Grey/Black screen after BIOS and stuck there

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
A

Ashur_

Prominent
Mar 14, 2017
19
0
510
I recently bought a new desktop pc, completely from scratch, which my cousin built for me because i don't really know how, but once every around a week or so sometimes less, when i turn on the pc, both my monitors go grey or one goes grey and the other black or both go black after the BIOS screen and before windows boot, sometimes the mouse cursor shows up but it doesn't move and keyboard or reset button doesn't work either so i just usually hold power button to turn off and usually it works properly after turning on again. Also when the screens go grey/black the activity light from the case doesn't blink or shine at all.

The motherboard is a MSI Z270 Gaming Plus, both monitors are connected to the graphics card which is a GTX 1070, one with hdmi and the other with dvi, windows is installed in a samsung evo 850 SSD, the ram are 2 g-skill tridentz 8gb, not sure what other component need to be mentioned, so do tell me if its needed.

I tried updating the bios but it doesn't seem to fix the issue, i never really configured BIOS before and always used the default configurations and never had an issue, so i don't really know much about BIOS. Actually not sure if i should be posting this here because i don't know if its a mother issue or something else, i don't really know a whole lot about pc building and stuff.

Since i don't know a whole lot about pc stuff, when offering to test something that might be a solution, please be more detailed about it because its likely i don't really know how to do it properly or not even know what i actually am doing. Also english is not my main or even 2nd language so i apologize if i don't express myself properly. And thanks in advance

 
Solution
A
The PSU wattage is completely fine. But if the PSU is faulty or having issues... then bam, you have the issues and it wouldn't be only during boot. It could be happening when under load etc...

It is hard to test for all this stuff but the fact you stated it is happening on two machines from the same location... gets me thinking it's most likely a hardware issue.

Sort by date Sort by votes


After the BIOS splash screen and before the windows one shows up, the mouse cursor only showed up today, usually its just grey or black screens.

I have already been tweaking with drivers for weeks and also tried formatting and updating the BIOS, nothing works yet
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Motherboard: MSI Z270 Gaming Plus, i'm guessing it has an integrated card not sure about the details tho
CPU: Intel 7700k
Ram: G.skill 8gbx2
Graphics: GTX 1070
SSD: Samsung EVO 850 500gb
HDD: 2x WD blue 4tb each
Power: Corsar RM850x
Case: NZXT Phantom 410
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 bit

Might be forgetting something

Actually i haven't tried unplugging monitors and plugging them to the integrated card, but i did try unplugging and plugging them on the same slot.

Also forgot to mention that when its stuck on the grey/black screens, the light that signals activity doesn't shine at all
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well, it might take a long while for it to happen again so i can try it, and the thing is that its not only the monitors that doesn't show anything even through there's signal, the one time the mouse cursor showed up, it didn't move at all. I will have to test it but keyboard might not work either even if the lights were on to enter BIOS, also reset button of the case doesn't work either.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Yes that makes a lot of sense, well i gotta wait until it happens again so i can try and that can take a week, but thanks for taking the time, this thread might be dead in a week's time or by the time i manage to test it but i will try to post again when i do or send a pm or something.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Btw, from the OS side of things, is there anything that i can try out?, i already tried installing windows again from scratch after the first time, but the problem still continues and i don't have another version of windows to test. Or its more likely that its the BIOS and should wait to try that out first before worrying about the OS
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I see, so now the thing is to narrow down what hardware is failing, or not working properly, that's somehow good to know, this motherboard in particular has been giving me a lot of trouble since i bought it, from sound distortion(i use onboard sound), to network card sometimes not detecting that the cable is plugged(which i know its likely the onboard card because i bought a network card and it works perfectly fine), to device manager sometimes refreshing every couple of seconds and this issue. Kinda wanted to figure everything out before sending it to warranty because i live in south america right now and warranties are kinda shaky and logistically its a pain because i have to send it, then it takes around 48 to 72 hours for then to test and if they can't find any issue with it i have to pay them extra.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Is there nothing more immediate that i can do to test if the motherboard is working as it should or any other hardware?. Really hoping its not the motherboard tho....72 hours without pc is gonna be a pain specially because i sold my laptop, also if i send it and they can't find issues with it i have to pay 1/4 of the price of a new one.....which is kind of a joke. So i have been trying to figure out all the issues for the past 3 weeks since i bought the pc.

As a side not, could it be that there's something not seated or plugged properly? i mean i haven't actually checked properly because i don't know what to look for, as i said i have no idea how to put the parts together and it was my cousin who built it and even him is pretty new to it and has only built a couple of pcs so far.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
So, just to make sure i got it right, i'm supposed to enable integrated graphics and try to plug monitor into it next time its stuck on grey/black screen? or leave the monitors plugged into the integrated all the time?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
What i don't understand most of all, is that this issue that i have only happens around once and week(i turn off the pc every night) and its not consistent, sometimes it happens after just 4 days and sometimes it takes over 10 days to happen again.

I understand what i'm trying to accomplish trying to get a POST using the integrated graphics with both monitors, what i don't really get is that my gut feeling is telling me that it probably will work fine. I have been looking around, and most of the similar issues i found, the pcs just don't seem to boot at all without fixing the issue, in my case the pc works fine aside from the sound issue that i think i already fixed and the onboard card issue that after installing a pci card works fine too. Only once every on average 5 to 7 times i turn on the pc it gets stuck on grey or black screen after the BIOS splash screen, which i find very weird, it kinda feels like its the OS not booting properly....but well i will still test it tomorrow its kinda late today already.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Pretty sure I said what we were trying to see here.

You should be able to see POST on the connected GPU regardless of a driver or OS related issue. If it just a black screen and you are not seeing POST when the problem happens. Then that means there is a hardware issue. Could be the monitor, the GPU, could be the GPU PCI slot, could be a mobo issue. We are trying to rule out parts at this time.

First thing to rule out if a mobo or GPU issue. By turning on intergrated chip and plugging directly into the mobos display. If we monitor see a POST then we know mobo overall is OK, monitor works and system can at least get into the BIOS. Next steps would be to troubleshoot PCI or GPU.

If it doesn't POST then we know there is a larger issue, such as a mobo problem.

It's part of troubleshooting. It's called process of elimination.

We are trying to reproduce the error on another GPU to rule things out. If you don't have another external GPU to test with, we have to use what we can, which would be integrated chipset.

It really doesn't matter what order you want to troubleshoot in. But we need to troubleshot.

Try to use another monitor
Try to use another GPU
Troubleshoot monitor power (is it plugged into a powerstrip? bypass it) etc...

You can try those things first if you want. We already troubleshooted the basics, it doesn't appear to be a software issue. This problem is going to be harder to troubleshoot because it happens to randomly.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Ok great. Do you know how long on average it takes for the issue to reappear?

If possible, you may want to remain connected to the integrated display for now. Lets see if the system issue returns or not. You said it was pretty random right?

Is that possible or do you use this system for gaming or something and need the external GPU?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Its quite random, the shortest time it took was 4 days and the most it took was 11 days so far. Yes i do use it for gaming, would it work if i have one plugged in the external graphics and one in the integrated? thing is i don't have a vga cable at hand right now, kinda lost them and couldn't find them.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Ok i will stick with this setup for a while and wait it out until it happens again then report. Thanks again for the help and patience, i really appreciate it and i apologize if i came out as rude or something, its just that i don't really understand in detail how a lot of this things work, been using pcs for almost 20 years but never had this issues and never actually bothered to go into details on hardware stuff. So really, thanks a lot and i will report back
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom