Asus Strix 1060 drivers causing black screen

Tumatauenga · September 19, 2018

PC Specs

Basically, if I attempt to install any driver except 388.13, Windows will boot to a black screen. The caps lock and num lock keys on my keyboard will stop responding and I'm forced to hard reset, enter safe mode and use DDU to remove the driver. The same thing happens on Ubuntu (although they don't have driver 388.13). Any Nvidia proprietary driver I install loads me into a black screen with the same problem (very frustrating considering the release of Proton requires the newest driver) rendering me incapable of utilising Valves new Steam Play features on Linux.

To add to that problem, if my Dell (E2313H) monitor isn't connected or is disabled in the display settings. Windows will crash... Which is a huge problem considering it's been broken for months (water damage caused loss of picture on the screen, although it powers on etc). It's fine being switched off, but if it is disconnected (even if I just connect 1 of my other monitors) Windows will freeze and reboot my PC anywhere from seconds to 5 mins after booting. That problem doesn't happen in safe mode, nor once I've removed driver 388.13 and it doesn't happen in Ubuntu with the open source drivers either.

I've had this issue for over a year (since I got this Mobo/CPU/GPU).

I've tried fully updating windows (last time I updated it was causing issues with a number of things so I rolled back) which didn't fix the problem. Tried numerous drivers from Nvidia, Asus and even letting windows update issue drivers. I've tried using just 1 stick of ram (tried all of them), updating my Mobo bios, different ports on my GPU, using 1 monitor (tried them all prior to 1 dying), the graphics ports on my Mobo. I'm really not sure what to do next, it's very frustrating.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tumatauenga · September 19, 2018

Since my Strix is the factory overclock version, I grabbed the VBIOS from the non factory overclocked version (86.06.0E.00.08) and flashed that onto the card.

The good news is that it has fixed the issue with drivers not working. I was able to update to the newest drivers on Windows 10 and was even able to install the newest proprietary driver on Ubuntu. The bad news is that the weird crashing if the broken monitor isn't connected issue hasn't gone away and even worse, has now started in Ubuntu :s.

Is there any way to fix that issue short of sending the card back? I'd really like to avoid that if it's at all possible.