Diagnosis help, windows 10 black screen

jololkk

New Member
Hello HWiNFO community!

For the past few months I've been having problems with my PC.
It started with me getting a black screen while playing intensive games (the screen went black, the audio glitched and holding the power button down for a few seconds is the only way out).
Then it started happening at less intensive games and finally while using youtube or just chrome. Maybe it's a coincidence, but in a lot of cases it happened when I alt-tabbed out of a game or watched videos at HD, 2x speed and fullscreen.
I assumed that perhaps it's a temperature problem, since I had never cleaned my PC (since 2016). So I cleaned it, and did some tests. It started running a couple of degrees colder, but it still crashed. So probably temperature isn't a cause. (According to various forums it could be anything from a failing CPU, GPU, PSU or short circuits on the motherboard, but I don't know how to check for any of that. (I did run some stress tests for CPU, RAM and GPU, but nothing caused a crash)
Then the crashes just stopped for a month or so even if I went back to playing intensive games. Now they are back. Today I got a black screen just from opening 3 tabs in chrome, but luckily I started HWiNFO before.

I have a bunch more logs from just watching youtube or playing games from the past month, but in that time there wasn't a single black screen for some reason.

Thank you for reading and taking the time.

tldr: please check HWiNFO log and see if you can tell what's wrong.

Specs
windows 10
ASUS B150M-A DDR4 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-6600 Processor
Transcend 8GB DDR4 PC4-17000 2133MHz UDIMM LV 1.2V x2
Seagate 1TB SV35.6 Series 3.5" HDD SATA 6Gb/s 7.200rpm
Transcend 256GB SSD370 2.5" SATA III 6Gb/s (Premium) (main disk)
Cooler Master B700 ver.2 700W ATX Power Supply
Sapphire Nitro Radeon R9 390 8GB with back plate
and another seagate 4TB disk
 

Attachments

  • log12.zip
    28.3 KB · Views: 2
Hi jololkk,

OK, I had a "very quick look" at your logs and they look fine for me (voltages, temperatures, ...). I'm wondering why a "black screen", crashes end typically in a "blue screen". Does "black sreen" mean PC is still running in the background, but "video is not longer updated", how do you know "it's a crash" (?). You can check this with the following test:
  • start HW logging (before: check that PC time is syncronus with some other clock of you)
  • Do something to force crash (gaming, browsing, ...)
  • if crash happens only note the exact time of the "other clock"
  • do at least one minute nothing ...
  • after that period, you can reset the PC with "holding the power button down for a few seconds" (note exact time again)
  • after reboot check the latest entries (last lines) in the HWINFO logfile, which timestamp do they have
    - time of crash -> yes, PC crashed
    - time of "holding power button" -> PC was still running, only video crashed

Independent of this test, if a PC was build "six years ago", I recommend to unplug and plug in again "everything what is possible/movable", because of corrision:
  • all cables on motherboard, grafic card, power supply
  • RAM modules
  • PCI-Slot cards too ... again grafic card, ...
Hope this helps
Tom
 
Hi Tom,

Thank you for looking into this.
By black screen I meant, that the computer is completely unresponsive:
-the monitor goes black (but is still turned on) No blue screen.
-the sound crashes and I only hear loud buzzing (I think it keeps replaying the last bit of sound over and over again).
-the light on my pc case that indicates use of disks doesn't flash anymore
-restart button on my pc case doesn't do anything (except if I react very quickly after the screen goes black and immediately press it)
-pressing the power button also does nothing. Only if I hold it down so the power is cut the pc is turned off.

I will try the test and do the other thing as well and report back.

Thank you again.
Cheers,
Jololkk
 
Hello again.

I performed the test.

Started logging: 23.44
Black screen: 23.48
Definite shut down: 23.56

Ok so to test the crash I just decided to watched a video on youtube. I watched for a minute or so, then decided to try full screen. At that moment the black screen happened. So I left the computer alone, but at 23.56 something happened that hasn't on any crash before. The computer shut down and restarted on its own (at 23.56). I didn't press anything. After the restart the hard drive light was flashing as if it worked, but the screen remained black. The PC responded to both the press of the power button and the restart button, but screen remained black. I shut down and opened the case and unplugged and replugged some cables for main hard drive and pci-e cable for gpu.
I restarted, but nothing changed, then I unplugged the monitor cable from gpu output and plugged it at the motherboard output and now I'm able to access the PC.
Also when I started the PC I was looking at gpu fans and they never started.
I think my GPU just died right now. (I think I've read some forum posts about this model dying on people after a couple of years of use)

Cheers
Jololkk

PS: if I'm without a gpu for some time is there anything I should avoid doing (like watching videos on yt or from hard drive). Obviously no games, but is there anything else that can damage my system?
PPS: I hope that this at least means the crashes will stop lol.
 

Attachments

  • log13.zip
    23.8 KB · Views: 1
Hi jololkk,

your PC should run fine without an explicit GPU! Your processor has internal an "Intel® HD Graphics 530" graphic processor (link).
That's enough for all "internet things", including watching videos on YouTube, no problem. Only gaming will not "work", because of too less performance.

And ... there is nothing you "have to avoid", the CPU is checking it's own temperatures all the time, so performance will be automatically decreased if temperatures will be critical.

Regards
Tom
 
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