Black screen on main display, Windows 8...hardware or software?

Yikes...this is my second full day using my new M17x-R4 that I've done a clean install of Windows 8 on. I'm running Nvidia's newest drivers on a GTX 680.

I locked it, came back, and to my surprise the external monitor I use as my main display was just...black. It was still getting a signal, but just displaying black, while the built in monitor worked fine. Toggling monitor settings didn't seem to help (I could get to them by remembering the keyboard command to switch a program from one monitor to another lol)

Sooooo I'm nervous. I've NEEEEEVER seen a computer do this, but also this is my first Windows 8 system, and maybe 8 is even more broken than it seemed...

Do you guys think this is hardware, or software?

EDIT: I should mention that right now I'm using the Geforce GTX 680 ONLY, not going through the Intel video, so that shouldn't be causing an issue.

 

The Intel chip handles external display output. Does this reoccur when you restart the system? It's probably a Windows 8 hiccup.

Also, NVidia just released a new driver a few days ago. You might give those a try.

 

Thanks, yeah I'm running the newest Nvidia driver. In my case the GTX 680 is handling the HDMI port as I have Optimus disabled.

 

Have you tried a reboot and see if it works again? IIRC there have been issues with win8 like this, but don't remember exactly what they were.

 

Yeah, if I reboot it works again, or if I manually disable the external monitor through software, then reenable.

If this is a known Windows 8 issue that would be great...I'd love if it was so nothing was wrong with my PC, but...

 

It appears it is an issue between win8 and NVidia drivers. Google "windows 8 and NVidia GTX 680 issues" and you will find out more. Some people having these and other issues didn't have them on win 7, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware problem.

 

Darn, I'm maybe doing a bad job googling this. Not seeing anything exactly like my issues. I hope it is just software though! Soooo don't want to have to return this.

 

Did you go to Dell for your drivers? For some manufacturers you need to use their drivers instead. Check out Dell's download area and try the video drivers from them?

 

Nope, the M17x can use Nvidia's drivers fine, which is the one of the reasons to buy the system. Only Dell drivers I used were the Creative software, as that's needed, plus the Alienware OSD and Command Center software.

Even if Dell's video drivers "fixed" it (which they shouldn't...should be worse as they're multiple revisions out of date) it wouldn't really be a fix as...well, they're multiple revisions out of date, and only going to get worse.

 

OEM drivers offer some degree of quality assurance, even if they are outdated. You can go to the component manufacturer for the drivers for just about any system really, but there's always potential to open Pandora's Box by doing so. OEM drivers have an added layer of quality assurance as they're tested against the machine at the time of production, at least.

But yes, you'd be outdated.

 

From my experience, they tend to more more problematic, actually LESS likely to work...hence the need to make sure any notebook you buy works fine with the real drivers.

It's really a moot point, as anyone who cares about their hardware enough to care about having a GPU, obviously wants to actually be able to USE their GPU, and hence won't put up with the ancient drivers provided by the notebook's manufacturer. In the bad old days of course we had to resort to hacks-but now a large number of systems work just fine with Nvidia (and to a lesser extent AMD's) drivers.

 

I have had similar issues, the most annoying being the black screen if I let my display turn off while waiting to log on to Windows. (I have my power settings set to turn off the display after 1 minute. On start up, if I don't log in within 1 minute (say I get a phone call at that time) and the screen goes black without my having logged in, it never recovers. I have to do a hard reset to get my screen back.