Can't install AMD driver -- goes to black screen

I

IcarusSC

Gawd
Joined
Apr 19, 2006
Messages
611
A couple of days ago, my computer crashed while playing XCOM2. Screen froze on white and pink lines. So I rebooted. Instead of showing my Win10 login screen, it showed a black screen (not blank, black -- monitor was on as usual). That's weird -- reboot again. Everything looks normal this time. Later that day, another XCOM2 crash. This time, no matter how many times I reboot, I get the black screen. Nothing is showing up at all.

I boot into safe mode and uninstall the driver. Boots into Windows just fine with the default driver, but of course the default driver is crap. So I go to install a new AMD driver. At the point in the installation when the new driver should take over, screen goes black, never comes back on. I try this a couple of times.

I think maybe the uninstall was incomplete, so I uninstall the old driver with DDU. Go to reinstall the new driver, no change. I dust the computer out, fiddle with connections a bit, try it again, no change.

I am running an XFX R9 280; had it for two years with no problems. Before crash, driver was up to date. Windows version is 10.0.16299. Anyone have any insight? Thank you for any and all help you might have!
 
try the card in another system but it sound like it died. my 280x died suddenly too...
 
pendragon1 said:
try the card in another system but it sound like it died. my 280x died suddenly too...
Click to expand...

Now, I'm pretty ignorant, but the monitor is plugged into the card. If the card is actually dead, wouldn't it be black screen all the time? Any type of diagnostic I can do short of plugging it in somewhere else? Getting that card into this motherboard was a nightmare I don't wish to revisit :-P
 
try ddu again but load the older 17.7.1 version see if that works then upgrade to the newest. I have had to do that once with my 280x and with a HD7770. if that does work, load a fresh install of windows onto another drive. next try another psu.
 
Well, switching to 17.7.1 didn't work *at all* ... after a long chain of auto-reboots, it finally took me back to repair mode :-P Something is bad wrong with this thing. Unfortunately, I'm not in a tech-rich environment here . I'll have to poke around and see if I can find another installation to try the card on. I suppose there's no way to do that without having my key, is there? This thing is so old, I originally installed 7 on it when it first came out. Haven't had a key in ages.

But at any rate, thank you very much for the suggestion!
 
Any chance I could slap a Linux install on a flash drive to test the card out? No idea if that's even a viable idea ... I've never done anything with Linux :-P
 
Update: black screens started to happen more and more often, even without the driver. I found an old machine with a bad HDD that I'd forgotten about. Pulled the HD 6670 from that one and swapped out my erstwhile R9 270x (forgot the model number :-P). HD 6670 runs great; updated driver and no black screens at all so far. Hello, functioning computer. Goodbye, beautiful graphics. Going to try and give the 270x a good cleaning and put it back in, just on the off chance that it's a dirty connection or some such.
 
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