you a clue to go on

Have you posted over on the Radeon forums? I assume they have one

 

[songoku619]

So nothing really works. Sometimes it just boots but majority of the time not. If I leave it on it works perfectly. No hiccups. I just feel so bad about wasting electricity.

 

[The Original Ralph]

THERE have been a few black screen posts per week now for quite awhile - i only noticed cause i was watching for a possible solution to mine, which i already described to you.

In going back and reading your original post, i noticed "....but alas it has come back with a vengeance. I changed my GPU and everything ran fine for around 6 months." I've got to suspect either driver conflicts after updated drivers download / install, or something on your board is crippling your GPU. My money is on buggy driver.

Have you tried going back to the driver that you installed when you first installed the new GPU? And if you're running windows 10, I'd try dis-abling automatic updates

and did you try downloading WhoCrashed to see if it found any dump files, what it identifies the BSODs as

link to WhoCrashed https://resplendence.com/whocrashed

 

[songoku619]

Update: so a friend suggested that I change out the cmos battery and so far no issues. Will keep an eye on it for a few days but it seems to have sorted out the problem!

 

[songoku619]

Just an update on this issue, about 2 months after this incident the black screen came back and did not respond to changing the battery. Eventually I just left the PC on 24/7 but then I decided to re-flash the bios. And that's fixed my issue.

Wonder what will cause my next black screen xD
So far:

1. GPU broke - New GPU fixed it then
2. CMOS battery went - Replacement fixed it.
3. Bios corrupt - Re-flashing bios fixed it.

All on the same system xD. Fix 1&2 lasted a few months.