Specs first: GTX660, I5-3750k, M4 128gb SSD with Windows on it, 250gb HDD currently disconnected for trouble shooting, Gigabyte z77-d3h motherboard, 16gig corsair vengeance ram, Corsair CX600m PSU
This morning while playing a game, America's Army: Proving Grounds, and I encountered a BSOD, sadly I did not pay much attention to it due to a very loud sound blaring out of my speakers, after a few seconds of that I hard restarted. I do remember the BSOD looking weird, kinda like it was having a graphics glitch. Afterwards I could not get to the login screen. Windows would start to boot normally and then it just goes to a black screen after the Windows logo, yet the monitor never went into sleep mode / lost signal. I have tried everything I can think of to fix it and spent a few hours on Google, sadly none of the fixes I found worked for me.
After the issue popped up the first thing I did was run Ubuntu from a DVD to check if it was a graphics card failure, but everything seemed fine while messing around in that. I also ran the memory test that comes with Ubuntu and it did not return any errors. I then tried to boot into safe mode, but it would not work, all I could get into was BIOS/motherboard menus and a windows menu asking me to boot normally or attempt to repair. The attempt to repair didn't work. I have tried 2 different HDMI cables, both HDMI ports on monitor, as well as a VGA cable using a DVI adapter and an older, smaller, monitor. After that I decided to yank out my 2nd HDD and do a fresh install on my SSD.
Once Windows was done installing everything seemed to work at least until I installed the latest Nvidia drivers. The problem has returned and now I am stumped. It would seem to be a hardware issue if it's persisting through a clean install, but I am stumped as to what it could be since everything appears to work fine just after install. Every time I install the drivers the issue reappears, but once I system restore to a point just before the driver installation the computer seems to work as well as a computer without graphics drivers can work.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as this has had my stumped all day. However, I will continue to comb through google results and if I find a fix I will update.
UPDATE: This morning when I tried to power up the PC just to see if it somehow magically fixed itself it wouldn't even power on, I changed nothing hardware related after making this post last night so I'm stumped. My gut says PSU issue, but I'm not sure a PSU problem could cause all the problems I experienced before it refused to power on entirely. Any help is greatly appreciated. Later today I can swap to another CX600M that I know is working to see if that's the issue. I might also be able to grab another graphics card to swap in and test with.
UPDATE #2: Swapped PSUs and all of the modular wiring and ran into the same issue, also working with original PSU now so it might have been a loose wire causing that issue. After testing more I'm now leaning towards a graphics card failure being the cause. It still boots into Windows with no graphics drivers, Windows safemode, and Linux off CD fine. The only failure is when I install graphics drivers. This leads me to believe that the card as failed since it works in low resolutions and not filling the entire screen like it should. Any help getting this problem figured out is appreciated.
Final edit: It was a bad graphics card. Swapped a new gtx660 in and comp is back to normal. Really wishing I didn't wipe my SSD right about now though, didn't have any of the game files backed up, lesson learned.
This morning while playing a game, America's Army: Proving Grounds, and I encountered a BSOD, sadly I did not pay much attention to it due to a very loud sound blaring out of my speakers, after a few seconds of that I hard restarted. I do remember the BSOD looking weird, kinda like it was having a graphics glitch. Afterwards I could not get to the login screen. Windows would start to boot normally and then it just goes to a black screen after the Windows logo, yet the monitor never went into sleep mode / lost signal. I have tried everything I can think of to fix it and spent a few hours on Google, sadly none of the fixes I found worked for me.
After the issue popped up the first thing I did was run Ubuntu from a DVD to check if it was a graphics card failure, but everything seemed fine while messing around in that. I also ran the memory test that comes with Ubuntu and it did not return any errors. I then tried to boot into safe mode, but it would not work, all I could get into was BIOS/motherboard menus and a windows menu asking me to boot normally or attempt to repair. The attempt to repair didn't work. I have tried 2 different HDMI cables, both HDMI ports on monitor, as well as a VGA cable using a DVI adapter and an older, smaller, monitor. After that I decided to yank out my 2nd HDD and do a fresh install on my SSD.
Once Windows was done installing everything seemed to work at least until I installed the latest Nvidia drivers. The problem has returned and now I am stumped. It would seem to be a hardware issue if it's persisting through a clean install, but I am stumped as to what it could be since everything appears to work fine just after install. Every time I install the drivers the issue reappears, but once I system restore to a point just before the driver installation the computer seems to work as well as a computer without graphics drivers can work.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as this has had my stumped all day. However, I will continue to comb through google results and if I find a fix I will update.
UPDATE: This morning when I tried to power up the PC just to see if it somehow magically fixed itself it wouldn't even power on, I changed nothing hardware related after making this post last night so I'm stumped. My gut says PSU issue, but I'm not sure a PSU problem could cause all the problems I experienced before it refused to power on entirely. Any help is greatly appreciated. Later today I can swap to another CX600M that I know is working to see if that's the issue. I might also be able to grab another graphics card to swap in and test with.
UPDATE #2: Swapped PSUs and all of the modular wiring and ran into the same issue, also working with original PSU now so it might have been a loose wire causing that issue. After testing more I'm now leaning towards a graphics card failure being the cause. It still boots into Windows with no graphics drivers, Windows safemode, and Linux off CD fine. The only failure is when I install graphics drivers. This leads me to believe that the card as failed since it works in low resolutions and not filling the entire screen like it should. Any help getting this problem figured out is appreciated.
Final edit: It was a bad graphics card. Swapped a new gtx660 in and comp is back to normal. Really wishing I didn't wipe my SSD right about now though, didn't have any of the game files backed up, lesson learned.
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