[SOLVED] Monitor won’t turn on/Display driver keeps uninstalling

[Lv 88 Mog]

Ok, so I'm having a problem and I think it is connected with my graphics display driver, but anyway let me explain.

Recently, my screen has started freezing up. It will just suddenly stop working (usually while using Chrome), but the PC is still working in the background (if I was watching Youtube, I can still hear the video, if I press the sleep button, it still sleeps and wakes up, etc.) JUST the screen is completely frozen. Sleeping and waking don't change anything, and hitting the reset button doesn't change anything either - the screen stays unresponsive. I've gotten around this by sleeping my computer (to hopefully limit it from doing anything important) and then turning off the PSU switch and then restarting the PC completely. When Windows reloads, it loads everything back up exactly as it was (Chrome already open to the page I was on) and I get a message in the notification center saying:

Display Driver Failed to Start:
Display driver failed to start; using Microsoft basic display driver instead.
Check Windows Update for a newer display driver.

However, today when it happened again, the usual method of turning off my PC and restarting it hasn’t worked - the PC appears to start up and go to the log in screen (after waiting by for a while, I can still put it into sleep), but the screen won’t turn on AT ALL now, and I’ve tried multiple times.

Aside from today where the screen won’t turn on even after restarting, I've had this happen before and pretty much everytime, I check my Geforce Experience and sure enough, it says a new driver is out and I need to install it. Then everything is fine. But this time, I installed Geforce Game Ready Driver 431.36 and everything was working great...for a day...then it froze again and when I checked, Geforce Experience told me AGAIN that a new driver was out and I needed to install it (431.36). SO I installed it again. And I made sure it went through the whole process and restarted my PC like it said. I even went into Control Panel - Device Manager, and checked and it did say (431.36). But then, 2 days later, my display froze AGAIN, and I went back into Geforce Experience and AGAIN it says, "New driver available (431.36). " So the next time I checked Device Manager and sure enough, there was an exclamation mark on the Nvidia display adapter....it DOES show 431.36, but reads "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)" Then, once 431.60 came out, the exact same thing happened - worked for a few days then it froze and told me I needed to update as if it had never been installed before.

I ran Troubleshoot for hardware in the Windows settings and it did bring up the Nvidia card, and after running troubleshoot on it, it said that I needed to restart my PC to make changes and complete installation....but I've already done that multiple times...?

I also tried a selecting “clean installation” in the GeForce experience install process, and I also tried completely uninstalling the driver and reinstalling. All that led to was what happened today, where now even a restart won’t turn on the display.

First of all - how can I get into my PC to reinstall the driver to at least temporarily fix the problem?? Will changing from HDMI to VGA at least let me get that far? And once I do that, how can I get my PC to stop uninstalling (or corrupting, or not recognizing) the installed driver?? Any help greatly appreciated!

Running:
Windows 10 (up to date version)
Core i7
16GB
Dell XPS8500 mobo (Japanese model and all the initial components, like SSD/HDD hybrid and Dell monitor)
Nvidia GTX970 MSI
Corsair CX 600m

 

[alexoiu]

If video ports on board, try removing the graphics card and connecting the monitor to the board.

 

[hang-the-9]

Issue is likely a failing video card or power supply, nothing really to do with the driver. Test the card in another system, try another card in yours.

 

[Lv 88 Mog]

Issue is likely a failing video card or power supply, nothing really to do with the driver. Test the card in another system, try another card in yours.

Thanks for the reply! Well, the video card is only a couple years old and I HARDLY ever actually "use" it (I thought I would really be into gaming and stuff, but all I actually do is use the internet and watch movies every once in a while on Netflix or whatever).

But, I've been very suspicious about the power supply. I've had other problems - for example, occasionally when I try to wake my PC from sleep mode, the PC tries to start up but then shuts down and it tries by itself to start up multiple times before actually being successful. I think I've "fixed" the problem by making sure the 24-pin connector is connected properly because for some reason the latch on it doesn't seem to work with my MOBO so it doesn't actually latch and can wiggle a little loose over time... I "THINK" that works, but then again, the problem comes up again every other month or so....

On top of that, my Thermaltake touchscreen fan controller screen has gotten dimmer and dimmer over time. The last one I had did the exact same thing and after a year was barely readable anymore, so they sent me a new one which did the exact same thing.... I've asked here before and gotten mixed responses about whether or not a PSU could be causing the problem.

Finally, the Corsair CM600x that I've got is apparently not a great PSU (something I didn't find out until well after buying it), and even when I bought it at the time, I wasn't sure if it would actually have enough power to run my PC with the Nvidia card and such (I remember doing a little calculating and thinking that it seemed like it would barely be enough at the time, but went with it anyway because I was really short on cash....a problem which has persisted and kept me from just biting the bullet and upgrading since then).

So perhaps the power supply is the most likely culprit for my problems??? Any other opinions?