PC Drivers & Software

[thezealot35]

This might look like an innocent post, but believe me when I say this problem has been the bane of my existence for 2 and a half days.  So let me start you in on a quick backstory on how this "problem" of mine came to life:

First specs:

Radeon R9 200 290x

Windows 7 service pack 1 64 bit

8 core cpu

16 GB ram

Radeon GPU (midnight right now cant remember exact model)

Its Thursday morning, and my niece is playing on my computer.  A video game she always plays, nothing wrong going on.  Everyone is happy.  I usually use my computer for programming and competitive games, on top of that I've been around computers and building them most of my life.  Now, suddenly the computer shuts off without warning.  Niece cries, I investigate, chalk it up to over heating.  Last time I changed the thermal paste was years ago and it was flaking last time I checked so I didnt bother with it until later in the day.  Niece is gone, take apart computer, remove water coolant and replace thermal paste after checking for damage.  Nothing wrong so I put her back together and boot.  Starting up, good, "windows did not shut down correctly" yeah whatever boot normally, get to loading screen and....  nothing.  Black.  Then, shut down.  Hold on, that's not supposed to happen.  Queue 4 hours of troubleshooting and many oh my "blocked" so many restarts and computer adjustments, still nothing.  I came to the hefty conclusion that the graphics software was corrupted and needed to be reinstalled.  In this case, radeon.  So next day I performed all the cleaning methods I could think of.  The radeon auto driver checker, clean install using ddu, and even going as far as a system restore point.  Low and behold, nothing worked.  I retried every possible solution until I was basically praying to god every time the computer was loading back up.  I've now spent a collective 14+ hours researching every support forum and attempting every method, removing any sign of radeon software and reinstalling it.  And I know it's a problem with the graphics software because when I uninstalled radeon and booted the computer, it worked.  Only problem is that the computer obviously used the default graphics driver, which sucks bum and isn't built for gaming amd whatever else I do.  So I come asking this question myself in Hope's some other poor soul has been in my situation.

If anyone has had this same problem or knows a fix l, you would look like "blocked out for filter" walking on water to me.

Huh, curse words are a nono.   Good to know.

[kingfish]

I have a R9 290X / Win7 / I7 processor and have had no issue with any of the latest drivers...so I would eliminate the drivers as the issue. Win7 has one big issue with AMD drivers...it must be fully updated:

** Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 must be fully updated before attempting to install any AMD driver. All 'critical', 'recommended', and 'optional' (no language packs,etc) updates as well as any Service Packs (SP) must be installed before any attempt to install graphics drivers. If you do not get this message .... keep installing until you do:

[thezealot35]

Clean uninstalled radeon in safe mode, restarted, installed missing windows updates until it restarted.  Made the mistake of forcing the computer to boot into safe mode, windows updates couldn't finish properly so I had to redo the process.  Back to square one, checked to make sure there were no radeon files, restarted windows updates.  Let it restart in normal mode, checked for any more updates, none so I started the radeon latest update.  Restart after update and...  nothing yet again.  Fix didnt work.  I know this is the radeon driver because normal mode only starts properly with the default VGA graphics driver.   I will retry this at least once more to make sure I didnt make any mistakes, but beyond this I think I've tried pretty much everything I can find.

[thezealot35]

Hello.  About a week later since my original posting, I still cannot fix my problem.  I have attempted the previous solution more times than I can remember, after that didnt work I attempted to update my computer from windows 7 to windows 10.  However regardless of if I had a new version of the graphics driver installed (i checked twice without downloading any graphics driver, then twice with downloading the windows 10 graphics driver before windows 10 installation)  it would give me the same black screen after configuring itself.  Then upon restart it would initiate a rollback regardless of what I did (attempting to enter safe mode, getting to the windows recovery screen in general) and put me right back to windows 7.  I have logged the drivers with boot logging, and noticed that when I had the VGA driver installed it would give me hardly any errors.  However with the Radeon driver installed it would give me "Did not load driver @cpu.inf, %amdppm.devicedesc%;amd processor" at least 100 times, and in the middle of those ot would say sometimes "Did not load driver @oem13.inf, %amd6810.1%;amd radeon r9 200 series" but beyond what I have found I cannot find any solutions.  Anyone who has experienced something like this before or seen this please help.  I am running out of options and believe my last resort would be to wipe my drive to default factory settings with default files.

[cr3000]

I’ve had the same problem, only I was trying to update the graphic drivers. As a last ditch attempt, I figured I’d try plugging it into my tv with an hdmi cable to see if I’d get my pc screen or a black screen there, too. Surprisingly, it showed my computer screen. Idk why my display won’t actually show up on my computer, but this might allow you to find a solution. It’s as far as I’ve gotten and I’ve yet to figure out how to get my screen to go from black to the actual screen display.

It made me think of my ps3 when I switched it from a box tv, to an hdtv, and back to the box. Switching back to the box gave me a black screen on my tv, and I had to reset the display settings. I’m wondering if something similar is happening here. But alas, so far I can only see my computer screen on my tv.

if you figure out a way to get the computer screen working again with the Radeon (I have the same specs as you) let me know. This is a frustrating problem.

[1000mdanny]

I have the same GPU but not the X and it's a lot of months later than OP's post but I have the same problem. I have this build for years and it's amazing. Now just recently I was playing Overwatch (a game that has never given me or my friends any trouble at ALL) and out of nowhere (I was in a lobby, not even playing the game so no stress on my system whatsoever) my screen goes black. It didn't turn off my screen as I saw it still lit up, but black. I couldn't use any of the controls or no mouse cursor and had to use the button to turn it off.

After that, any time I boot I see my BIOS from msi like normal, I see the windows 10 icon with the spinning loading dots under it and then black screen again. I've tried reinstalling windows on both my HDD and SSD which did not help. Safe mode would not start. Settings to prioritize the internal motherboard gpu didnt do anything. It was when I took off my external gpu (amd r9 290 from MSI) that I got the normal windows login screen. I uninstalled my amd drivers using their own uninstaller and ddu. Now i can boot with my amd gpu as primary gpu but there is a greenish virtical stripe on the left side of the screen. Windows auto updates the drivers and causes the same problem again. I turned off the autoupdate, download new drivers, unplug ethernet, install drivers. Sometimes while updating, sometimes after the following reboot, I get the black screen again and I have to start all over. I've tried version 20.1.1, 19.12.2, 19.12.1 and 19.7.3 but none work and I keep getting the same problem. I'm not sure what to do at this point.

[thezealot35]

Hey, OP here, I worked on a number of theories myself for months but

nothing worked. My last theory however was that my GPU was perfectly fine,

it was my motherboard that was causing the problem. I was able to test this

by using my GPU and CPU in an entirely different computer. I have yet to

purchase a replacement motherboard for my old computer, seeing as it was

6-7 years old and about time to upgrade anyways. But if you get the

opportunity to test this out, please let me know if it works for you.