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edit note: disregard overclock in sig, it's not actual overclock, it is merely what the card is capable of as verified when first purchased around a year ago. Since that time it has been run @ stock since I've not needed the extra power.
Seriously, what the hell. All my games have been working perfectly until about a week ago and all of a sudden I can't play many full screen games (especially seems to affect ones that run in 16-bit color) without first settings windows itself to 16-bit color and even then many games still won't work at all. I'm pretty certain it's a problem with the driver and my monitor (sig) because these games are displaying properly on my secondary monitor (old acer 22" LCD) but I never have had a single issue like this until now. The game is working properly each time because I can hear the music, but the screen is always totally blank and usually proceeds to "out of frequency/no signal" within a few seconds of launching the game.
The maddening thing is some games are just fine, some are a disaster. Homm3 works perfectly in full screen without a single issue. Tropico 1/2 won't show me the main menu or the game unless I start in windowed mode in 16-bit color then switch to full screen once I get into the game itself. Interstate 76 won't give me anything at all, even in desktop 16-bit color. Caesar 3, Pharaoh, both work perfectly. Dosbox based games are all black screen. Total Annihilation is black screen including videos and main menu, and I JUST played that game like 2 weeks ago. All modern games I've tested work properly. rFactor, IL2, F1 2010, war3, Galciv2, etc. Modern games are no problem. It's definitely something to do with older games, but not all older games. Example: Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 works fine. Railroad Tycoon 2 works fine (same engine as Tropico 2, which doesn't work unless you 16-bit/window->fullscreen trick it).
There's no windows framework link between any of these games that I can think of. Nothing. I haven't installed any program recently that could have done this, to my knowledge, because I've been too busy gaming. Everything has been perfect until this utterly random bullshit just started happening.
Things I've tried:
every nvidia control panel setting under the sun, including the hidden ones found using nvidia inspector.
disabling secondary monitor, and disconnecting it physically.
3 different NV drivers with driver sweeper between attempts (last 3 WHQL sets, two of which played these games properly in the past 12 months)
reinstalling DX
removing any program on my pc, including files and registry entries, that might be even obliquely related to display.
reinstalling, removing, upgrading video codecs
the typical slog of virus scanning, defragging, anti-malware, inspecting all running processes, etc etc. Everything is normal as expected.
I even reinstalled Tropico 2 about 5 different times with steam version, gog version, CD version, pirated version, ALL have the exact same result, and then I started randomly picking other games and testing and found that it affects roughly 30% of the games installed on my PC (read: probably at least 50 games affected).
Take the last 60 seconds: I tried to load Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and not only did I get a totally black screen but Windows refused to alt-tab or recover the primary display after I killed the process using the secondary display. It would not re-init the primary display until I disabled it, then re-enabled it.
Seriously what the fuck is happening? I don't see how it could be a faulty display or graphics card because there are no other symptoms. It's driving me mad.
edit: also changed HDMI cable. No joy.
edit2: switching ports on the 480 didn't work either. It DID let me load Tropico 2 one time full screen, but it was almost like it "forgot" that it was supposed to be broken and when I immediately ALT-F4 and then reload again (with NOTHING inbetween) it did not work. This, right here, makes me think hardware fault somewhere along the line. I hope I am wrong.
Seriously, what the hell. All my games have been working perfectly until about a week ago and all of a sudden I can't play many full screen games (especially seems to affect ones that run in 16-bit color) without first settings windows itself to 16-bit color and even then many games still won't work at all. I'm pretty certain it's a problem with the driver and my monitor (sig) because these games are displaying properly on my secondary monitor (old acer 22" LCD) but I never have had a single issue like this until now. The game is working properly each time because I can hear the music, but the screen is always totally blank and usually proceeds to "out of frequency/no signal" within a few seconds of launching the game.
The maddening thing is some games are just fine, some are a disaster. Homm3 works perfectly in full screen without a single issue. Tropico 1/2 won't show me the main menu or the game unless I start in windowed mode in 16-bit color then switch to full screen once I get into the game itself. Interstate 76 won't give me anything at all, even in desktop 16-bit color. Caesar 3, Pharaoh, both work perfectly. Dosbox based games are all black screen. Total Annihilation is black screen including videos and main menu, and I JUST played that game like 2 weeks ago. All modern games I've tested work properly. rFactor, IL2, F1 2010, war3, Galciv2, etc. Modern games are no problem. It's definitely something to do with older games, but not all older games. Example: Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 works fine. Railroad Tycoon 2 works fine (same engine as Tropico 2, which doesn't work unless you 16-bit/window->fullscreen trick it).
There's no windows framework link between any of these games that I can think of. Nothing. I haven't installed any program recently that could have done this, to my knowledge, because I've been too busy gaming. Everything has been perfect until this utterly random bullshit just started happening.
Things I've tried:
every nvidia control panel setting under the sun, including the hidden ones found using nvidia inspector.
disabling secondary monitor, and disconnecting it physically.
3 different NV drivers with driver sweeper between attempts (last 3 WHQL sets, two of which played these games properly in the past 12 months)
reinstalling DX
removing any program on my pc, including files and registry entries, that might be even obliquely related to display.
reinstalling, removing, upgrading video codecs
the typical slog of virus scanning, defragging, anti-malware, inspecting all running processes, etc etc. Everything is normal as expected.
I even reinstalled Tropico 2 about 5 different times with steam version, gog version, CD version, pirated version, ALL have the exact same result, and then I started randomly picking other games and testing and found that it affects roughly 30% of the games installed on my PC (read: probably at least 50 games affected).
Take the last 60 seconds: I tried to load Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and not only did I get a totally black screen but Windows refused to alt-tab or recover the primary display after I killed the process using the secondary display. It would not re-init the primary display until I disabled it, then re-enabled it.
Seriously what the fuck is happening? I don't see how it could be a faulty display or graphics card because there are no other symptoms. It's driving me mad.
edit: also changed HDMI cable. No joy.
edit2: switching ports on the 480 didn't work either. It DID let me load Tropico 2 one time full screen, but it was almost like it "forgot" that it was supposed to be broken and when I immediately ALT-F4 and then reload again (with NOTHING inbetween) it did not work. This, right here, makes me think hardware fault somewhere along the line. I hope I am wrong.
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