Question No Video on Normal Windows Boot

[jdupton]

I am experiencing some problems with booting Windows on my new PC built a couple of months ago.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 3.5 GHz 16-Core Processor
MB: Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Royal 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory
Storage:
C: Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (boot drive)
D: Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (data storage)
F: Western Digital Blue 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (online data backup and overflow)
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card
Power: Corsair HX Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum ATX Power Supply
Cooler: NZXT Kraken X52 Rev 2 73.11 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case

The problem shows up as no video to the monitor (HDMI to older 1920x1200 60 Hz) when booting Windows 10 Pro in normal mode. When Windows boots in Fast Boot (hybrid) mode, the monitor immediately shows the Login screen. If I shut down just using the start menu power shutdown, it will always boot again properly.

However, if I do a full shutdown using the start menu power shutdown with the Shift key held down or reboot windows after an update, the next boot of Windows will show no video (although the system is booted and running). If in this state, I wait for 60 seconds and momentarily press the PC power button, the video immediately springs to life showing the Windows Login screen. Further, if after booting in normal mode to a blank display, I can press the Windows hot key combination of WinKey+Ctrl+Shift+B and again the Windows login screen will appear without having to wait for 60 seconds and pressing the power button.

Does this ring any bells with anyone here?

BIOS, and all drivers are reported as being the latest available. There are no issues with the system running once I have the display going. The system sleeps when requested and always awakens immediately to the login screen. It boots perfectly in Fast Boot mode. It simply fails to show the display when booted in normal (slow boot) mode unless I use the magic key combination or wait 60 seconds and pulse the power button.

I feel this is likely a driver issue somewhere but have not found other reports of such behavior and the drivers are all reported as current by both Windows itself and the various manufacturer's driver checker utilities.

 

[James Mason]

If you have graphics or driver issues, one of the most common fixes is a clean uninstall and removal of your graphics drivers.

To uninstall your drivers, first download and run Display Driver Uninstaller, and follow it's recommendations of booting into safe mode and ect.
(This is a direct download link so you don't grab the wrong version)
http://www.guru3d.com/files-get/display-driver-uninstaller-download,20.html

You'll download a compressed file called "[Guru3D.com]-DDU.zip"
Right click and choose extract.
Go into the folder and run the DDU v##.##.exe
This will extract more files to this folder.
Run Display Driver Uninstaller.exe
Choose Yes when it asks you to boot into SafeMode.
After you've rebooted into safe mode.
When DDU comes up, if it hasn't selected your GPU manufacturer (Nvidia/AMD/Intel) then choose it from the drop down list
Press the Clean and Restart option
If a window comes up asking to disable the Windows automatic installation of display drivers click yes.

After (or before removing the old drivers, just put the new ones on the desktop or somewhere handy) rebooting back into Windows, manually download the latest drivers from Nvidia or AMD, don't use auto detect, choose you GPU model and OS from the drop down lists.
Nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
AMD: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
Intel: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html

 

[James Mason]

The fast boot may not fully unload your graphics drivers, hence why it works. The slowboot would fully reload your drivers, and it's possible some other driver is breaking the GPU driver after it's loaded. Hence why the keyboard combo (which restarts your graphics driver) works.

What you could do, is do a slowboot and then open event viewer and look at the System logs and see if there are any errors where your GPU driver crashes right after booting up.

 

[jdupton]

I have tried all of your suggestions. There is no change in the behavior. Here is what I did:

• I downloaded and installed a new version of the AMD X570 chipset drivers. (Not on your list but I noticed a new version available.)
• Restarted. (Dark screen as before. Windows HotKey combination restores display.)

• I downloaded the DDU utility and unpacked it but did not run it at this point.
• I downloaded the latest NVIDIA driver for my card. (There was new one about a week old. The one I was using was now a month old and had been installed using the "Clean Install" option.)

• I used msconfig.exe to configure Safe Mode Boots.
• I restarted into Safe Mode and used DDU to remove the NVIDIA Drivers. (This booted with the display active -- a clue.)
• Restarted Windows back to Safe Mode again. (Display again active.)
• Installed the new NVIDIA driver using the "Clean Install" option.
• Restarted to Safe Mode once again. (Display again active.)
• Configured Windows for normal booting using msconfig.exe.

* Restarted Windows for normal operation. It booted to the blank screen again. I used WinKey+Ctrl+Shift+B to get to the login screen.

I also went through the Windows Boot and Startup logs. Nothing jumped out at me. There were no errors flagged.

I did note that windows always booted successfully in Safe Mode. The login screen was always displayed. I think your guess about some other driver stomping on the Display Driver is on the right track.

I have previously done "Clean Boots" with all third party programs and services disabled. Those do not prevent the no-video condition for a normal boot. I still have to use the Windows HotKey combination to get a login screen. From the unchanged behavior of a clean boot, if there is a conflict with drivers, it must be something else (but not a third party program) loading that is messing up the display driver. Whatever it is, it is likely not being loaded during a Safe Mode boot. Based on that maybe I will start disabling devices one by one in the Device Manager to see if I can find one that changes the boot behavior.

Other than that trial and error process of looking for an offending device, what else might I try?

 

[jdupton]

There is still no joy... I tried a few more things and have not found a solution to the dark screen on a normal (slow) boot.

I tried disabling all services using msconfig.exe. I also disabled all start-up programs. (Windows automatically re-enables some critical services when you use the option to not use any.) When restarted, again I get the no video condition until I use the magic Windows HotKey combination.

Leaving all services turned off, I then started disabling devices in the device manager. I turned off all networking and Bluetooth related adapters, all audio devices, the Aura controller, and the BluRay writer. Restarting still resulted in a black display.

In doing all this and also pouring over the msinfo32 output, I did notice one unusual thing. The reports all show the video card as having only 1 GB of memory. The card physically has 6 GB of video RAM. I am using a on old spare 1920x1200 HDMI monitor so I am not sure that makes a difference. On my older system, I use a similar sized monitor with and HDMI connection and that system shows that 2 GB of video RAM is present which is correct for that older card. To confuse matters even more, however, dxdiag.exe does show the adapter as having 6 GB onboard.

I am beginning to wonder if there is a hardware problem with my video card. It is identifying itself correctly to the system but the mismatch in memory may be indicating that something is amiss. Any new thoughts on this piece of information?