PC Blackscreening When Display Drivers Are Installed

[DonnyD]

Ok so it all started when I was doing my everyday stuff, playing my game. Suddenly the screen started spazzing out with sort of glitching and the sort. After about a minute of this I get the bluescreen "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" for which I have the minidump of: http://pastebin.com/CEF5rmu2

So after it rebooted, the usual windows icon with the loading circle happened, but after that it just went black, and stayed black (went black, but for a second the monitor looks as if it looses the light but then returns to the lit black).

After tinkering with it for hours in Safe Mode, which worked fine, I finally found that everytime the display driver for my GPU was installed or running I would get a blackscreen. I installed a program (DDU) to completely removed all the GPU drivers off, reinstalled latest versions (and older) and never worked. I have tried all the Advanced Boot options like system restore etc. but never works.

I have had this PC/GPU for about 2 years now and had no previous problems (except having to replace PSU a few months back).

Is my GPU broken? Is it a bad windows update? (I also don't recall updating anything that day) (28th April 2016). Help me out guys, please. I'm currently running on the standard windows display driver.

 

[Dustybin]

-What is your spec (mainly motherboard, PSU, CPU and GPU)?
-Are you able to run off the integrated graphics (if your CPU has them i.e. not an AMD FX etc)
-Have you checked that the GPU fans are clear and do actually spin? (some models this isn't applicable as they may not turn when not under load)

Glitching or visual artefacts are often a symptom of a GPU that is over heating so it might just be your card has broken. If you can try it in another machine that would be a worthwhile test as it would eliminate other factors with your system from the equation. You might want to try a clean install of windows but I would only consider that if you see the card works on someone else's PC.

 

[DonnyD]

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
AMD FX-8350 32 °C
Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
32.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. 990FXA-UD3 R5 (CPU 1) 37 °C
Graphics
AMD ASUS Radeon HD 7870
Storage
1863GB Western Digital WDC WD20 EZRX-00DC0B0 SATA Disk Device (SATA) 32 °C
111GB Samsung SSD 840 Series SATA Disk Device (SSD) 32 °C
Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio
PSU
750w Corsair

I don't have integrated graphics. I have watched inside of PC as it black screens and noticed no difference.

I will update though, I am starting to notice that my PC is now rarely blackscreening when I go away for 10mins or so while I use the windows drivers??

 

[Dustybin]

Running in windows would be putting the card under virtually no load, really what would have been interesting is the GPU temp when you were gaming and running the card under heavy load. DDU should in theory clear everything associated with the GPU out, you need all the drivers removed, any references in device manager gone and anything in programs uninstalled (probably good to check there is either no AMD folder or it is totally empty).

Sometimes Device manager will list other references in safe mode so it might be worth booting to that when you check the device manager, at that point I would either test the card on another machine or clean install windows (whichever would be the least hassle for you).