IGPU stopped working?

Tender_Coconut · July 23, 2020

Hi LTT! I have built my PC 4 years ago and have been adding components as and when I have the budget to buy. I started with an i5 6600k, MSI z170 and 8GB Ripjaws V at 2400 MHz. The mobo died (broken CPU pin - my bad) and i changed to an Asrock z270 Taichi since z170 were unavailable and this was cheap. I added a GTX 1070 Ti back in 2018 and added an extra 8GB RAM (exactly same stick) in 2019. I modded my PC case (Corsair 780T) and placed a small 5 inch display in the 5.25" bays (pic attached) to monitor system vitals. This display was plugged into my motherboard HDMI and was running off of the iGPU and the main monitor was connected to the 1070 Ti. I had the iGPU multi monitor enabled in the BIOS. All was good until recently the iGPU just won't throw any signal to the display. It's just showing "no signal". I know the issue is with the iGPU only since the display works perfectly fine when plugged into the 1070 Ti. When I plug both the displays to the 1070 Ti, I'm facing serious issues with games - tearing, random errors and force closures.

I removed the 1070 Ti and the system stops at post code “A2”. Tried everything I saw on other forums but no luck. Now I’m back to having the main monitor out of the 1070 Ti and not using the small display. It’s just so annoying.

A few changes I made recently were:

1. Updated to Windows 10 2004 build (Windows update offered me the update, I didn't forcefully update with an ISO). Every time Microsoft released a new Windows 10 build there were issues with Intel iGPU drivers. The setup was all OK for over a month of updating to the newer version. Not sure if this is a Windows related issue since even BIOS won’t show up when connected to the mobo HDMI output (after removing the 1070 Ti)

2. The board has PCIe WiFi. I swapped the on onboard WiFi card from Intel 3160 to the latest ax200 - mainly for better Bluetooth connectivity and also better WiFi speed. While troubleshooting I had removed ax200 and replaced the original card and still no response from the iGPU. Not sure if this was the issue as well.

I tried swapping the RAM sticks' positions, did a fresh install of Windows 10 - both 1909 and 2004 versions, changed the HDMI cables, no luck.

Please help me...

Origami Cactus · July 23, 2020

Have you reset bios/ did a bios update recently?

On intel chips you can completely disable igpu in bios, maybe somehow that happened?

Tender_Coconut · July 23, 2020

I did reset the BIOS, multiple times when the post code A2 appeared. The BIOS is at latest version v2.3 for the board. Should I re-flash the same BIOS again?

Tender_Coconut · July 24, 2020

OK.. it started working again! Damn... the reason is silly at best... Here goes..

The mobo has this plastic shield over the IO and when you look from inside it looks cool and all.. this shield is screwed from the backisde of the mobo. I saw some brown stuff at one of the screwing location and I thought i might have screwed in too much last time (when i was changing the WiFi card) and accidentally peeled off the paint on the mobo exposing some traces. This should actually short whatever that trace links to but didnt. All it did was to cut HDMI and DP output from the mobo. I got the iGPU working without this shield but when i screw all 5 screws of this shield the mobo HDMI went plonk! Phew!!! Now i have the shield held onto 3 screws that were OK i guess.. I'm glad its back to normal now...

I guess I just screwed in with confidence..