[SOLVED] EVGA GTX580 only shows white dots or BSOD upon loading Win7 GUI

Status
Not open for further replies.

urpq32

Distinguished
Aug 31, 2008
9
0
18,510
My GTX580 recently stopped working normally - other than potential HW failure (it IS a 8 year old card), nothing changed recently that would've caused this to happen when it did.

Using the miniHDMI output. No overclocking, etc. - running standard configuration.

Running Win7 SP1 64, i7 3770K @ 3.50GHz, 16GB RAM.


Never had an issue with it. Then one day when I was watching a video on Twitter, the screen went black (I believe the audio died too at that point), but not completely blank. There were a bunch of matrixed, faint, little white dots scattered across the screen. Not over the whole screen, but probably covering 2/3 of it.

So I hard rebooted, booted in normal Windows mode, and it completed the Windows boot process, but when it tried to load the GUI, it only shows me the faint white dots.

Rebooted in Safe Mode, and that works fine. I uninstalled the drivers, then let it restart in Normal boot mode, where the default Standard VGA Windows driver loaded itself, and does work (the default 800x600 driver).

Then I tried fresh re-installing the latest drivers from the EVGA website (391.35), let the setup run, let it reboot, and the same behavior ensures - the white dots only instead of a logon screen.

I also tried the same process with the drivers from the NVIDIA site directly, but they appeared to be the same, and sure enough, resulted in the same behavior (white dots).

(As a last resort, I tried uninstalling & clean re-installing the older drivers I was running when the initial black screen occurred (306.97), but same result w/ white dots.)

-Sometimes- when trying to boot in Normal mode, I get a BSOD instead of the white dots. The file named in the BSOD is nvlddmkm.sys. Its occurance is random though - no rhyme or reason when I get the dots vs when I get the BSOD. The dots are more common though. Plus, the BSOD is not only blue & white - it appears distorted with multiple vertical columns of light blue dashes across the screen, about every 2 inches wide. The white letters also appear slightly distorted and some are tinged pink. I can post the actual BSOD if anyone thinks it'll be helpful.

Any thoughts on where to go from here?

Thanks!
 
Solution
Well, that's a REALLY excellent power supply, and while ANY power supply CAN be bad, even a Seasonic Prime Ultra or Corsair AXi unit or something equivalent, it's certainly a LOT less likely that your HX850 is faulty than it is that your 9-10 year old graphics card is.

The other possibility is of course that the motherboard is to blame, and that's not far fetched either because your 3rd Gen motherboard has to also be about 8 years old and often a faulty motherboard can have many of the same symptoms as a failing graphics card or other hardware. I think in this case I'd probably want to either replace the graphics card simply because it's so old anyhow, and then if it isn't to blame at least you've preempted the imminent failure of that...
Actually, your card is probably more like 9-10 years old with a 2010 release date and an early 2012 release of the GTX 680 means that your card was only in manufacturing for a little more than a year and a half before they'd have switched gears to the new manufacturing.

So anyhow, it's pretty obviously well past the age that most daily used graphics cards last for. Chances are extremely high that this IS the problem, however, it would be good to rule out the PSU first.

What is the exact model of your PSU and how old is it, in number of years in service?
 

urpq32

Distinguished
Aug 31, 2008
9
0
18,510
Actually, your card is probably more like 9-10 years old with a 2010 release date and an early 2012 release of the GTX 680 means that your card was only in manufacturing for a little more than a year and a half before they'd have switched gears to the new manufacturing.

So anyhow, it's pretty obviously well past the age that most daily used graphics cards last for. Chances are extremely high that this IS the problem, however, it would be good to rule out the PSU first.

What is the exact model of your PSU and how old is it, in number of years in service?

Thanks, good point. It was not the newest card when I purchased it, you are correct!

PSU is actually newer; been in service for about 2 years now. Corsair HX850.
 
Well, that's a REALLY excellent power supply, and while ANY power supply CAN be bad, even a Seasonic Prime Ultra or Corsair AXi unit or something equivalent, it's certainly a LOT less likely that your HX850 is faulty than it is that your 9-10 year old graphics card is.

The other possibility is of course that the motherboard is to blame, and that's not far fetched either because your 3rd Gen motherboard has to also be about 8 years old and often a faulty motherboard can have many of the same symptoms as a failing graphics card or other hardware. I think in this case I'd probably want to either replace the graphics card simply because it's so old anyhow, and then if it isn't to blame at least you've preempted the imminent failure of that part anyhow because it was going to likely come soon in any case and then go after the motherboard or a whole platform upgrade if it turns out to not be the problem,

OR

borrow a graphics card from somebody that you can use to test in your system to see if you have similar problems with it or not, so that you can have a much better idea if it's a board or GX card problem. This is the preferred diagnostic recommendation, but if it were me, I'd probably just replace the card because I'd know that I need to anyway. Fortunately, even a somewhat low end current gen gaming card will likely match or exceed the performance of your GTX 580. Even a pretty lowly GTX 1650 will outperform your GTX 580, so anything from that up is going to be a serious upgrade in reality. If you don't actually use it for gaming, you can probably even get away with just taking it OUT of the system, connecting the display cable to your motherboard video output and using the integrated graphics from the CPU. Or getting a low end card like the GT 1030.
 
Solution

urpq32

Distinguished
Aug 31, 2008
9
0
18,510
Thanks for the ideas. Finally got some time to troubleshoot.

I completely forgot about the onboard GX. Turned that on, and I can see in HD again. So it definitely seems to confirm / indicate the graphics card has finally gone.

I knew that it was about time to overhaul or replace the entire system (as you mentioned, my MB is about 8+ yrs old as well, among the rest of the components in it; PS and RAM has already been replaced over the years), so this is probably my sign that it's time to do that.

Thanks again!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.