Fixing a Viewer's BROKEN Gaming PC? - Fix or Flop S1:E19

SPONSOR: For your chance to win a Tesla Model S Plaid and support a great cause, enter at www.omaze.com/...
Why is this gaming PC not sending a picture out?! Is it something we can fix? By the way, if you live in the Orlando, FL area and have an issue with your rig, apply to have it (possibly) fixed for free today! gregsalazar.co...
⭐ Consider supporting us on Patreon! / gregsalazar
SPONSOR: Snag an OEM Windows 10 Pro key and use code 'SKGS' for a 25% discount: bit.ly/3nfdVmg
🛠️ My troubleshooting gear:
FLIR C5 Thermal Camera: geni.us/3ALEI
Skybasic Digital Microscope: geni.us/6zurf
YIHUA Soldering Station: geni.us/DbjS
Helping Hand Soldering Board: geni.us/7DDrL
Xool 80 Precision Tool Set: geni.us/1IfxDSw
🧼 My cleaning gear:
SYINE Respirator Mask: geni.us/V4uA
Scott Shop Towels: geni.us/rIy5O6Y
Electric Air Duster: geni.us/RALt4
ONSON Cordless Vacuum: geni.us/aABrFWE
Medical Grade 99.9% Isopropyl Alcohol: geni.us/tBVQ
Q-tips Cotton Swabs: geni.us/nQhVVQm
Xool 80 Precision Tool Set: geni.us/1IfxDSw
Hizek Black Disposable Gloves: geni.us/MBCJaf
🎬 My studio gear:
Sony a6600 (Primary): geni.us/k8VBToq
Sony a6400 (Secondary): geni.us/24nqw
2x Pixio PX277 Prime 165Hz IPS Monitors: geni.us/bCg4nD
Neewer LED Lighting Kit: geni.us/9VTXr0
Audio-Technica AT2035: geni.us/xvQc
Yamaha MG10XU Mixer: geni.us/d4VvGM
Neewer Microphone Arms: geni.us/1w5Sx2Y
Arrowzoom Sound-Damping Foam Panels: geni.us/EKFxZc
📱 Follow me on social media:
TWITCH: / gregsalazar
FACEBOOK: / gregsalazaryt
TWITTER: / gregsalazaryt
INSTAGRAM: / gregsalazaryt
💻 Join our public Discord server: / discord
DISCLOSURES: All Genius links are tied to our Amazon Associate account, from which we earn a small sales commission. Links containing a 'bit.ly' reference forwarding to Newegg are tied to our Rakuten account, from which we earn a small sales commission. All sponsored links and comments will contain the word "SPONSOR" or "AD." Any additional revenue stream will be disclosed with similar verbiage.
#FixOrFlop

[@GregSalazar]

We've just one more episode in Season 1 of Fix or Flop! I'm a bit sad but also super encouraged by your support for this playlist. We've already begun filming Season 2 and episodes should begin rolling out in early 2022! 🙂 ALSO: _Safe Mode..._ Wow. I can't believe I overlooked Safe Mode. It would've allowed us to boot into Windows with basic VGA drivers, therefore bypassing the problematic Radeon install. We basically did that when we swapped the AMD card for an Nvidia one, but Safe Mode would have been faster and not required another card. To those who mentioned it, thank you!

[@necromancerln6106]

Im very excited for season 2, this whole series helped me learn more about computers and ultimately helped me fix my own pc when I had issues with it.

[@harisshahid6578]

@@necromancerln6106 Yay

[@lawrencego4691]

this season was a huge help for all of us beginners in the field of pc's. thank to this I've manage to learn various troubleshooting that I dont usually see on others. thanks greg!

[@matthewwallis794]

That's great to hear I look forward to season 2! I just finished watching your video from the other day about the negative experience you had a computer submission. I think you handled the situation pretty well. I'm glad that your continuing the series because you're helping a lot of people while keeping it entertaining!

[@jetlaw2848]

Even the most experienced PC enthusiasts need a refresher. Thank you for making this series. I'm really enjoying the videos and will continue to watch and give my thumbs up. Happy Holidays!!!

[@Varg84]

This series is extremely addicting.

[@java4028]

I mean it's kinda dumb that we're literally watching pc fixing and yet it's just soooo addicting and I have no idea why

[@chaviraibusgeet7279]

It's really is :D

[@herosine]

agree

[@andypmz07]

It's the pc equivalent of a detective series. Was it the gpu, or is the psu keeping a secret..

[@andrewprytherch]

Addictive. Addicting isn't a word.

[@MrMcp76]

Important note: Greg, the use of a second GPU to get into the OS only works when the second GPU is from a different company (ie: your current card is an Nvidia and the backup is AMD). Everyone, please just use safe boot to get into the OS. Safe boot loads basic Windows graphics drivers, so it would work everytime with an issue such as this. Your driver install got corrupted and when the OS attempted to load the driver into memory it caused the memory to fail, resulting in the DRAM LED to come on. The graphics card should never have been a concern for two specific reasons: The issue began after a driver update. The system displayed the motherboard logo during boot. If your CPU has no onboard video how do you think that was being displayed? Greg, love this video series, but jeez how can you forget about Safeboot?? LOL

[@iMinx]

Thank you. I got a tad frustrated and went to put a similar comment.

[@mavagam99]

I agree. I love this series and what Greg is doing, but there are some basic troubleshooting steps to know and safe boot is one of them

[@richardfarmer6570]

Thanks for the clarification, this makes sense.

[@jeffsharp2113]

Hard to boot into safe mode when all you have is a black screen.

[@kyse2]

that might have not worked but he didnt try it in the video so who knows i mean it should cuz it shouldnt load the driver just like putting in another gfx card

[@wmckinty]

These videos are probably helping so many people who are having PC system problems. Great to hear you are making a second series.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

I love it when the PC decides it wants to be featured on Fix or Flop.

[@matasa7463]

Ooh, oooh, me Greg, pick me!

[@DasLooney]

The thing you start to realize when working on computers for so long is that you'll never see it all. You'll never know it all and especially with Windows the simplest things can cause problems. You'll diagnose for days until suddenly you try something that makes no sense and BOOM it works! Keep on rocking it Greg! You're doing great buddy!

[@DopeBuildsGaming]

FACTS! Lol

[@TimBoundy]

"It POSTs but then the screen goes black, and the only thing I changed were the graphics drivers" My first thought was a bad graphics driver, as it fails after the driver initialises. The very first thing I would have tried would be to remove the driver in Safe Mode.

[@Dukitek]

That was Gregtastic. One of the best learning series. Every episode is like class, professor Greg teach its students new lessons. Thank you Greg.

[@GregSalazar]

Thanks for watching!

[@brent4093]

Love the vids Greg. Not sure if somebody else asked this question already. But couldn’t you boot into safe mode which would disable the graphics drivers and then uninstall them using DDU? (I’m not an expert but I did stay at a Holiday Inn express one time 🙃)

[@GregSalazar]

Yep, 100% could have (and should have)! I took the long way around using a second card.

[@brads2041]

+1 First thought that came to mind seeing windows start then fail and mention of installing drivers

[@AnticipatedHedgehog]

Holiday Inn Express guru!

[@dennisloosen6035]

Always a good try. A few days ago my Radeon drivers crashed and the card was no longer recognized by them. Normal uninstall and reinstall did nothing. So I had to do exactly that, safe mode and DDU.

[@hirstondas2236]

AMD drivers have been having the same issue since 2016. Booting into safe mode and uninstalling the drivers is the quick and easy way to do it. You have to research like crazy before installing AMD driver updates.

[@nemysisretrogaming3771]

Booting directly into safe mode would have loaded the generic drivers and enables you to uninstall the buggy drivers with DDU without having to change out the discrete GPU. I did notice that the PC did get to the point where you could have forced safe mode boot before the bad drivers kicked in. My suspicion is the NVME drive. A corrupted sector would have been enough to bug out the drivers and maybe a few other files causing the hardware like error. Doing a good drive check might be in order unless the NVME has already unallocated the problem sectors.

[@Stinkehund]

Another option would be to boot into a different OS entirely, like with a Linux USB. Had to remove faulty drivers that way once.

[@stevewright1013]

Wonder why Greg didn't mention F8'ing into Safe Mode? Bad graphic driver installs historically gave been all too common.

[@safetyzone2962]

@@stevewright1013 I don't think F8 is enabled by default on Windows 10. I think you have to enable it in bcdedit. So in that case the only way to get into safe mode would be to get an installer USB and tell the recovery to boot the main OS into safe mode.

[@HellDuke-]

Personally when you described how the issue occurred it immediately made me think of a driver issue. Get into safe mode or reinstall Windows and you should be good to go.

[@sirbumblefuck]

He didn't try getting into safe mode. I've had the same issue.

[@necromancerln6106]

These videos helped me learn a lot on computers and fix my own pc when it didn't want to post due to bios being outdated compared to my cpu

[@TerminusTartaros]

I also suffered from a bricked PC because of grafics drivers. I learned that using the tools provided by AMD or Nvidia and just doing fast updates can cause really bad problems. Also using DDU not in safe mode can lead to issues of things not being properly removed. I am taking updating grafics drivers way more seriously than before now.

[@arjentromp12]

how can you possibly brick a whole pc with just drivers? just reinstall windows if all else fails. Only update that i can think of that could possibly brick at least the motherboard is a BIOS Flash.

[@crisscrossam]

hey greg! this is one of my favorite playlists of yours because even though the deep cleaning, taking things apart and putting them back together is super satisfying, most people are going to look for troubleshooting problems with their or other peoples' system, and i would really appreciate if you could help those people by putting the symptoms of the problems in the description of the video, the title or both so that people with the same problem can find the right video and help if not fix their systems at least steer them in the right direction and teach them the troubleshooting process. keep up the great work!

[@ACVoong]

I had a similar experience when I built a PC for one of my friends, which had a 1050Ti at the time. I downloaded and installed the Nvidia GPU drivers as usual, but after a restart, it exhibited the same problem shown in the video. At the time, it never occurred to me that I can get into Safe Mode and use DDU, I kept reinstalling the OS. This time I used a previous version of the driver and.. it somehow worked. Maybe the latest drivers at the time were buggy, not sure how or why but I knew the GPU itself wasn't the issue because it was still displaying a picture prior to installing drivers.. Must admit, been hooked with this series as it's an excellent learning experience on troubleshooting various issues, so thanks a ton for this.

[@secondolido]

HALLO GREG MUCH LOVE FROM THE NETHERLANDS, I ENJOY WATCHING YOUR VIDEOS AND LEARN A LOT FROM THEM, KEEP THE GOOD WORK.

[@patausche]

coming home to see another fix or flop video is actually the highlight of my day! thank you greg ✨

[@joviemeneses1458]

I have been trying to watch each of your uploads in my free time. I would just like to say that what you do is truly wonderful. Charging at no extra cost other than needing the viewer's PC which a tech repair company would already do anyways. It's always nice to see someone going out of their way to just help with little in return, thank you for being amazing Greg.

[@justthisweeb]

I love how helpful these series are...

[@joshhosking4675]

Literally have the exact same problem with the same build, ryzen 5 3600 and 6600xt. Tried DDU multiple times and my only solution currently is having to turn my computer on twice for it to post, glad to see someone else had the same problem

[@kochkochkoch]

You can also test if the GPU is fine with something like a Linux live USB boot, especially if it's an AMD card (quite a few distros will have issues with Nvidia from what I hear). If it boots at the right resolution and loads the drivers, the GPU can't be the thing that's failing. This does unfortunately mean that, unless you have a spare GPU or spare PC to slot your boot drive into, and thus remove the bad driver installation like what was done in this video, you may need to reinstall Windows fresh just to get the drivers working with it again.

[@zarrexify]

I have Ubuntu on SSD for exactly this reason. Trouble shooting. Plus drive cloning, which is so easy on Linux compared to all the questionable tools available for Windows.

[@GregSalazar]

BTW: Only a couple more days to enter our RTX 3080 giveaway! Just comment and follow on Instagram! instagram.com/p/CWjeeQgvfCA/

[@sinofsanity6593]

Greg: here's a VIEWER'S broken PC Viewers: hey, that looks just like your PC! Greg: I'm technically a viewer of my channel

[@johnvandeven2188]

You are right. Many would have pinpointed the issue being a faulty addon component never realising that it could be the software or firmware which had been installed. I had an issue with a new build also not booting even from the very first boot. When I say not booting that also meant no fans spinning, a dead build. After some time I began replacing different cables and lo and behold it was the sata cable to the hdd. Sounds stupid as it also was a new cable but the pc booted up straight away. I enjoy watching your analysis in this series. Keep up the great work.

[@daytona1445]

I believe that there is a way to configure windows 10 to boot safe mode using F8 like you could under windows 7. This would be a good thing to do with new or existing builds incase of a problem.

[@Bada4ever]

DDU has saved me a few times and I make sure to always use that when I get a new card installed, so I am happy it worked for you. Having a backup video card is really important to have, as well, so it is unfortunate they are not readily available from 2020. Another informative and fun video! Thanks as always.

[@ScottBottt]

I love this series. He's such a calm person to watch. Love watching him diagnose PC's. Super helpful for future issue for myself too. 10/10

[@Tad1zz]

14:58 or just go into safe mode is simpler in my opinion

[@dallas88b]

Thanks for the series. Will certainly be watching your 2022 series.

[@Joe-js7nr]

Love this series

[@Shifo_47]

Me too Man

[@matthewwallis794]

Same

[@l3on_166]

X2

[@GregSalazar]

Much appreciated! 😀

[@pewpew65]

Greg, I can wholeheartedly say that the community and I would have 100% supported you if you went off on that guy. You don't have to tip toe around those situations. You have earned the hearts and respect of many of us. Thank you for your content and all you do for us.

[@Stringmaster413]

It's really nice you made a video about a possibly "niche" issue that people may or may not know about. You are a helpful human! Good job sir.

[@AreYouOkKuro]

If you don't have another gpu, just wait for windows to say automatic repair, go into safe mode and use amd driver removal tool. You're not out of luck if the driver had an issue while installing. You will need another computer to download the tool to a USB drive tho.

[@trilliedon8728]

If your CPU has a APU built into it. If it doesn’t then you’re still fucked

[@AreYouOkKuro]

@@trilliedon8728 Not really, no. Ive had this happen and once you force restart the pc it will go into recovery and safe mode doesnt load any drivers, but your GPU will still display the picture using Microsoft basic display adapter driver ;)

[@Stevenzao]

I find that real handy tool for these occasions is to just try a bootable flash drive with an OS - say Ubuntu - to check if the problem persists on a fresh OS, without tampering with your original boot drive. If it doesn't, then it's probably related to the original OS.

[@FeaolPlay]

14:46 "I didn't do anything differently". Yes you did, you DDU'ed the drivers. What most likely happened is Windows was already installing drivers from its catalogue before you started installing the proper drivers resulting mismatched file versions, ultimately corrupting them. As MrMcp76 said below, you could've eliminated a hardware issue by booting into either safe-mode OR using some offline boot media such as WinPE, UBCD, HBD, Linux etc.

[@WELSHYTECH]

yes another one please keep them coming bud I'm loving this series so far

[@ryasilvern4339]

This actually happened to me on my current system through the GeForce driver client. Fortunately, I was able to boot in safe mode. I generally just clicked the "recommended" Express Installation through the GeForce client. For whatever reason, the files corrupted during installation and all of my graphics kicked out. Through safe mode, I was able to navigate on whatever the native VGA resolution is on my previous settings to run the graphics setup and install from my downloads folder (I felt like I was using a 2000's laptop). Lesson learned, I will never use the "express installation" option in GeForce Experience. Manual -> Clean Installation -> Save "setup.exe" for driver to desktop and run from there. What a mess those driver updates can be... Awesome troubleshooting of this issue, though. Loved the content, as always.

[@cpfb68]

Wow! Haven’t seen that one before! Great fix Greg! Thanks for the education! Greatly appreciated!

[@CapedGeekMarcel]

The spinning dial is the gatekeeper. If something goes wrong after the spinning dial appears (even if a post logo is still on screen) it’s windows. The other thing is that it is possible to get into safe mode/driverless mode even the moment that dial appears. I wish drivers were simple, but they do configuration as well… if it misreads, or fails to write all the files it needs… it can really screw things up. Refreshing windows is a good solution! Love the show! Source: I worked on AMDs auto detect platform quite a few years ago.

[@deansigman6099]

There is a fix if you don't have a secondary GPU lying around. Booting into safe mode doesn't load GPU drivers. Windows will let you boot into safe mode after 3 failed boot attempts. (click advanced options instead of restart like you did in the video.) You can then run DDU and then restart you computer. Re-install your graphics drivers and you should be good. This is why I always keep DDU installed on my pc.

[@grantg98]

This is why I ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS do a "clean" install of all my video driver updates, SPECIFICALLY to NOT have problems like this.

[@1pspgofan]

Such an informative series. My friend recently thought his system hit the bucket (kept boot looping) and i instinctively told him to just try and clear the CMOS first. And guess what, it worked.

[@bvoyelr]

IIRC the situation you encountered could still be hardware related: cards have VGA passthrough mode when there are no drivers available. Once drivers are loaded, the card routes the signal through its more complicated chips/circuitry. Thus, if the complicated chips/circuitry are fried but the VGA passthrough circuitry is intact, driverless will work but drivers will activate the hardware failure.

[@gregomeara3023]

love your work Greg .. I have fixed computers for 20 years and have never seen that happen from a GPU Driver being installed .. Incredible

[@CoMmAnDrX]

Without another GFX card you can boot into safe mode with Command Prompt or Networking, go to device manager, and remove display adapter or run DDU

[@thepianokid27]

Ur PC CGI skills are getting better and better every week 👍🏼

[@Scopion44]

Really like this series .. it made me subscribe. Very satisfying when you figure out the problems, and very educational for me. Thank you and keep it up :D

[@mpkio]

I had the exact same issue when I built my new computer 4 months ago. My motherboard's VGA LED was flashing and I couldn't figure it out as it was a new card. Turns out, I didn't take off the guard. But when I took the guard off, still no picture. I still had my old graphics card, so put that back in, booted into windows, uninstalled some old drivers, put in my new card, and it worked!

[@technohc4939]

I always love seeing your new videos pop up! Always brightens up my day everytime I see ur smile and your face haha. Love from Australia, Sydney ❤

[@sisakib3598]

I did face this problem when I was trying to enable NIS in geforce experience and I just DDU the old driver and did a clean graphics driver install and it fixed it.

[@LopezDuzit]

At the point I just auto like you’re video’s from the beginning 😅👍🏽 great job Greg!

[@johnwelander]

Interesting to see how Greg moves on these issues. An essential tool to include are a few different Linux USB boot media. We all do stuff differently I guess.

[@taimoorshah8230]

I've acquired so much confidence since I've started this series. Now i do things i use to avoid.

[@emmanuelbradley3819]

Glad I found this video 3 months later. Concerning the Radeon Driver , you'll install it in the safest way possible, you will still have a black screen(for newer driver versions apparently). On the AMD website in the graphics drivers tab, they recommend an older driver(marked as "recommended") for you to install instead of the newer ones(marked as "optional"), AMD stating the recommended one is the most stable one. I might think that this black screen problem occurs only on ASUS' Mobo because i've seen lot of them having this issue. On the Other side ….. I myself own a Gigabyte motherboard and never got any black screen ever installing newer or older versions of the drivers, but... the software tends to crash constantly when trying to tune something and after crashing it resets all my personal fan curves to default. And performance wise concerning newer drivers (if you manage to install without getting black screen) gives you big performance drop:- high temps+ low fps in Warzone especially. In addition, Radeon Drivers are just a pain in the butt to install it properly, it won't update automatically like team green, you cant update over an older version also ; your system may crash and cause black screen; you'll have to use DDU everytime if you want install newer versions.

[@clemboy08]

So I'm commenting as I watch and I'm at about the 9 minute mark. One thing you can try that has helped me in the past is going to the recovery options menu and getting into the Windows Boot Options menu and turning off driver signatures, sometimes that will get you back into the OS and you can update drivers again

[@nobertoketch7837]

Booting into safe mode could also help in fixing this issue. Once you boot you DDU the display drivers then reatart your PC.

[@mace_vl]

I'm into the series so much I hear the opening line in my head at night This here - is another viewer's *inhales* BROKEN gaming pc

[@JonehJozieTM]

Thanks Greg for this new problem. I would've missed the safe mode too and just swap with a working gpu. Im not that patient with all these. LOL. For sure looking forward for the next season. Happy holiday bro 👍👍😁😘😘

[@theamazingtoot]

I love watching your videos because it is helping me figure out what possibilities could be the problem.

[@reamoinmcdonachadh9519]

A good video, very entertaining and informative. Greg, I hope you billed yourself appropriately for the work done!!

[@thepoliticalstartrek]

Reset your secure boot keys. The reason it breaks is the Secure Boot state is triggering. Uninstall driver and try again. I do see this with a couple ESRI applications like Arc Map or Cad Cam.

[@zacker95]

At first I think that your RAM will be the cause, however, I was wrong. It is a good things to learn new things on this channel. Great info.

[@dancristian7272]

What one could also try, if no other graphics card on hand, is going to windows safe mofe from the windows repairing window. Because the driver usually doesn't kick in when in safe mode, which lets you fast ddu and let windows reinstall those drivers for you to boot and install the official one, done it before, so i know for aure that is also a solution. Thanks for the informative video though, i really love them, keep it up!

[@andrendenum1]

Questions (if you don't have a second gpu to use): 1) Did you try and boot to safe mode with the discreet graphics card? 2) Presumably, couldn't you have just re-installed windows? 3) Was the latest bios update installed for the board? 4) Was there a check to see if the discreet gpu have a firmware update? 4) Downloading the standalone driver from the manufacturer website rather than auto-update... which you ultimately did.

[@MysticalWafflez]

I've seen something like this happen before. I'm late, I know. I can actually explain the black screen you're seeing. When you're booting your PC, it will always boot in a standard VGA mode. There's no graphics drivers loaded or anything like that. The only thing the card is doing is loading its own BIOS and waiting for windows to give it a driver to work with. As soon as windows completes loading, it will attempt to initialize the drivers installed to that system. In this case, it tries and fails. This is often due to corrupted driver installs regardless of driver origin. (it happens, and it sucks.) You took the long way around by installing a new graphics card. However, it was the safest bet. Very good looking build and awesome video. Keep it up!

[@SiAnon]

I've been building and fixing PC's (friends and family) for about 20 years and people say to me "Why don't you do it as a job". And the answer is because nobody needs the headache these problems give you when it is somebody else's PC lol

[@lotsoflife8236]

I know how you feel. I keep telling them that it is just a hobby.

[@kiphenry88]

I'm newer follower and love this series. I went back and watched them all. Keep up the great work Greg!

[@forestfaint9269]

I love watching my daily dose of Greg Salazar! Plus we can learn from these videos!

[@road-runner]

And the little GT-710 saving the day... again! Great series!!

[@garbuckle3000]

I was gonna say, yeah Safe Mode is your friend. And always keep a bootable usb drive around ;) As for the driver issue, perhaps there was something with SAM and the driver. SAM accesses system memory, so maybe that's why you got the debug led. Just a thought

[@tetryl1]

Worst part about this type of issue is that when it happens to someone who doesn't really know how to debug problems or have any friends that do, they might do an RMA and then the business that sold it, imported it or manufactured it will charge them 50-100$ to get the card back. For nothing. This was a very important video IMO, for someone like you and me it's kinda obvious what to test but to the vast majority of people it's not because the debug LED's confuse people.

[@progetto4782]

Thanks Greg for informing me ahead i'm planing to upgrade my GPU(Gtx 1050ti) to the RX 6600 so that i can play 1080p at high or max resolution

[@ashberto6041]

I have a similar issue with a 270x, which is my backup GPU. It was known working and sitting in it's box in a cupboard. Works till I install the driver. I'll revisit it after seeing this.

[@Obie327]

Hey Greg! And yes this problem is more common than you might realize. It usually starts with a Windows Update and then it's gone. (Same exact issue you had) Windows boot corrupts. I also had the same issue going from AMD to Nvidia or vice versa. I think Microsoft is getting lazy or deliberately being incompetent. I've seen this issue on hardware as old as a Intel 2600k/3570k to AMD A10 series systems. All these problems happened a few months back so don't know if repeatable today. Thanks Greg for bringing up this issue. Cheers!

[@Syntheticks]

That trusty GT710 is so clutch. Good video as usual Greg. :)

[@elephystry]

I updated to the latest driver for my amd APU and not only did it not fix the crashing the original driver had, but it introduced an audio crackling issue. I went to a 13 month old driver that’s still newer than the original and it seems to work fine.

[@Technoz-yt]

Recently I had a problem when I was swapping all of my working components from one case to a new case (011D Mini) and it would not post, everything was connected and worked fine beforehand. So I cleared my cmos and waited about 3 hours till I attempted to boot again, fixed my issue...thankfully

[@jadyelsantana4632]

I’m leaving this comment about 3 min into the video. I had a similar issue with one of pcs once and it wasn’t even a dram issue, turns out my gpu was giving out and when it died on me it would give me a dram led issue. Bought a new gpu and it started working immediately. I just wish I would of seen this issue 2 years ago lol would of saved me 300 bucks. Keep up the instructional vids man

[@dennissmith1435]

I think, probably, I would have gone with the "what changed last" principle of troubleshooting. The last change were the graphics drivers. That was my first thought when you mentioned the symptoms. It's not always right, there are coincidences, but it's a good place to start.

[@yohanag3408]

Try have a Linux LiveUSB handy, you could get more details for it's boot log if there some hardware errors and you could run hardware test from it. This is what I normally do when the hardware is fine but OS has an issue. 😁✌🏼

[@InsaneMetalSoldier]

Happened to me back in Oct 2019, bought an 5700XT, this happened, glad I had a GTX 660 to troubleshoot, the thing is, not even reinstalling, uninstalling or doing whatever to the AMD drivers fixed it. I ended up returning the card and changing it for a RTX 2060 super which worked great, basically plug and play

[@DarkHorseCom]

I have a really old ATI HD 5450 256MB GPU that I use for something like this. I think I bought it for $15. Saved me a few times with issues like this. Great video! Thanks Greg

[@failomas1443]

sometimes people don't have all the tools i mean spare parts to do this but always useful to know for sure

[@KakeruAizawa143]

Hey Greg! I recently bought my rig, I have the same card as yours and built it myself. Same problem, black screen. But in my case, I can boot into windows. I get the black screen when I try to watch a video in 4k, also playing games. I tried reinstalling drivers and OS, the black screen still appears after I install the drivers. I am so lost so I have to bring it to the shop where I bought the parts. Funny thing is they even stressed out the GPU and played a video, no black screen appeared. But when the video was switched to 4k, it goes black screen or sometimes restarts itself. Very random. Conclusion: Swapped the same card to a new one and everything was fine. I think Gigabyte 6600xt has a lot of problems so buy at your own risk guys!

[@KHunterK3]

Had this same issue with an rx 570 last week. Luckily I'm running the i5 11600k so I was able to switch back and forth between the 2 until I found a solution. Even after I got it to work I ran an update this weekend and had black screen again. My solution was booting in integrated graphics and running patch software. I'm not exactly happy with this but it got me going for now.

[@Michael_Anthony05]

Thanks for the video, my graphics card stop working today and I have graphics on my Intel CPU so I kind of narrowed it done to the graphics card, because when I took the card out my PC booted. And the last thing I did was install new drivers to play cod vanguard. And I put another card in the slot to make sure it was not dead and it worked. But when i put the card back in, it will not post. I will do a little more trouble shooting by installing the graphics card into another working PC. Keep making the videos , I love your channel.

[@Michael_Anthony05]

i was about to spend money on a new card, I will continue the testing on Sunday. i was hoping it was something else , because graphics card are so hard to get . i really think it might be the driver update.

[@kraze6522]

just recently discovered your channel and im binge watching the shit outta this series

[@Chris93au]

For anyone wondering you can force a Windows PC to go into automatic repair by powering it off and on 3 times in a row in relatively quick succession. It will force an automatic repair, from here you can boot into safe mode and it’ll load generic Windows drivers and give you the opportunity to uninstall the faulty ones. I appreciate Greg’s expertise is in hardware, but this should be the first thing done when experiencing these sorts of symptoms (especially after driver installs).

[@JB-Voices]

Had the exact same issue with the Ryzen 3 4350G Pro, I can tell you that was extremely "fun" to try and solve :/ No matter what apu driver I installed, got the same black screen issue as you did with your 6600xt, I eventually (after literally weeks of troubleshooting and being in contact with amd support) put in a gt1030 and (after a long wait) got my hands on a Ryzen 3 3300X to replace the 4350G

[@jokek8976]

The Aio radiator is upside down the water won’t circulate properly through the tubes because the air is sitting at the beginning of the tubes

[@qT_p13]

I'm glad you got this issue fixed. I feel like you are a bit lucky on this one. I have seen a similar problem with an Asus board and the flashing dram light. I am led to believe it is a cpu issue, at least the memory controller on the cpu, and not the ram itself, but I have no real way to prove it. In my case after resetting the bios to no avail, i put in a 2400mhz single stick and got a post (it only worked in dimm 4 no less). I went to bios, updated it to latest stable version (the board didn't have flashback). After flashing dram some more and me fiddling memory configurations some more I got it to post again. This time I opened bios and adjusted (increased) soc voltage. Booted perfectly fine. Reinstalled the original memory, I never got the problem again.

[@I_Evo]

I have a local remote access program (Splashtop) installed on my PC for such eventuallities, so as long as it boots I can access the operating system via a secondary device and DDU the troublesome graphics drivers.

[@caplecure07]

Safe boot from Bios would be my go to first step especially if the black screen happened after a Graphic driver install, and further more I would always do a clean install of graphic drivers via DDU as Nvidia always seems to leave leftovers behind.

[@deisan4817]

Another easy solution is boot from a windows flash drive installer and format and reinstall windows which will clear the drivers and boot up again.

[@davidbates2161]

I ran into this with my AMD system. Had to install the ram one stick at a time. That fixed it.

[@Wasted_Thyme]

im learning sooo much! thanks!

[@Peterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr]

We just learn so much with these videos. Thanks Greg!

[@GregSalazar]

Thanks so much for watching!

[@Ven183]

I've seen similar situations, not quite the same, but when i saw the flashing led i thought CPU as it could have been knocked or something. But a corrupted download of graphics software happens quite a lot. I usually DDU after 2 or 3 updates to my 2060.

[@marcc5768]

first time seeing this issue. Tho..I usually make a C drive image with Macrium Reflect on a clean install of Windows with current updates. So just restore that if I run into issues. Then make a new image, with current updates again. install programs, games drivers etc. Then make a new drive image with the way you want things. So you have something to fall back on and save some time. Especially works if it is just a corrupted driver of some sort and you can't reach the desktop or in your case not even see an image.

[@esoj01]

I had this issue about six months ago when installing an amd driver. Fortunately I was able to boot into safe mode and then use ddu. Driver installed perfectly the second time around.