Occasional bootup problem (W10)

[Hoofy]

I'm having a strange problem that doesn't always occur.

When it's fine,
Monitor 1 looks like this:

and then it loads into the W10 screen

Monitor 2 is blank (no signal).

When it's not fine,
Monitor 1 is blank (no signal).

Monitor 2 looks like this:

and pressing any of the buttons has no effect.

Switching it off at the back and holding the Power On button on the front for about 10 seconds clears it.

Any idea why this is occurring and how I can stop it?

I had the PC built a year ago, it's always done this. The builder said it's fine???

I have re-seated the memory chips and checked all the cables are securely in place.

[FunkyGibbon]

do you have a usb stick in the machine when this randomly happens?

[toohuge]

Do you have a separate graphics card?

[Hoofy]

FunkyGibbon said:

do you have a usb stick in the machine when this randomly happens?

No. And external HDD isn't connected.

[Hoofy]

toohuge said:

Do you have a separate graphics card?

Yes. GeForce GTX 750 Ti.

Edited by Hoofy on Thursday 6th January 12:21

[FunkyGibbon]

Hoofy said:

No. And external HDD isn't connected.

That probably rules out the boot order of the bios then.

[Robotron70]

Turn off fast boot.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows...

Caused me quite a few boot issues on my Dell pc’s in the office.

[Hoofy]

Robotron70 said:

Turn off fast boot.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows...

Caused me quite a few boot issues on my Dell pc’s in the office.

Already did that. It did help a little bit but it still happens.

[some bloke]

I had an issue a while back with random BSOD - drove me nuts. I suspected it was RAM and was reading the mobo hand book, and noticed that the ram combo I had was supposed to be set at a certain speed. I set it to that instead of auto and it's been fine ever since.

[Hoofy]

some bloke said:

I had an issue a while back with random BSOD - drove me nuts. I suspected it was RAM and was reading the mobo hand book, and noticed that the ram combo I had was supposed to be set at a certain speed. I set it to that instead of auto and it's been fine ever since.

I've not had BSOD (yet!). Just a problem when starting it. Oh, I've tried it with just one stick of RAM, too, and still got the error.

[2fast748]

Strange:

Graphics card being inconsistent? Showing it's age?
Maybe change monitor cables? You'd be surprised...
Check motherboard BIOS for firmware updates?
Latest nvidia drivers installed?
Reset BIOS to factory defaults for a bit if you've changed any of them.

[Hanslow]

Is one driven by the motherboard/chip mounted GPU and the other by your discrete Nvidia card? Is it perhaps a motherboard race condition at startup? Do you have the capability in the BIOS to disable onboard video and rely solely on your Nvidia GPU for all video, including BIOS interaction?

[Hoofy]

Thanks for all the replies btw.

2fast748 said:

Strange:

Graphics card being inconsistent? Showing it's age?
Maybe change monitor cables? You'd be surprised...
Check motherboard BIOS for firmware updates?
Latest nvidia drivers installed?
Reset BIOS to factory defaults for a bit if you've changed any of them.

Graphics card seems fine - play BF3 most evenings at quite a high res.

I'll have a look to see if I have spare cables.

BIOS firmware updates - I've never done this before. Could I accidentally brick the PC?

Nvidia drivers - will check.

BIOS settings - not changed anything AFAIK!

Hanslow said:

Is one driven by the motherboard/chip mounted GPU and the other by your discrete Nvidia card? Is it perhaps a motherboard race condition at startup? Do you have the capability in the BIOS to disable onboard video and rely solely on your Nvidia GPU for all video, including BIOS interaction?

Both monitors via the card.

I'll have a look at that BIOS idea.

[Hanslow]

Out of curiosity, do you have a single cable from the video card to one monitor, which is then daisy chained to the next, or are there two cables out of video card, one to each monitor?

[CorradoTDI]

Hanslow said:

Is one driven by the motherboard/chip mounted GPU and the other by your discrete Nvidia card? Is it perhaps a motherboard race condition at startup? Do you have the capability in the BIOS to disable onboard video and rely solely on your Nvidia GPU for all video, including BIOS interaction?

^ I was going to suggest the same and also update the BIOS

Also I'd re-seat / swap cables around and maybe re-seat the card.

[Hanslow]

Doing a bit more reading around this, yep work really isn't grabbing me at the mo, other people have had similar issues when Fast Boot has been enabled in the BIOS. There's no given reason as to why it's given them issues, but they all seemed to be happier when they disabled Fast Boot. Depending on the difference it makes time wise, that might also be something you want to play with and see if it has a positive effect for you.

[Hoofy]

Hanslow said:

Out of curiosity, do you have a single cable from the video card to one monitor, which is then daisy chained to the next, or are there two cables out of video card, one to each monitor?

One cable for each monitor coming out of the video card. One VGA, the other DVI. This has worked fine for my old PC.

[Hoofy]

CorradoTDI said:

^ I was going to suggest the same and also update the BIOS

Also I'd re-seat / swap cables around and maybe re-seat the card.

Thanks. Oh yes, already re-seated the graphics card.

[Hoofy]

Hanslow said:

Doing a bit more reading around this, yep work really isn't grabbing me at the mo, other people have had similar issues when Fast Boot has been enabled in the BIOS. There's no given reason as to why it's given them issues, but they all seemed to be happier when they disabled Fast Boot. Depending on the difference it makes time wise, that might also be something you want to play with and see if it has a positive effect for you.

It did display thing issue less often. I do feel like it's happening almost daily now whereas about 6 months ago it was once a week.

[Hoofy]

Right, there was a new driver released in December 2021 so I'll test that for a couple of days and see if everything behaves as it should.

Will update and work through the other recommendations. Thanks all.