Troubleshooting Black Screens GTX 1060

[crankybytes]

I have a Gigabyte GTX 1060 Windforce X2 OC 3GB that I picked up used for a graphics design based purpose build... At first everything seemed fine, but then I discovered after having the card for several weeks that it will only detect the first monitor I plugged into it after putting the build together. An LG ultrawide (Model WK900 I think). It will not detect any other monitor what so ever. All other monitors display a blank, black screen once Windows loads the Nvidia driver.

 

To be clear, here are the things I've already tried. Initially I tried different cables, then I tried even more monitors. It just didn't make sense, so I then plugged in the monitor I initially set this build up with and it works without any issue at all... So I then tried all cables with that monitor to make sure I wasn't crazy and sure enough all the cables worked fine, but if I plugged in any other monitor the screen would go black as soon as Windows loaded. I figured it must be a Windows issue so I attempted a Windows repair, but it wouldn't find anything to repair. I was able to boot into Safe Mode using any monitor, but if I boot it regularly as soon as Windows got to the login screen it would go black... After more testing I determined it was when the Nvidia driver would load when the the screens would go blank. I tried reinstalling the driver several times, I tried both the studio and game ready drivers, both the latest and older versions of each. Same results each time. I even found that if I let Windows boot with the monitor that the graphics card seems to like and then swap the cable to a different monitor the different monitor would show the screen, but when looking at the settings Windows and the Nvidia control panel both were reporting the monitor that does work was still plugged in even though it was not... And of course with the monitor that will work plugged in, no other monitor would be detected when plugged in as a secondary monitor. I did everything I could think of short of a BIOS flash and a Windows reinstall, against my better judgement I did a Windows reinstall, and nope still same issue... So then I put an old HD 5450 in the computer and the GTX 1060 in a different slot. I used GPU-Z, nvflash and techpowerup to find my BIOS and reflashed the card... SAME ISSUES... I tried two other BIOS versions that were older and still the same issues.... Mind you, the HD 5450 while in the machine worked with any monitor I plugged into it.

 

I've never had this problem before. It seems as though for some reason something on the graphics card is just stuck only detecting this one specific monitor and it will not detect any other monitor. As long as the computer is using a generic vga driver any monitor works, but as soon as the nvidia driver loads, only this one specific monitor will work...

 

The card works as expected with the LG monitor plugged in, no performance issues or crashes, I stress tested the system before calling it complete. Go to put it where it was intended to be used and plug in the monitors and peripherals at that desk and that's when I discovered the issues. I'm at a complete lost, never had this issue before.