Card(s) failure or drivers for sudden black screen? =(

[mizhop]

Hi guys. There were some with similar aspects, but I couldn't find any info on my particular problem in the forums. Probably since I'm not exactly sure what's gone wrong. Pardon the lengthiness; I'll get right to it.

Though it appears that both my cards failed, which I find hard to believe, I naturally suspect the drivers. I was playing a very low powered game earlier this evening (think Big Fish or Bejeweled) when my screen went black, and said there was no signal. I tried the HDMI slot on card #2, and there was nothing. I brought in a LCD monitor from the other room, and on #1 still saying no signal with a DVI-D plug. The comp never shut off, no weird noises, just tooling along as usual.

About a month ago I replaced my graphics cards with Radeon 7970's. These were used cards, but I stress tested once installed and they ran fine, crossfire linked. I haven't even used them hard since I got them, no OC'ing or anything. I installed the Catalyst suite (256MB?? Really??) recommended by AMD, Rev. 14.4.

Everything was fine until a small issue several days back with a slow-right-click on the desktop that turned out to be a problem with NVIDIA's (previous cards were GTX 760's) Display Shell Extension (context menu) which I then disabled using ShellExView, and nothing untoward happened then either. I thought I'd give another driver a try, and so DL'ed the Catalyst package (even bigger) with it's Beta driver, 14.7. It made no difference with the shell extension problem, as apparently it had the same version # as the 14.4 package (335.23). So, I just stuck with the 14.7 drivers since nothing else seemed to be awry. I did all this before I realized that I probably didn't need it anyway since I was using the Radeon software. Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it in case it has contributed to this issue.

I was able to cannibalize the card from my hubby's comp in order to get back in business, a Radeon 5670. The first card I pulled out of my parts bin made my poor rig literally shriek until I quickly shut it down and tried the 5670.

I'd very much like to see if it's the drivers for the 7970's that failed, and how I should safely go about trying it, as I'm a little gun-shy currently. My rig is not quite a year old and has just about every amenity I could want.

Full-size Thermaltake case w/extra fans
ASUS P9X79LE motherboard
32GB RAM (G-Skill Ripjaws)
Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit SP1
Intel core i7-4820, water cooled
1200 watts Coolermaster PSU

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While composing this, I did another quick sweep of the latest posts in the forum and found another black screen post where it was suggested to do a Display Driver Uninstaller, so I gave that a go. I chose the first button "Uninstall the current and previous drivers and restart the computer (highly recommended)". I did another run of ShellExView and the NVIDIA entry(ies) are no longer there at least. Maybe this whole thing was a conflict between the previous card drivers and the new Radeons??

I can't think of what I might have left out, except maybe that there was no Windows updates or anything that may have thrown that particular shiat out of whack. I'm by no means an expert, but know my way around things enough to be the extended family 'puter chick.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!

 

[iamlegend]

Damn! What a long story. You`d better be a movie scriptwriter than an extended family puter chick. (I don`t know what that means).

So going back to your problem. Yes! It is a conflict with the drivers. Why do you have Nvidia drivers anyway?

And yes. The GPU total installer is a good thing to do which it will totally wipe out all the graphics files.

So, reading that you have done all this GPU uninstallation and installing it again, have you solved your problem?

 

[mizhop]

Ha ha... I suppose I could do some script editing with all my free time... heh. Really, though, like I said I'm just a bit gun-shy, and want to do this correctly instead of cramming everything back in there and giving it another go. I wanted to be sure that there wasn't anything else I should have done/be doing before I do, yuno.... Putting things out there just in case, you get me.

Well, I'll probably do it in the morning (I'm on vacation, so I have all sorts of time to sweat on this thing), and see what happens, if there aren't any more "you-should-do-this" suggestions for the problem-preventative, overly-cautious, more-than-a-little-paranoid fixit chick.

Thanks again for all you guys do!!

 

[iamlegend]

Do you mean "more-than-greater-than-little-petite-paranoidal-fixated-chicken`s-egg-hatched-chick?" lol.

By the way, my suggestion is, try to reinstall the drivers for the 7970. And see if the problem persists consult your doctor.

I think it will be OK.
Cheers!

 

[mizhop]

Okay, I reinstalled the 7970's this morning, and started it up, and to my delighted relief, it did not just stay on the black screen, but booted up normally.

I went to run the Catalyst installer for the 14.4 drivers, but when I checked device manager, it said that it was still using the 14.200.1004.0 driver from the 5670 that I was using temporarily.... I'm not sure why that happened, maybe because I DL'ed the 14.4 package from AMD's site while I was running the 5670? I ran that same 14.4 installer a second time, and noted in the custom install check-off that the 14.2 driver was "up to date." WTF??

So I've just DL'ed the 14.4 AGAIN just now, and am going to give it another go.

Also, device manager is only showing ONE of my 7970's though both are running, and I'm praying that this anomaly is because of the transition from the 5670 driver to the newer ones.... but I might be fooling myself.

The more-than-greater-than-little-petite-paranoidal-fixated-chicken`s-egg-hatched-chick's freak-outedness is reaching a new high. Am I missing something?

Thanks again for all you helpers do to help! =)

-------------------

Just ran the newly DL'ed 14.4 Catalyst package, and it STILL!! Still shows the 14.2 driver as being "up to date." What is the freaking problem here?? I had the 14.4 driver before all this shiat hit the fan yesterday... *sigh*

 

[iamlegend]

Relax your doing fine.

You should follow this steps very carefully.

To make it simple.

1. Uninstall the AMD catalyst using the GPU uninstaller (DDU http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html)
Note: you should be on safe mode.

2. Uninstall the GPU in the device manager.

3. Run CC cleaner to clean junk files.

4. Run CC cleaner to fix system registry (note: there is a "Registry" option in the CC cleaner")

5. Reinstall the AMD drivers 14.4 (in my case I use the 14.7)

5. Wipe your a** and smile.

(i have to edit about 3 times.)

 

[mizhop]

Relax your doing fine.

You should follow this steps very carefully.

To make it simple.

1. Uninstall the AMD catalyst using the GPU uninstaller (DDU http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html)
Note: you should be on safe mode.

2. Uninstall the GPU in the device manager.

3. Run CC cleaner to clean junk files.

4. Run CC cleaner to fix system registry (note: there is a "Registry" option in the CC cleaner")

5. Reinstall the AMD drivers 14.4 (in my case I use the 14.7)

5. Wipe your a** and smile.

(i have to edit about 3 times.)

I'm sad to report that this procedure did not work. Although, I did leave off #5. *wink*

After all that, it's still sticking with the 14.200.1004.0 driver, that was uninstalled. I'm floored. To go into more detail, I did not start the DDU while running windows normally. We had a brief power outage today, so I took that opportunity to start in safe mode, and began it there. I ran it to delete the AMD drivers as I did with the NVIDIA drivers a few days ago, and it completed successfully. I ran it to complete and NOT restart immediately, so I could run CCleaner for junk files and clean out the registry, as advised, still in safe mode (you didn't specify if that mattered, and I didn't think it really did).

After the restart, I ran the 14.7 Catalyst package, and it also completed with no problem. What I did take note of was after this restart from safe mode, as it did in my last effort, Windows immediately went to search for drivers for the "new hardware", and it always says that it found them and installed them, so I wonder if this automatic Windows driver search and install that's screwing things up. Because it always completes before the Catalyst package has installed. Is there a way to stop it from doing that?

Other than there's still only one card that shows up in device manager, that's all I can think of to add here.

Thanks as always for all you guys do!

**I also have to edit more than a couple of times for lack of clarity because of frustration... heh.

***okay, I did a search to see if there was a way to stop Windows from doing that, and was able to do it under the group policy settings, as the first method involved "changing device installation settings" which was already set to the "let me choose what to do", as I never let Windows automatically update itself. Soooo... I'll give IamLegend's procedure another go! Check back in a bit...

-----------------
Another update:
After enabling that group setting, whose full title is "Prevent installation of devices not described by other policy settings", I restarted and tried to install the 14.7 package again. But it crashed. And it crashed again. So I ran the 14.4 package and, while it actually made it through the installation procedure, there was a problem. Guess what failed? Here's part of the log:

Catalyst™ Install Manager Installation Report
09/12/14 19:32:26
AMD Display Driver
Final Status: Fail
Version of Item: 14.100.0.0000
Size: 90 Mbytes

Of course, by now I've come to the disgusted conclusion that this "fix" by MS, which was only supposed to prevent WINDOWS from installing whatever driver happened to be convenient, has prevented ME from installing AMD's driver pack. SO, I disabled the group setting and restarted again. Windows went looking for the driver for the hardware again, and I was amused to note that this is what it came up with:

Standard VGA Graphics adapter
6.1.7600.16385

...instead of the 14.2 which I was expecting. What I was NOT expecting was, after all of THAT SHIAT, and successfully installing the 14.7 package and restarting again, that device manager says the current 7970 driver is (and, of course, it's still only showing the ONE card instead of two)... wait for it!

14.200.1004.0

Yes. It seems I'm doomed to keep this driver, and never to update again. Perhaps I'm being punished for something. I just don't know. Of course, I have no idea if it was Windows' auto driver install that is the problem; that's just what struck me as plausible, I guess. *sigh*

On another note, why does a CMD window open after the Catalyst install, with
"Administrator: https://secure.amd.com/di?VID1=1002&DID1=6798&PID1=AMD%20Radeon%20Gr...(runs out of space, and can't enlarge window) Is the install package calling home? It's done this after every successful install that I've run. What's up with this??

I guess if I can't nail down a solution to this card driver fiasco, maybe someone can explain something else.

 

[iamlegend]

ZZZZ, it should be simple. I have experienced drivers issue before and so far my solution works.

Ok again, let`s try different approach.

Remove the 2 GPU`s 1st and then Repeat the process.
After rebooting, you must see the iGPU only.
Then, install the latest Catalyst as Administrator (still don`t put the dGPU).

Let`s see if the Drivers will be updated.
Goodluck.