Windows failed to start driver - Screen goes black/freezes

Ullizzzz · December 12, 2018

Hi everyone.

I have a issue i can not get my head around.

I've newly reinstalled windows 10 after installing a M.2 disc and got an error during some gaming yesterday.

Computer has been running fine for 5 or so days but yesterday I had several black screens.

I played one game for a few hours without any issues, swapped over to another game and after a while got a message saying "windows failed to start display driver". Second time screen just had a white line across. This also happen a few time during login screen after reboot.

I had around 5 of these before i just gave up and went to bed. one of them i managed to get a picture after, the rest i had to reboot.

GPU fan went to +110% or so by the sound of it.

Tried doing a clean install using an older driver but have same issue still.

Could anyone point me to the next step? I'm afraid this is caused by a HW fault but as its so close to a fresh install I'm hoping for a windows error.

GPU: Evga 1080Ti

CPU I7-8700K

PSU Evga Supernova 850W

Any help is much appreciated

faziten · December 12, 2018

post here full rig description stating brand and model of your hardware, including aprox age (how long have you been using each component) and your current windows version.

Ullizzzz · December 14, 2018

Hi, I'm sorry for the lack of info.

Intel I7-8700K Water cooled

MSI Z370 Gamin Pro

8Gb DDR4 (Croshair i believe)

M.2 Samsung 970 Evo 500gb
2x Kingston 128gb SSD

2x Seagate 5Tb drive

Evga GTX 1080 TI SC Hybrid

Evga Supernova 850W

Windows 10 Pro (tried fresh install from usb, guess early build and after latest update)

Long story short.

I had a i7-7700K until this summer when my PSU blew up and fried mb, memory and CPU. Got myself parts above after. GPU seemed fine and has been working perfectly until now.

GPU is a little over 1 - 1.1/2 year. Rest is around 5 months.

M.2 is a week old. <- Could this be the reason? Everything is fast and W/R speed is on point.

Reinstalled windows Wednesday afternoon and it worked without any issues for around 4 hours yesterday.

i thought it could be one of the game broke it, but after a few hours with that game trying to replicate the error i swapped to another "easier on the hardware" game and went straight to black screen. So i guess its either HW or windows causing the issue.

I even had in without any games running.

faziten · December 14, 2018

Take a look at this: (from your MoBo's manual).

Also follow this configuration guide and check if everything is up to this table down below, i see you have 4 sata disks, you may have accidentally installed one of them in a non supported config scheme.