HELP PLEASE! Nightmare problem

[Neoni]

Right guys everythings been working fine and dandy on my machine for years, its a good machine not the latest spec but it certainly manages with most my graphic work, and gaming etc, right here goes!

I boot up a game last night and change the graphics settings, seems okay working alright, i interact with an object on said game, and i get a weird graphical artefact but almost like a bug in the game? the pc then goes to black, no signal detected and then crashes!

So i reboot the machine, everytime i reboot it gets to windows just before login, no signal detected!

So i reboot in safe mode, that works can see everything fine, so i decide to uninstall all my Nvidia drivers, so i do it using DDU to remove everything, now i reboot in normal mode, im in again but no gpu drivers are installed so it doesnt look the best!

So i download geforce experience, and try to install it gets part way does the disconnect hardware sound, and then screen goes black, pc crashes and i reboot, everytime i reboot from here on in it gives me no signal detected on screen like before,

So im back into safe mode to remove drivers, ive changed the gpu slot, ive reseated it, ive cleared the cmos, ive tried even another boot drive, but im sat here now running of the graphics card, but just without any drivers installed!

Im losing my mind, i think ultimately i may need to reinstall windows?

Any ideas are greatly and deeply appreciated!

Help!

 

[Neoni]

Graphics card is a Geforce 680, CPU i5-4670k, 16gb ram, and MOBO is a ROG Maximus Gene Matx

@ChocoViennese How would i know where to find that?

@harry5522 No overclocks on it at all! Ive not tried a BIOS update yet, would the GPU work now (im plugged into it as i type this?) even if it was dying?

Cheers Alex

 

[Neoni]

PSU more than likely.

Got a 650watt EVGA psu in not even a year old

 

[Neoni]

There is an option mentioned here https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...w-to-disable-integrated-graphics-through-bios, its been a while since I had to do it but I had similar issues with a radeon card and an i5-2600k years ago, worth a go just to rule it out as its quite a simple test.

Spoke to Overclockers and described it all, also spoke to another tech expert they all think the GPU is basically dead, it works without drivers, but as soon as i try to install it unlock the features on it, it dies

 

[Neoni]

Hey I was just thinking about this and a video I saw a few months back

Whilst the issue isn’t identical, it does hold some similarities. Basically the system fails to boot with drivers but is fine without them. He fixes the issue in this video with a rom update. As he says himself this is bit of an invasive repair method and if it goes wrong then the card will be bricked, but if it’s already goosed and out of warranty what do you have to loose from trying?

I've just bought a 1060 so ill let you know what happens, we'll soon find out if its a card issue

 

[Neoni]

I'd rather have a 980ti than a 1060

would you?

Awesome, what 1060 did you pick up? nice solid upgrade over the 680

Its a EVGA Superclocked 6GB 1060, good reviews so went with that And i think id prefer a 10 series tbh

 

[Neoni]

Recent 980Ti that died on me did the same thing, soon as drivers loaded up the system went nuts and crashed, safe mode and no drivers everything was as fine as it can be. Nice little upgrade going from a 680 to 1060, you were about due an upgrade anyhow

Did you find a new card worked?

 

[Neoni]

Yes, fortunately I was running sli so it was easy enough just to switch cards around and try individual ones in certain slots/power connectors to make sure. But exactly the same issues you had...

Graphical glitches
Black/hung screen
Wouldn't boot
Remove drivers all posts fine
Install drivers everything gos back to a crashy mess

In my case the RMA went through fine and got a 1070 in return

People were saying it could have been the pci-e slots but I doubt it with both especially using a second boot drive too!

 

[Neoni]

You'll know soon enough once your 1060 arrives.

Though I've little experience in a pcie slot going bad.

I certainly don't think it's a driver/windows issue, yes you get odd behavior from a bad driver install, but not to the extent having any driver installed hangs the system.

My money's on the card giving up.

ive installed it and its full screen alrwady the 680 was giving me a weird window mode, so lets see after or if i can install drivers but system seems to be running better already without drivers installed!

 

[Neoni]

I'd remove the gpu and boot in for some tests using the cpu's onboard graphics, That way you can rule out it being anything other than the gpu if it's all working okay.

What OS is it & has there been any recent updates due to Spectre issues?

EDIT: I'm too slow as usual, If it's not fixed now check if you've had any Spectre/Meltdown related OS updates & if so check for m/b bio's updates as you may need both for the PC to work properly.

New card installed, and didnt crash, lock up the computer, and everythings working as it should be again! still not convinced that other card is 100% dead so gonna build another machine for some graphic work, see if that can be saved

 

[Neoni]

You'll know soon enough once your 1060 arrives.

Though I've little experience in a pcie slot going bad.

I certainly don't think it's a driver/windows issue, yes you get odd behavior from a bad driver install, but not to the extent having any driver installed hangs the system.

My money's on the card giving up.

We have lift off!

 

[Neoni]

Hi all, just a note that this is CLASSIC dead GPU syndrome. Without drivers the CPU is rendering the image and the GPU just outputs it to the display and does not really do any processing. As soon as you load the drivers the interface will load the GPU core and if it's failed it will crash.

Just something to look out for in the future if someone has the same issue.

Thanks mate! Been really stressing me out, i couldnt work out what was going on, is there a certain reason it died, or just because of how old it was getting and how much use it had? It crashed out during a game, id been gaming, had a break for an hour downloaded a new game booted it up, altered the settings, went back into the game and artefact, dead.

 

[Neoni]

You could try something I had to do when new nvidia drivers borked my setup and I got exactly the same issue. I figured Windows may actually still be running as normal, just no display output. So I installed tightvnc and remotely connected to my PC from my phone, played around with driver settings for resolution, refresh rate and colour profiles (RGB/YCbCr444) and got it working.

it was definitely crashing out, my keyboard profile lockedup, rgb colors froze etc, and sound crashed, completely killed it everytime i tried to install