Graphics Card Issue

[jwgmorley]

Hello,

My daughters gaming PC screen suddenly went black despite the PC itself still showing signs of power. After a while I changed the HDMI connection from the graphics card to the one on the motherboard and it was suddenly working again.

It looks like there was some form of driver update by MS however I'm no longer able to use the GC as a result. I contacted AMD whom told me to contact MS. MS took control of the PC and attempted to re-install the AMD drivers however this kept failing. They gave me instructions on how to rectify this by obtaining the drivers etc however I've been a complete numpty....

Whilst the R9 GC wasn't showing in device manager it would show if you clicked on show hidden devices. It was however greyed out. On trying to follow previous instructions I mistakenly read about uninstalling the driver and uninstalled the greyed out R9. Now everything I have tried I can't get the graphics card to showup.

Is there an easy way round this? I'd read some people mention that they removed the GC and put it into another slot on the motherboard however I didn't want to do this if it wasn't needed.

Thanks in advance.

 

[henson0115]

first try DDU to wipe the AMD driver out of the system, reboot and install the lastest driver. let us know how you get on. you can get DDU from here http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

 

[jwgmorley]

first try DDU to wipe the AMD driver out of the system, reboot and install the lastest driver. let us know how you get on. you can get DDU from here http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

Hello & thanks for the response.

I've done the above and when I attempt to install the AMD driver it states 'Error 173 - AMD Installer cannot continue since AMD Graphics Hardware was not found'.

 

[henson0115]

i have had this happen before, it was down to OS corruption, i had to reinstall windows on the machine to resolve the problem, if the card has not died a repair install might be worth a shot instead.
the hidden devices tend to be 'previous' device installations, i/e if you have an xbox controller into 1 usb port of 2, then you move it to the second. you will have 1 hidden device for the first plug in and an actual device for the second.
there are a couple of other things you can try;

1.make sure the cables on the card are all plugged in correctly
2.reseating the card as you have already mentioned
4. plug the card into another machine
3.check the bios and make sure the primary gpu is set to pcie
4. os repair install, you can do this by putting your os disk or usb stick in whilst loaded into windows and running the installer and selecting upgrade during the setup.
5. reinstall the os from scratch.

 

[jwgmorley]

i have had this happen before, it was down to OS corruption, i had to reinstall windows on the machine to resolve the problem, if the card has not died a repair install might be worth a shot instead.
the hidden devices tend to be 'previous' device installations, i/e if you have an xbox controller into 1 usb port of 2, then you move it to the second. you will have 1 hidden device for the first plug in and an actual device for the second.
there are a couple of other things you can try;

1.make sure the cables on the card are all plugged in correctly
2.reseating the card as you have already mentioned
4. plug the card into another machine
3.check the bios and make sure the primary gpu is set to pcie
4. os repair install, you can do this by putting your os disk or usb stick in whilst loaded into windows and running the installer and selecting upgrade during the setup.
5. reinstall the os from scratch.

Thanks henson0115. I'll work through these and let you know how I get on

 

[Angilion]

As a possible extra suggestion, running system file checker might be a fix without having to do a repair installation. You can find guides to using it online, but it boils down to opening a command prompt with admin privileges and entering sfc /scannow

It'll fix some things and create a very detailed log you can examine for more info if things still aren't right.

 

[jwgmorley]

As a possible extra suggestion, running system file checker might be a fix without having to do a repair installation. You can find guides to using it online, but it boils down to opening a command prompt with admin privileges and entering sfc /scannow

It'll fix some things and create a very detailed log you can examine for more info if things still aren't right.

Many thanks. Went through this however all came back fine.

 

[jwgmorley]

i have had this happen before, it was down to OS corruption, i had to reinstall windows on the machine to resolve the problem, if the card has not died a repair install might be worth a shot instead.
the hidden devices tend to be 'previous' device installations, i/e if you have an xbox controller into 1 usb port of 2, then you move it to the second. you will have 1 hidden device for the first plug in and an actual device for the second.
there are a couple of other things you can try;

1.make sure the cables on the card are all plugged in correctly
2.reseating the card as you have already mentioned
4. plug the card into another machine
3.check the bios and make sure the primary gpu is set to pcie
4. os repair install, you can do this by putting your os disk or usb stick in whilst loaded into windows and running the installer and selecting upgrade during the setup.
5. reinstall the os from scratch.

Tried everything with the exception of reinstalling the os. One thing I'm finding is that when changing the bios to pcie, after rebooting and it not having an impact. I restart, go back into bios and it's changed back to auto again. I've make sure that I get the save and exit message on changing however it still changes to auto. Not sure if this is because it's still not picking up a card in the slot or if it's because of something else.

 

[henson0115]

Tried everything with the exception of reinstalling the os. One thing I'm finding is that when changing the bios to pcie, after rebooting and it not having an impact. I restart, go back into bios and it's changed back to auto again. I've make sure that I get the save and exit message on changing however it still changes to auto. Not sure if this is because it's still not picking up a card in the slot or if it's because of something else.

does the card work ok in another machine? in regards to the bios behaviour sounds like its not detecting the card and potentially swapping back to auto because of this. might be worth if you can testing in another machine which should potentially eliminate the potential for a dead card.

 

[jwgmorley]

does the card work ok in another machine? in regards to the bios behaviour sounds like its not detecting the card and potentially swapping back to auto because of this. might be worth if you can testing in another machine which should potentially eliminate the potential for a dead card.

I remembered I still had my old (cheap) card in the attic. Changed it and it worked perfectly. I uninstalled the drivers, removed the card and plugged the R9 back in. Nothing happened

Hopefully it's not proof that the card is knackered however how would I find out for sure?

Thanks for your (and everyone else's) help with this.

Edit: I'm pretty sure the card has a manufacturer warranty of 3 years. It's 2 years old?

Yep - They'll repair if faulty.

 

[ICharger]

I'm having the same issue. All of a sudden both my screens went black. After doing some research, there is an extensive thread about AMD drivers and MS updates.

After reading through 40 pages, updating bios, rolling back drivers, Ddu, installing older drivers and finally backdating from win10 to win 7 the problem still exists.
As soon as I download the driver and it installs, both screens go black and stay black.
Never ever will I by AMD again.
I've spent over 30 hours trying to resolve my gaming PC and now it looks like I need a new card.
Hope you mange to find the issue with yours.

 

[jwgmorley]

I'm having the same issue. All of a sudden both my screens went black. After doing some research, there is an extensive thread about AMD drivers and MS updates.

After reading through 40 pages, updating bios, rolling back drivers, Ddu, installing older drivers and finally backdating from win10 to win 7 the problem still exists.
As soon as I download the driver and it installs, both screens go black and stay black.
Never ever will I by AMD again.
I've spent over 30 hours trying to resolve my gaming PC and now it looks like I need a new card.
Hope you mange to find the issue with yours.

Luckily mines is covered by manufacturers warranty. It might have been just coincidence that the issue occurred just after MS updated some display drivers. Either way it's being sent back to the reseller whom is going to test and repair if needed.

 

[henson0115]

I remembered I still had my old (cheap) card in the attic. Changed it and it worked perfectly. I uninstalled the drivers, removed the card and plugged the R9 back in. Nothing happened

Hopefully it's not proof that the card is knackered however how would I find out for sure?

Thanks for your (and everyone else's) help with this.

Edit: I'm pretty sure the card has a manufacturer warranty of 3 years. It's 2 years old?

Yep - They'll repair if faulty.

glad to hear you figured it out.

 

[henson0115]

I'm having the same issue. All of a sudden both my screens went black. After doing some research, there is an extensive thread about AMD drivers and MS updates.

After reading through 40 pages, updating bios, rolling back drivers, Ddu, installing older drivers and finally backdating from win10 to win 7 the problem still exists.
As soon as I download the driver and it installs, both screens go black and stay black.
Never ever will I by AMD again.
I've spent over 30 hours trying to resolve my gaming PC and now it looks like I need a new card.
Hope you mange to find the issue with yours.

you could try and teamviewer/rdp in at the time the screen goes black if you have another machine and rebooting in windows to see what happens; alternatively you can if you have an igpu/example i5 with onbaord vga/hdmi etc plug a monitor into that and enable the option in the bios. you should then get display on that screen to reboot and see what happens.

 

[ICharger]

you could try and teamviewer/rdp in at the time the screen goes black if you have another machine and rebooting in windows to see what happens; alternatively you can if you have an igpu/example i5 with onbaord vga/hdmi etc plug a monitor into that and enable the option in the bios. you should then get display on that screen to reboot and see what happens.

I was able to select igd in the bios to get every thing working again, but I am awaiting delivery of a gtx 1060 FE.
So for the time being I can't.play any games not even csgo as my mobo msi z170a gaming m5 doesn't support it.