Windows 7 black screen after startup animation

So recently i've had a serious crash in which the computer completely stopped responding. I had the only choice of powering it off (tried everything before)

Once rebooted and passing the "starting windows" stage i was greeted with a black screen and no cursor. No response to ctr alt del, no sound the screen would turn off and the fans would keep going.

So i turned it off again and booted it in safe mode, it worked. I quickly backed up all my stuff and did a fresh windows installation. That worked too, until i installed the latest wql from nvidia and then the problem came back.

I then booted it into safe mode again, uninstalled the drivers and tried older drivers and it worked but as soon as i enabled sli the screen went black and then turned off.

NOTE: everytime i uninstalled drivers i did it with driversweeper and ccleaner too.
i have a bootlog, i tried the sfc scannow commands for file integrity, found nothing
i've read about these black screen errors and it seems that they are either caused by failed hardware, bios settings, power options or general driver issues.

The only stable condition ive found is with the factory 162 drivers and 1 card disabled. Updating that working graphics card's driver via the 'upgrade driver' option in Device Manager resulted in a black screen and then restarted my laptop. My deepest concern right now is whether i have software or hardware issues but i dont know how to check my cards integrity or motherboard/memory.

 

I've kept trying different things, no luck

here is my ntbtlog

View attachment ntbtlog.txt

 

the issue isnt fixed, but the computer works fine with just the one card now.

how do i check the other one to find out if it's bricked?

 

just opened the laptop, and removed the gfx cards heatsinks..no apparent damage

 

as your running 9800 cards it most prob is a dead card as there are lots of us who have suffered with them over the past couple of years. i think the only way you can test the supposed dead card is replace it with the card A thats working which is a pain.
if you do decide to change the cards over just to check if its totally dead you should still be able to boot but will have a screen like attached.

 

Really? ah, that sucks. I mean it just happened like that, out of the blue. it wasn't dusty and it wasn't hot.

I opened it up and (cosmetically) seems fine.. weird.
I'll switch them round and see what happens.

I thought replacements would have been cheaper nowadays, but i had a look in ebay and they're pretty damn expensive!

 

It is entirely possible that what Mr.DJ suggested is what happened. If you exhaust all of your other possibilities, you can try baking the card to see if that may bring it back to life at least temporarily.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...r-your-dead-graphics-card-your-alienware.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/385857-baking-gpus-oven.html

As for buying MXM cards, they're always expensive on their own. You go from available but expensive current tech to discontinued but expensive older and harder to find tech (which stays high because people want replacements).

 

Alright thats my last resort then! Busy with coursework at the mo so the computer will stay as it is for now. Will check it out as soon as i can.
Thanks!

 

No way.. no way its working

I can't believe it. Thank you so much guys!! Its working!!!

 

congrats. glad youve finally got to the bottom of it.
now how the hell did i forget to tell you about the baking method DOH!
sadly this is only a temporary fix that could last weeks or months but hopefully years.
all it does is melts the soulder on the cards which have cracked and reconnects them.

ill never forget the poor sod that came on here panicking after he baked his card in the microwave and couldnt understand why it blew his kitchen up

 

well it seems my happyness was short lived!

The reason i did the bake was to play max payne 3 properly, i knew it would be a severe test of the card right after i baked it, happy to report it works perfectly, everything on very high or high. no problems at all.

HOWEVER.

i now get periodic PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA bsod. No *.sys or *.dll is mentioned in the stop. i'm not in front of the rig right now, i'll post the dmp file if it can help. I don't think its related, unless i messed up something while i was installing, removing the cards, but i dont think so.

The funny thing is, i played MP3 for 2 hours straight yesterday without a single bsod. but if i leave the computer on idle, it bsods every 10, to 15 minutes. Thats why i suspect its an unrelated process problem. something is trying to access a piece of memory that doesn't exist... by accident... if that makes any sense..

 

So.. more bad news I think. I've disabled SLI and the bluescreen still appears. I've re-loaded the drivers, tried anything but a clean software install and switched to determining if it's a hardware problem.. and I think i've got somewhere.

I dont know if baking the card can have serious side effects or not, but while i was using the windows memory integrity checker, the computer just turned off. total power cut.

Switched to using Memtest86+, same result. This time i'm sure it's not software related, because memtest was running from a bootable usb key.

So what can I determine? baking the card somehow fried my RAM? is it that or am i having more serious motherboard issues? How do I check if the mobo is still good?

But what puzzles me even more is, why does this happen only when the computer idles?

 

Ah. Solved.

Solved BSOD - Page Fault In Nonpaged Area - Windows 7 Forums

The cause is Max Payne 3, and missing Windows Service Pack 1. Unbelievable. Un-F****ing-Believable. I can't believe Rockstar releases a game that can do this much damage to your PC. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action lawsuit yet.

EDIT: WORST YET. The BSOD appears when i try to uninstall the game, in safe mode. Can you believe it?! i have to re-format the thing, just to get rid of this junk! I'm so angry!

Full diagnosis of the baked card will happen after i format tonight. Fingers crossed i've got to the bottom of this.