GPU prevents laptop from booting
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- During boot, there's this moment after the spinning circle that the screen powers off (not just gets black, but stops working at all), and after half a second it turns back on and shows blank black screen. Well, starting today, my laptop freezes after turning screen off, and it never gets back on.
- I booted in safe mode and it works.
- I disabled Geforce GPU in device manager and rebooted normally (not in safe mode) and it works.
- Reinstalling driver doesn't help.
Windows 10 64-bit, Geforce 940MX, Acer Aspire E15. It worked fine earlier today.
Currently I can use my laptop just fine, but only with integrated GPU which is not good enough for my games. What can I do to fix the problem, aside from reinstalling Windows?
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Rollback to a previous version of the drivers?
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@tsaukpaetra I tried one of the 60 versions between the driver I had and release of my video card and it didn't help - same issue.
Any particular version you recommend checking out?
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@gąska said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
@tsaukpaetra I tried one of the 60 versions between the driver I had and release of my video card and it didn't help - same issue.
Any particular version you recommend checking out?
No, just thinking maybe Windows aut0-updated them and broke something.
If you didn't make any other software changes, and Windows Update doesn't say it did anything (and rolling back to previous versions doesn't help), I'm wondering if the GPU is dead?
It's possible a reflow might help, but that's not an easy thing to do especially if you don't know what you're doing (it essentially involves separating the MB from the laptop and baking it to soften the solder points on the GPU to "reflow" the solder back onto the pins).
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@tsaukpaetra I'd rather keep to software solutions, despite knowing what you're talking about, how it works and why it's usually a bad idea.
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@gąska said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
@tsaukpaetra I'd rather keep to software solutions, despite knowing what you're talking about, how it works and why it's usually a bad idea.
That's why I'm worried it might not be a software problem. Unless cosmic rays corrupted the bits associated with the driver on disk (in a consistent manner) or some other software change caused it, I'd wager it's a hardware issue.
Easy way to test is to create a Windows To Go workspace (or slap a new install on a spare drive and swap it in) and see if a clean install does indeed work correctly.
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@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
create a Windows To Go workspace
Home Edition.
@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
slap a new install on a spare drive
No spare drives.
Does checking out some Linux LiveCD make any sense? Is there a LiveCD that loads Nvidia's proprietary drivers by default?
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@gąska said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
create a Windows To Go workspace
Home Edition.
@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
slap a new install on a spare drive
No spare drives.
Does checking out some Linux LiveCD make any sense? Is there a LiveCD that loads Nvidia's proprietary drivers by default?
I'm not sure if it's built in, but Nvidia apparently has driver packages for common distros I guess.
I believe you can totally install 10 Home on a flash drive just fine, albeit it will be sloooowwww if it's less than USB 3.0. Here's an example Google result that uses a GUI tool to run the necessary commands:
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@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
@gąska said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
create a Windows To Go workspace
Home Edition.
@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
slap a new install on a spare drive
No spare drives.
Does checking out some Linux LiveCD make any sense? Is there a LiveCD that loads Nvidia's proprietary drivers by default?
I'm not sure if it's built in, but Nvidia apparently has driver packages for common distros I guess.
I believe you can totally install 10 Home on a flash drive just fine, albeit it will be sloooowwww if it's less than USB 3.0. Here's an example Google result that uses a GUI tool to run the necessary commands:
Similarly, Linux LiveCDs can usually be installed to a USB drive as well, and will probably work a little bit faster than Windows on a non-USB 3.0+ port. Doing so will allow you to install the drivers if not already present and then test.
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Side note, accomplishments I'm somewhat proud of: Installing Windows 7 + Office 2010 (IIRC, may have been 2007) on a 4 Gb flash drive, and installing Windows 10 on a 7 Gb partition (thanks UEFI).
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@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
Side note, accomplishments I'm somewhat proud of: Installing Windows 7 + Office 2010 (IIRC, may have been 2007) on a 4 Gb flash drive, and installing Windows 10 on a 7 Gb partition (thanks UEFI).
How?
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@dreikin said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
@tsaukpaetra said in GPU prevents laptop from booting:
Side note, accomplishments I'm somewhat proud of: Installing Windows 7 + Office 2010 (IIRC, may have been 2007) on a 4 Gb flash drive, and installing Windows 10 on a 7 Gb partition (thanks UEFI).
How?
Magic! For the first though, Tiny7 was the key here, the modder stripped out tons of stuff to reclaim room, but on the consumer hacker viewpoint it works just fine.
For the second, WIMBOOT is your friend. Yes, technically MS says it's not supported, but they only say that because it's basically non-upgradable through Windows Update, so feature upgrades can never be applied.
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So, some Windows updates installed. Computer was still booting afterwards, so I tried enabling Geforce in Device Manager. For the first three seconds, the mouse was very jittery, and then computer froze. Reproduced twice. So it's not strictly booting issue.
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Is it under warranty? (Probably not if you had 60 versions of the driver sitting around, but it should be asked.)
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Found this: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/884335/nvidia-geforce-driver-causes-windows-10-to-freeze-crash/
Sounds like the exact same issue, except I didn't try disabling Intel card yet. Downloading Intel drivers now, later gonna try update BIOS.
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Didn't work.
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How to Run a Portable Version of Windows from a USB Drive
