This here is another viewer's broken gaming pc and have a
bit of a confession to make this is actually one of my pcs
I guess I'm kind of sort of a viewer of my own channel I
wanted to stick with the the same title of course for this
playlist but uh yeah I kind of sort of took advantage of the
opportunity to create another one of these videos but the fact
of the matter is I have no idea what's wrong with this thing I
really have no clue I was in the process of setting something up
to run some benchmarks and in the middle of it all the system
refused to post I I don't know why now a bit of backstory this
build here has been repurposed several times in fact if you
remember back to our ryzen 5 g sponsored video in this case
this platform essentially housed that apu now obviously I've
removed that since then because I've got a discreet card in here
now it wouldn't really make much sense to have a 5600g in here
with a powerful graphics card like the 6600xt even though it's
not crazy overkill 68 or 6900xt territory it's still a really
good card especially in 2021 if you can find one for a decent
price and right now most of them are being scalped to living
hell the other thing I replaced here was the cooling solution
for the cpu so now we've got a 120mm aio and if you recall
from our this is what a dead aio pump looks like video well this
is it essentially this is how that build looked when we tested
the dead pump scenario and since then the only thing I've
really done is install graphics drivers that's literally it I
haven't touched anything else I wanted to install graphics
drivers because I wanted to stress the graphics card uh in
something like three mark times so I obviously want the most
up-to-date graphics drivers for such a test and upon rebooting
the system which kind of did on its own the system refused
to post I really don't know what's wrong with it actually
I should clarify it posts but then we get no picture out after
that it's it's a it's a really weird one i'll have to show you
I really hope we can fix this thing I also hope that you have
a chance to learn a thing or two assuming that whatever ends
up being the fix is something you haven't seen before and it
might be that's the joy of this playlist you never know what
you're going to get stay with me oh maze is hosting a chance to
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I'm going to make it a point to not treat this video any
different than I would any other episode in the fix or flop
playlist the only real caveat here is that this is my system
not someone else's I do know the symptoms and they are repeatable
no matter what I try no matter how many times I reset I cannot
get this particular symptom that I'm seeing and you'll see it
in a second to disappear also for those who don't know what
this playlist is about we reach out to folks in and around the
orlando florida area and offer to fix their systems for free
so long as they're okay with us filming these processes we
don't charge them anything we can monetize these videos and
I don't feel like offloading any of that cost to them I
just prefer them to be happy maybe spread the word and we
get other people submitting inquiries about having their
builds fixed and we can continue making these videos so you
know the cycle repeats that's the idea anyway and even if I
was charging there's no way I really could justify charging
myself that's a bit weird so I do know the symptoms but that's
as far as I've gone I figured why not make a fixture flop
video because I'm as in the dark as you guys are at this point
so here's what happens power on the system and everything
looks fine at first now there is a debug a series actually
of debug leds at the top right of this board i'll show you
those up close here in a second but the system posts right we
get to that that's great now it says preparing automatic
repair because I've reset this thing so many times let me get
my keyboard so we get to this point we click restart and you
know the computer does what it normally does at this point I
would expect it to post right there's nothing wrong with the
system in fact again I was only installing a graphics driver
before all of this happened so I know the system works we used
it before in the aio video it's the exact same build and uh yeah
you just get this a black screen
no I mean like you know if it really shouldn't be this
complicated if you install graphics drivers on a system
that has no previous graphics drivers okay and you restart
your system you would expect the system would work right but we
don't get that here instead we get a very confusing debug led
notification I don't I don't know what this is maybe someone
else knows I can't find this anywhere in the motherboard
anywhere else online in fact I've looked all over forums to
find this exact symptom it's a no avail so I'm going to reset
the system so you can see how the debug led cycle so that
light there that red light is a cpu light that white light was
the vga light and that green light you see there is the boot
light that's what you want to see that's good stuff but then
we get to this part here where the bootlight shuts off and
yeah nothing still nothing still nothing by the way screen's
black and there we go amber led orange led whatever color you
want to call it it just flashes now that led indicator is for
dram of all things what the heck why would dram be causing
this specific issue now I've tried multiple monitors multiple
ports including these display ports over here we get nothing
and while I would normally try plugging the hdmi cable directly
into the motherboard this cpu the ryzen 5 2600 assuming again
it's a 26 I'm not sure if the 2600 or 3600 but either way
neither of those chips has an integrated graphics processor
which means we'll get no picture out no matter what so
if the only thing I did prior to experiencing this issue was
install graphics drivers is it possible that my graphics card
is to blame should we swap this out first I think what I'm going
to do first only because we've got the debug led telling us
that it's the blame I'm going to switch out dram you can't
go wrong with corsair vengeance lpx memory we'll try just one
stick in multiple slots to see if that fixes the issue by the
way this build was using two silicon power ddr4 sticks these
were actually pretty cheap which is why I wanted to throw them
in our budget 5600g build at the time it'd be a shame if uh
this was to blame but alas with this dim that we know works in
slot a2 as a standalone ddr4 stick we still get the same
issue blinking ddr4 amber led and same thing for the dim in
slot b2 so we don't have a case here of a dead memory channel
and we're still stuck with this black screen after the system
post again i'd be a little less concerned if this happened
before the system post like maybe we've got a black screen
the whole time like it never turned on but it does and then
it doesn't so is this software related that's what I'm really
not looking forward to it would obviously make sense right to
assume that something software related went wrong especially
after installing graphics drivers graphics software I
suppose no one should really be surprised by that but why
is the dram led light blinking the way it is I don't get it
it's obviously not ddr4 related because we swapped out those
modules with perfectly working ones in fact we just stuck to
a single dimm in case there was a dead channel and still
nothing but if it is software related how on earth would we
get around this I mean we can't get into the operating system to
fix what is probably wrong with the operating system which is
why it's not booting so what I think this is because it posts
and then the screen goes black is it's trying to initialize the
boot drive and for some reason it can't I suppose we could try
clearing the cmos but I don't really think that's gonna this
doesn't really have to do with any bio setting I mean whatever
we can try it I don't think it's gonna work if it does I'm gonna
feel really stupid a few moments later still nothing so what are
we gonna do here we can't get into the operating system so we
can't change software settings or software settings that are
os dependent maybe we could just swap the graphics card I don't
really know what that's going to do we do obviously have at least
I think we have radon graphics drivers installed we should have
them installed because that's the last thing I did before
the system craft itself but swapping to a gt710 though it's
far from optimal will at least give us a chance to get into
the operating system if we can get there we can then ddu and
start fresh I think that'll fix the problem long term I just I
don't really know what else to try at this point I could also
try putting the 5600g in here just booting from integrated
graphics seeing if that works so we'll try the discrete card
first because that's a little easier and then we'll move on
to the apu if we need to let's disconnect supplemental power
slide this card on out and slide our puny gt710 in which again
we've confirmed works will this work that is the big question
I'm hoping that whatever drivers supposedly corrupted this card
preventing it from working properly are exclusive to this
card the fact that we switched to nvidia here might yeah there
we go that's it so there's proof and I'm still kind of baffled
by this there's proof that just by using amd auto detect
and allowing the drivers that amd says you should install
to be installed it's possible you might end up with a black
screen and if you don't have a secondary graphics card laying
around or maybe you don't have an integrated graphics processor
in your cpu you could be sol and that's that's really not good
um it's not a very common thing this is probably the first time
I run into it that I can recall but I I just I don't know I'm
at a loss for words it's a very strange issue for something
software related to mimic hardware symptoms you might
be willing to bet that a lot of folks troubleshooting this
exact issue we're experiencing would have concluded this
graphics card was bad and I'm not saying that to try to
toot my own horn or put myself in a certain light I'm just
speaking very matter-of-factly here most people aren't going
to go this deep into the troubleshooting they're going
to see that the card is not sending a picture out when the
windows boot volume is loaded and they're going to conclude
that the graphics card is bad now there are a few telltale
signs that should dissuade you from concluding that it's
graphics card and that's what I want to talk about here so if
you experience something like this in the future you'll know
where to look this board has again those four debug leds for
whatever reason the dram led was the one flashing when we
got the no picture out scene that you would see after the
post you would expect that the vga light would be the light
to flash in this scenario right I mean it ultimately was the
graphics card right or at least the driver associated with the
graphics card because swapping it to a gt710 fixed the issue
you have to understand what these debug leds are designed
to do they are there to test the integrity of the hardware
they are not there and there's no way that they could ever test
the software baked into a boot volume because these drives I
haven't been initialized yet right which is why when you turn
your system on right away you're only getting vga drivers you're
not getting the the full like 4k you know crazy high refresh rate
experience that you would when you boot into windows because
by then your graphics drivers have kicked in they don't kick
in before that because your boot volume hasn't been initialized
and that's where your graphics driver is installed so because
the vga light wasn't flashing that should tell us there
is nothing inherently wrong with the integrity of this
card physically hardware wise everything is fine and we still
get picture out when we post which means that something
is happening when the windows boot drive or boot volume is
initialized what is on the boot volume that would suddenly
prevent this card from working the graphics driver right so
when the graphics driver kicks in we suddenly get no picture
out that should tell us that it's the graphics driver itself
to blame and not the cards so you have to think a bit
intuitively about this before just quickly jumping on the
bandwagon that you know your card is dead oh my graphics
card died I need a new one how many times you want to bet
that's been to blame here when in reality the cards were just
fine so what we're going to do is ddu everything we're going
to completely new graphics drivers of any kind and then
allow the system to shut itself down and then at that point we
can safely swap back in our rx 6600 xt so we have amd selected
it's important we see radon graphics here this is what we
suspect is to blame and we're going to want to click clean
and shut down because remember we still have our gt710 in here
now I'm crossing everything I got this works otherwise I will
be at a total loss just um at a dead end at this point if this
doesn't fix the issue we're probably gonna have to just
swap the drives out I don't know what else to do we know it's
not motherboard or cp related it's not power supply related
it's just uh graphics drivers and the graphics card okay that
was really quick wow all right so it works now let's um cross
our fingers when it comes to reinstalling graphics drivers
and hope we don't totally fry our system so this software is
really cool because if you're not sure about what uh driver
to install this will kind of suggest it for you as you can
see rx 6600 xt we've got the recommended I'm assuming this
is the driver version here and we're just going to click
install same as last time and all right that's great I always
uncheck this and we'll click restart let's hope we don't
have the same issues last time now that is what I'm talking
about well over 100 fps and 1080p and dirt 5 uh this is
how i'd expect this system to perform and we actually can get
it to perform now because we were able to get a successful
graphics driver install this time around still not sure what
exactly happened the first time I didn't do anything differently
you saw what I did it's a very straightforward installation
process but yeah for whatever reason it didn't work the first
time and hopefully if you run into this in the future this
video will show you how to get around it unfortunately unless
you have an apu in your rig this will probably require another
graphics card that's why I keep this gt710 handy because it's
so cheap and it really helps it really kicks in in cases
where your cpu doesn't have an integrated graphics processor
and all that's left to do now is swap back in our original
kit of ddr4 wow how eventful I'm really glad I decided to make
this a full-fledged fix or flop episode I know I'm not again
a conventional viewer I'm not doing this for someone else in
the area but hopefully this was still a learning experience for
some maybe just entertaining I definitely learned a thing or
two I've never had an issue that I can recall with amd's auto
detect tool I never have and I've used it for almost every
amd graphics card I've put into a system with the exception of
the few that are sent before public release I have to use
beta drivers in those cases but it's it's a shame that this
happened with the autodetect tool but I think it's a very
rare isolated thing it's likely it might have been corrupted
by some other program that was on the drive who knows the fact
is ddu got rid of it for us and we fortunately had an extra car
to throw in to allow us to get into the operating system we
didn't need to reinstall windows that would have that would have
sucked so if your system posts you get a picture through your
graphics card but then when windows starts to load up from
your boot drive your screen goes black might be a sign that
your graphics drivers nuked all right that's the conclusion I'm
drawing from this I think once we narrowed down what the issue
probably was it was fairly easy to fix we just needed that gt710
in there can any other graphics solution would have worked
including I expect an apu so if you had a 5600g in here or a
2400g or whatever you could have just booted directly into that
and then you could have swapped your graphics card back in once
you ddu'd but uh you have to get into your operating system
in order to display driver uninstall so it's kind of a
catch-22 there and that's again another reason why I recommend
just having a really cheap burner card if you run into
issues like this often maybe you're building pcs quite a bit
for clients or just for yourself or family members having a cheap
graphics card will come in handy if you suspect that the card
already in your system is to blame or maybe again like in
this case you just have a faulty driver for whatever reason it
just decided not to play well with the card in the system
and to get around that you have to remove the card so that the
graphics driver doesn't see the card and create whatever issue
it was creating so yeah things became quite clear at least for
me once we got around the ddr4 led blinking thing I don't know
that that totally took us in the wrong direction we swapped
ram for really no reason but uh it was quick it didn't take too
long it didn't take too much of our time in the troubleshooting
process so it's not like it was a huge loss there and it was
more or less narrowing down what could be to blame I suspected
either the graphics card or the ddr4 based on the symptoms
we were seeing but uh once we narrowed it down to the card
we could have just stopped and if we had stopped at the card
we would have wanted to rma the card right it takes several
days two weeks it's just a big hassle if your card's not broken
why would you want to rma it so doing a bit more investigation
thinking a bit intuitively about how this card is behaving how
we get picture out for the post but we don't get picture out
when the boot drives initialize tells us that it's probably not
the card itself but whatever software is on the boot drive
that's trying to initialize or take advantage of the card
that being the graphics driver in this case dduing easy as
that once we had the gt710 in there fix the issue now what
more can I say if you guys enjoyed this one be sure let
me know in the comment section below give this one a thumbs
up consider subscribing if you haven't already and I suppose
i'll catch you in the next one we do I think have one more
fixer flop episode in season one and we'll be kicking off season
two pretty soon probably right after christmas probably early
january we'll start season two a fixer flop we do have many
entries in the queue so i'll try to load up as many of those
ahead of time so you don't have to wait too long in between
episodes my name is Greg thanks for troubleshooting with me