Black screen, No signal...

AlexBW

New Member
Messages
11
Ever since I installed windows 8 I've been going through a lot of frustrations. First installation went corrupt in someway because of hybrid standby. I put the pc in standby and an hour later when I resumed, games started crashing. I couldn't even produce a dump file for debugging the problem !

Second installation went smooth, used it for a couple of days, installed windows media package, pc restarted a couple of times. The third time it booted I saw win8 logo and then there was black screen. Tried unplugging hdmi cable, tried restarting, nothing helped. Soon after the win8 boot logo there would be black screen and the system didn't even respond to the keyboard. I wanted to restart the pc with the keyboard with Alt+F4 combination or with shutdown command, nope it didn't seem to respond to keyboard.

Tried booting with the installation CD and use system restore, apparently there were no restore points ! Frequent powering down might have corrupted it somehow, making it invalidate the restore points ?

Reinstalled win8 for the third time in the last 6 days, I stalled my drivers and apps and rebooted, duh ! Same thing ! Win8 boot logo followed by black screen with no signal from the video out ! PC didn't respond to the keyboard, had to power off ! Tried rebooting but to no avail !

Can anyone help me with this problem please ? I've no idea what I should do now. I can't use the tool available on this website to extract the logs as I can't possibly see anything and the system doesn't respond to the keyboard. There is no safe mode booting ? Is there a way I can boot without loading the drivers ?

I'm using latest beta version of nvidia drivers 310.33.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
    Motherboard
    EVGA nVidia 790i SLI Ultra
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GTX 280 - 2 way SLI
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
I've had the black screen problem in virtual machines. On earlier versions of virtualbox, it happened any time the guest additions were installed (improper driver support for Windows 8's WDDM standards, I guess). It also happened when I attempted to replace the RTM evaluation's 'aero' theme with the theme files from consumer preview (the same way you would do it with the release preview's files, which DO work).

Basically, if it fails to load DWM for any reason... bad theme files, improper drivers, corrupt data in the theme/dwm system... it will black screen.

My laptop has an nvidia GPU in it, 360m, and I use the 306.97 windows 8 driver and it functions with no problems or lag whatsoever. Have you considered not using beta drivers?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit, Ubuntu 13.04 64-Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom Built
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 950 @ 3ghz
    Motherboard
    Asus Sabertooth X58
    Memory
    Crucial 6GB DDR3 1066mhz Triple Channel
    Graphics Card(s)
    1GB EVGA GTX 460 SE (Nvidia)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual LG Monitors
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080, 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    80GB Intel 320 Series SSD
    640GB WD Caviar Blue
    320GB WD MyBook (converted to Internal SATA)
    1TB Seagate Barracuda
    PSU
    Corsair 650TX 650w
    Case
    CoolerMaster HAF 922
    Keyboard
    Logitech G110
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    20mbps Down, 2mbps Up
Thanks for the reply. I actually started off with the signed stable driver and that is what I used in my first installation. Not sure installing those drivers would help me. Without being able to boot into the system I don't k ow how I can install the stable drivers. There don't seem to an option to boot into safe mode either ! Is reinstall is the only way out for me ?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
    Motherboard
    EVGA nVidia 790i SLI Ultra
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GTX 280 - 2 way SLI
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
Thanks for the reply. I actually started off with the signed stable driver and that is what I used in my first installation. Not sure installing those drivers would help me. Without being able to boot into the system I don't k ow how I can install the stable drivers. There don't seem to an option to boot into safe mode either ! Is reinstall is the only way out for me ?

There's supposed to be a way to trigger the boot options, but they may require getting into the OS. You could try cutting the power mid-boot (during windows logo) a couple times, it might trigger the repair center thing on next boot. Windows 8 does this if it fails to detect successful boots into the lock screen.

Thing is with the black screen problem... the system itself is running fine. You could probably blindly type your password and interact with it-- you just can't see anything. The system won't realize on its own that something's wrong in this case. That's why you may have to sabotage the boot yourself (power button, pull the plug, whatever) to trigger some recovery boot options while it is still booting.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit, Ubuntu 13.04 64-Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom Built
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 950 @ 3ghz
    Motherboard
    Asus Sabertooth X58
    Memory
    Crucial 6GB DDR3 1066mhz Triple Channel
    Graphics Card(s)
    1GB EVGA GTX 460 SE (Nvidia)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual LG Monitors
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080, 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    80GB Intel 320 Series SSD
    640GB WD Caviar Blue
    320GB WD MyBook (converted to Internal SATA)
    1TB Seagate Barracuda
    PSU
    Corsair 650TX 650w
    Case
    CoolerMaster HAF 922
    Keyboard
    Logitech G110
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    20mbps Down, 2mbps Up
It doesn't respond to the keyboard so, there is no way I can interact with the system when encountered with black screen!

I reinstalled win8 and all my programs, it worked fine until I launched a game, it crashed in 5 minutes with corrupt display. I had to hit the reset button. I am trying to narrow it down to one of the programs or drivers that might be the culprit.

In the meanwhile I'd appreciate if some one could shed some light on this problem.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
    Motherboard
    EVGA nVidia 790i SLI Ultra
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GTX 280 - 2 way SLI
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
Are there any flashing lights indicating that the keyboard doesn't respond at all?
Like, no lights turining on and off when you press num/caps lock?

Furthermore, does your pc work fine in Safe-Mode?
This could narrow it down to a software or hardware specific problem.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Android, BSD, iOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows
Ah ! Unfortunately I couldn't tell about the LEDs on the keyboard as my keyboard doesn't have any as it is a wireless keyboard and I guess that's so as to consume less battery power !

But I can see that the LED on the tower lits up frequently indicating HDD activity suggesting normal system activity except the display and the keyboard/mouse.

As far as the safe mode is concerned such thing doesn't exist in win8 !

I decided to move back to win7 and that's what I did. Now I've got a stable system with no crashes. Must say, win7 is 2-4 times faster that win8 when installing the programs at least. I'm yet to perform any benchmark tests on both.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
    Motherboard
    EVGA nVidia 790i SLI Ultra
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GTX 280 - 2 way SLI
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
Ah I see. Yeah, that's unfortunate. There is a safe mode, however, but here's the catch: you have to first tell windows to give you the boot recovery options from within windows. >.> It would not have killed MS to keep the F8 key thingie.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit, Ubuntu 13.04 64-Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom Built
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 950 @ 3ghz
    Motherboard
    Asus Sabertooth X58
    Memory
    Crucial 6GB DDR3 1066mhz Triple Channel
    Graphics Card(s)
    1GB EVGA GTX 460 SE (Nvidia)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual LG Monitors
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080, 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    80GB Intel 320 Series SSD
    640GB WD Caviar Blue
    320GB WD MyBook (converted to Internal SATA)
    1TB Seagate Barracuda
    PSU
    Corsair 650TX 650w
    Case
    CoolerMaster HAF 922
    Keyboard
    Logitech G110
    Mouse
    Logitech G500
    Internet Speed
    20mbps Down, 2mbps Up
I just read somewhere that Shift+F8 brings up the recovery options menu. But on faster machines it may not be possible to interrupt as win8 waits for the key press for a very short time. Another website advised that you hold the shift key pressed and keep hitting F8 !

You can enter this recovery options menu by booting from installation media and selecting Repair.

Anyways, I think I will have to defer win8 installation for a couple of weeks as I really don't have the time.

I still don't understand why installing programs in win7 took 1/3rd to 1/4th time it took on win8 !?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro
    Motherboard
    EVGA nVidia 790i SLI Ultra
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVidia GTX 280 - 2 way SLI
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
Ah ! Unfortunately I couldn't tell about the LEDs on the keyboard as my keyboard doesn't have any as it is a wireless keyboard and I guess that's so as to consume less battery power !

But I can see that the LED on the tower lits up frequently indicating HDD activity suggesting normal system activity except the display and the keyboard/mouse.

As far as the safe mode is concerned such thing doesn't exist in win8 !

I decided to move back to win7 and that's what I did. Now I've got a stable system with no crashes. Must say, win7 is 2-4 times faster that win8 when installing the programs at least. I'm yet to perform any benchmark tests on both.

So.. basically you're saying you don't know much..
How To Boot to Safe Mode in Windows 8 | Windows7hacker
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Android, BSD, iOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows
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