GTX 970 Code 43. Kinda a weird case.

[jfed]

A while back I ran into a problem where my every couple of times my comp would boot I would get a CODE 43 in device manager with a 800x400 resolution (Windows 10 x64). Then it became a permanent thing and no amount of rebooting would fix it. On Linux I would get a failure to initialize card error.

At first I blamed the card, however my brother has the same exact motherboard and cpu as me. (4790k and GA-Z97X-UD3H). I put my SSD and GPU in his comp and booted from my SSD. No problem, card performs fine no matter how many times I reboot.

So it can't be the card can it? I then test his power supply with my motherboard and parts and I get the same error. So that eliminates it being a PSU problem. I then test his ram in my computer. Same error. Can't be a RAM problem? So that leaves CPU and Motherboard.

I didn't test the CPU before RMAing my motherboard because I didn't think it could give an error43 problem? Was I wrong?

I RMA'd my board and now I have received an update that nothing was found wrong and they are shipping it back.

My board will be back soon so I want to get an idea of what to test next. I plan on sticking my CPU in my brothers computer and testing that part tomorrow. However my instinct of fixing many computers over the years makes me thing that the CPU won't be an issue.

I have no idea what to test anymore and it is getting quite frustrating.

Also around the time of CODE43 I had two of my SSDs corrupt in the booting sector and a HDD drive die. SSDs could be blamed on my constant restart of my computer to troubleshoot but what about the drive failure?. This is what pushed me to think it was a motherboard problem.

Any ideas? I really don't see how this can't be a board problem.

Quick recap of my troubleshooting:

-Tested my configuration with a different power supply and ram, same error.

-Tested my GPU and OS in a computer with identical CPU, motherboard. No errors.

Thanks for reading and thanks in advanced for any help you guys can provide.

 

[hang-the-9]

Your motherboard has onboard video, if you remove your video card does system work fine?

 

[jfed]

Yeah, onboard video works. So my theory is that it is something wrong with my PCI slot. Board returns on Monday.

 

[jfed]

Turns out the DVI slots are messed up. I have to unplug my DVI slots wait for boot then re-plug them in. What a stupid bug.

 

[concretedonkey]

I just spent most of the day trying to fix the same issue. I put in a different drive, did a fresh install of Windows, removed and installed different versions of the driver, etc., to no avail. But I did find the answer, at least for my case, and it's kinda dumb. I found no mention of this anywhere. You MUST use the right DVI port (the one furthest from the motherboard, which I believe is the DVI-SP port) when doing the install. As a last ditch effort, I decided to switch the monitor from the one port to the other. Booted, logged in as admin, and then I could tell it was doing some stuff in the background. There was no indication what was happening, but after a couple minutes it brought up a reboot dialog, and after that it worked just fine! I swapped the other drive back in, and it did the same thing. What a relief!

I was using the 344 version. The 353 version from Gigabyte appears to be corrupt.

Believe me, I tried everything I could think of and everything I could find online. The one and only thing that made a difference was switching ports. It just will not initialize properly, or finish installing the driver, if you use the wrong port. I believe that port is only for DVI-DP, if you are using two cables, and it even uses different firmware for it.