Graphics Card Crashing? Losing all video signal while gaming.

Windows Version 2004 (Build 19041.928)

Hey 10forums, been agonizingly trying to figure this out myself over the past few months and I've gotten nowhere, just need help finding some sort of crash/dump file to actually tell me whats going on.

While I'm gaming, randomly and quite inconsistently, my monitors go black, and fan(s) in my computer spin up and get pretty loud. I am still able to hear audio, and keep communicating through discord (Voice chat program), i just lose all video signal, and have to restart the computer in order to get anywhere.

This happens quite inconsistently with a few games (Apex, League), so i'm able to somewhat play them still, however there are specific games (Rocket league, saints row) that crash every time i open them. Regardless of how high/low my video settings are, the games still crash.

I'm led to believe that my graphics card could be failing, however im struggling trying to find any sort of crash log anywhere. I've gone through numerous different drivers over the past few months, kept windows up to date, and nothing changes. Any advice?

In Device Manager,left click on Display Adapter,then right click on Properties and check through the pages.
Next open Reliability History and check for entries covering the problem events,
Go through each entry and select---view tech details----which should give you searchable information regarding the fault[s].
There may also be logs in---control panel>all control panel items>security & maintenance>problem reports.
Perhaps you could shutdown,i.e. power ---Off--- at the wall socket,disconnect all peripherals except for ONE only monitor,mouse and keyboard,then restart and see if the problems return.
Forgot to mention,have only one drive connected if possible.
If this is satisfactory,then reinstall all the hardware,one at a time,to see which,if any,is causing the problems.
Sometimes,trial and error is the better method.
Good luck.

How is your monitor connected to the video card and what type video card is it?
Is your system overclocked?

dorcom said:

How is your monitor connected to the video card and what type video card is it?
Is your system overclocked?

As far as i can remember, no it isn't.
I have 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (EVGA)
Connected via 2x hdmi and a dvi cable, with some adapters inbetween. Do you think the cables could be causing it?

dorcom said:

Yes, cables!

Before you follow any advice or ideas of "tearing down the house and rebuilding it because the front door jams".

Why three cables? And what adapters in between? Anything that cannot handle the required bandwidth can cause a problem.


I had a similar problem like you. I had upgraded two years ago to a Nvidia GTX 1070 TI which is connected to my large 55 inch 4K Samsung monitor.
From time to time it blanked out, the Nvidia drivers had crashed and needed to recover reboot etc. etc. very similar stuff like you experience.
It was the cable, in my case a 6ft HDMI cable from the card to the monitor.
My fault, a $5 HDMI cable "made in China".
Not that everything is bad that's "made in China".
BUT
Not every HDMI cable is the same and there are different ratings.
If you have a cheap or HDMI 1.0 cable you run likely into a problem.
Buy one that is at least rated HDMI 2.0 better yet 2.1

FYI: What you need to know about cable HDMI cables

I bought for $20 an 8K 48Gbps certified ultra high-speed HDMI cable and since then never ever once there was a problem again. Going on into two years now!
As a side kick I also noticed that the mild ghosting on drawings respectively characters I had and attributed to the monitor, was gone and I had a real sharp crisp image.

Let me know how's it going after you upgrade your cable!

I have 3 monitors, listed in my system spec as such. I've tried disabling 2 of them but it doesn't change anything and games still crash. I'll replace all 3 cables and see if that changes anything.

So it's getting worse now, could anyone at all point me to more locations where logs could be?

Tried swapping every cable, reinstalling drivers again. Have done extensive cpu and gpu benchmarks.

For a split second before crashing, i think i saw an error along the lines of my drivers has crashed but recovered or something as well.

SparkyLite said:

So it's getting worse now, could anyone at all point me to more locations where logs could be?

Tried swapping every cable, reinstalling drivers again. Have done extensive cpu and gpu benchmarks.

For a split second before crashing, i think i saw an error along the lines of my drivers has crashed but recovered or something as well.

Event Viewer, Win+R, enter %windir%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s and click OK.