Black Screen After DDU: Graphics Driver Help?

SickleYield

Okay, guys, I did a stupid, stupid thing, and am only now realizing how stupid the thing I did was.  I'm hoping there's still some way to fix it, and that one of you clever people knows it.

I had a problem with rendering in Iray and wanted to update my Nvidia drivers to a known good version.  I downloaded it, downloaded Display Driver Uninstaller, ran it, no problem there.  Then the machine rebooted onto totally black screens, no monitor signal at all, although the keyboard and mouse turned on and off and on in the usual pattern they do when the machine posts.  I can't see the BIOS by hitting delete or a Safe Mode display by hitting F8.  It just stays black.

The Zenith II ROG motherboard has no on-board graphics ports.  I have a GTX 2080 and a GTX 1080.

Things I've tried after combing the internet repeatedly for fixes:

- HDMI to USB adapter to plug into motherboard's usb port.  Result: Black screen.

-Plugged in USB monitor to motherboard to get around the "no graphics ports" problem.  Previously tested USB monitor's plug and play capabilities on laptop, where it worked fine.  Result: Black screen.

-Hit F8 repeatedly to get Safe Mode prompt during startup, hit enter to select first option.  Result: Black screen.

-Starting up and hitting windows + P down down enter with USB monitor in hopes of getting it to show up.  Result: Black screen.

-Reset CMOS using the button on the motherboard.  Result: Black screen.

-Removing both graphics cards, popping out the motherboard battery, putting battery back in, restarting computer, in hopes of getting USB monitor recognized.  Result: Black screen.

 

I am at my wits' end here.  It seems like the onboard graphics are not enabled, but I can't enable them from the mobo without being able to get to the screen; resetting CMOS appears to not help (probably because the "default" or "original" setting of this particular motherboard is to have those onboard graphics OFF, not ON).  

Does anyone have any ideas?  Thank you in advance for reading all this!

PerttiA

"The Zenith II ROG motherboard has no on-board graphics ports"
"It seems like the onboard graphics are not enabled, but I can't enable them from the mobo"

Which is it, does your motherboard have onboard graphics or not?

If you do not see even POST (stuff happening before starting windows), it sounds like the system is using a graphics port which is not used as default.

Remove one graphics adapter from the machine and connect your monitor to the HDMI port on your remaining GPU (some are saying that in these cases the HDMI port is used as default)

EightiesIsEnough

Could it be possible that the OP's computer was a cheap one?  I had tried to install an update in 2017 and I ended up getting a black screen after rebooting, and it turns out the motherboard died prematurely.

The more I see these kinds of threads, the further I want to stay away from the v4.14.

kaotkbliss

Do you have an internal speaker on your motherboard and if so, do you hear a series of beeps when you turn the PC on?

I googled the board and it looks like there is no on-board GPU, do you have an old known-working graphics card you could pop in to see if you can get something to show up on the screen?

kenshaw011267

Ok, this is going to be fairly tedious.

Did you not follow the DDU instructions about running it in safemode in the first place because it sure sounds like you didn't. That reboot during the driver install was caused by having something installed that was using the driver and safemode would have prevented that.

There are no "onboard" graphics so stop messing with the CMOS battery.

That you can't see the BIOS screen says this is not a driver issue, as that is done directly throught the HW.

First power off the entire system and pull the cord.

Disconnect the GPU you have connected to your monitor and remove it from your computer. Connect the monitor to the other GPU. Boot and see if you get the boot screen at least. If you do get into safe mode and finish the driver install. If not power off and unplug. Move the card to a different slot and try again. You can try every combination of card and slot if you're stubborn but IMO 2 should suffice to establish that the motherboard is bricked.

If you've bricked the motherboard contact Asus about RMI.

 

SickleYield

I built it from components for my work renders (I always do, because I want complete control over the hardware).  So, while it was technically less expensive than if I had paid someone else to build it, it was not cheap, and the components are the best I could physically obtain from the research I did at the time.  Like all my machines going back to around 2008, when I was making my first beginner clothes for Victoria 4, it is a labor of love. ^.^

I didn't have a spare gpu to put in.  I've given all the old ones away, because I am already sitting in a throne of keyboards atop a vast pile of cables and components here.  I now see the error of my ways, lol.

The motherboard has no vga or hdmi or dvi graphics port, in the sense that there is nowhere on the board you can plug in a monitor.  It DOES have the same basic onboard graphics with the BIOS that a motherboard usually has (fortunately for me, as it turned out).  Thanks to @PerttiA for the solution that worked and to everyone who pitched in to try and help!

In case anyone else ends up falling down this particular rabbit hole, I ended up causing more problems for myself unintentionally by resetting the CMOS originally.  Yes.  You see, it defaults to a boot setting that is incompatible with Windows 10, so it was sticking at the BIOS stage behind the black screen.  I did not find this out until I followed PerttiA's suggestion of removing one of the GPUs but leaving the other connected with one monitor plugged into its HDMI port, which allowed the POST screen and BIOS options to show, so that I could get into the BIOS, change the boot settings to "Other OS" so it would stop trying to boot with UEFI settings, and then save and exit, allowing me to get into Windows 10, install the new graphics software, and then turn everything off and reseat the GTX 2080 as well and restart.  Now all is well AND Iray is rendering properly with the Nvidia 457.30 driver.  Whew!

The USB screen won't be a total waste of my money.  I'm going to try and rearrange my desktop so I can set it up alongside this laptop, so I can watch full-screen movies while I play full-screen videogames after work and achieve the Lazy Grail.XD

PerttiA

Glad to be of help