PC Booting to black screen with coloured lines

[morron]

Hi there,

Recently my pc has been booting to a black screen with some coloured dots and lines at the top of the screen. For a long while, the black screen and dots would appear immedietly after post and then boot into windows immedietly after. The last few days the dots and lines have persisted and I have had to reboot the pc many times in order to get into windows.

The dots and lines are exactly as in this image here https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv626%2Fjediman%2FMobile%2520Uploads%2F20150122_163324_zpsemsqxlnf.jpg&hash=d94f0109afeefb4833c704336106d976

Is this likely to be a hard drive issue? Some places are suggesting GPU. The PC runs perfectly fine when I actually do get into windows.


Specs are:

Intel 2500k
AMD 6970
OCZ Solid 3 120gb
8gb Corsair vengeance DDR3
MSI z77a g43

SSD and GPU are both aging now so they are my prime suspects.

Any help would be greatly apreciated!

 

[hiyabusared]

If you have on board graphics have you tried removing the 6970 and using the on board graphics to boot windows and see if the lines and dots go away? From what it sounds like the gpu is failing but I could be wrong. Also whens the last time you did a clean install of your gpu drivers or even updated them?

 

[morron]

Having removed all drivers for the 6970, upon a reboot the system no longer recognises the card. My display adapter is 'standard vga adapter' and I cant get full resolution etc. The monitor is still connected to the graphics card etc not the on board graphics. Have tried installing drivers from AMD but states drivers up to date for 'standard vga adapter'. While its running from onboard graphics, the boot error seems to have gone also - while there are still dots after post, it will go straight into windows after.

 

[helpstar]

check monitor cable and monitor on another system or check with another cable

How is it connected to the monitor? vga, dvi, hdmi cable?

download drivers for your HD6000 series card from amd.com

Which power supply is it exactly? brand and model please

 

[morron]

Hi Helpstar.

No system to check cables with but I assume they are okay. Monitor is VGA only so goes DVI (anologue port) to VGA to monitor. PSU is a corsair tx 650. The only driver package available is a catalyst control centre package inc display driver which I have

Have removed graphics card and connected vga to onboard graphics. Boots flawlessly, not dots or artifacts after post. Will reinstall graphics card and test.

 

[helpstar]

if dots were visible before with the onboard graphics and now they are gone, it´s the cable or adapter

delete all amd drivers wit "ddu uninstaller" and install the amd drivers again
if "standard vga" driver is shown, the amd drivers did not install correctly

 

[morron]

Hi there, when the VGA is actually connected to the mobo there are no dots and it boots fine. The dots persisted when the system recognised the graphics card as 'standard vga adapter' and the monitor was connected to the graphics card.

Have since reinstalled the graphics card and connected the monitor, I get no signal to the monitor this way. If i switch the VGA to the motherboard I do get a signal.

Will try DDU now.

 

[helpstar]

when you enter the BIOS of the motherboard while the graphics card is used, are there dots too?

you can try ubuntu live on an usb drive to be sure it´s not driver related

 

[morron]

Have used DDU to uninstall all drivers, shut down the computer, reinstalled graphics card, booted system - No signal to monitor at all via graphics card, onboard VGA slot does give signal to monitor and pc boots perfectly.

Cant install AMD drivers as system doesnt recognise the graphics card, not visible in device manager etc.

No dots when you enter bios when graphics card was working, motherboard welcome screen would show then windows tried to boot and the dots were visible then. Like I said, graphics card is no longer recognised by system or giving signal to monitor when used. Only onboard VGA slot is working.

 

[helpstar]

looks like your graphics card died.

Try it in another system or get another card to test

power supply could be faulty as well and doesn´t provide enough power to the 6970 anymore

 

[morron]

Thanks for your help. Is it unlikely to be the powersupply if I was running games perfectly fine on my last healthy boot?

 

[hiyabusared]

Wait have you made sure in bios to switch over to the pci-e slot/gpu. It normally will stick to the dedicated graphics unless you tell it other wise. The likely hood of the gpu dying is possible. another thing is if you have a laptop you could try out that cable and monitor to see if it's cable or adapter related.

 

[Vickie777]

Had the same problem lately. This is how i solved it;
Install Rufus booting software to update the PCs windows
On Rufus, make sure you choose between GPT and MBR according to the type of the hard drive