Did it happen that you installed the control software for the graphics accelerator, but upon rebooting, the system, as they say, “crashed” and instead of a usual greeting displayed a black screen. Why did the driver crash after installing the driver? In the general sense, the problem lies precisely in the driver itself, which is not suitable for the model of your video card, however, you should not discount some other factors either. Let's try to understand what is happening and try to find the optimal solution that allows you to quickly resolve the problem.
Black screen after installing drivers: causes
There is no doubt that the black screen appears precisely because of the mismatch between the control software (driver) and the installed video card, since it is the graphic chip that is the main element that is responsible for displaying graphic information on the screen when the operating system starts. It’s still necessary to rejoice that the blue screen did not appear, otherwise it is much more difficult to fight the elimination of the consequences of its appearance. It happens, however, that the screen gradually darkens when the games start. In the end, it turns completely black, and the system hangs tight.
But what, in fact, is the reason for this phenomenon? A black screen after installing the drivers may appear in several cases, but among the root causes that caused such a failure, the following are usually distinguished:
- the driver does not match the model of the video card;
- the installed driver is damaged initially;
- the necessary components are not fully installed;
- the driver installation procedure is not followed (for cases when the device has both a discrete and integrated accelerator);
- incorrectly installed game or program;
- system components are damaged.
Despite such an impressive list of problems, for almost all situations it is possible to offer several universal solutions that almost always eliminate failures of this kind.
A black screen appears after installing the video driver: what to do first?
So, first of all, if you have installed Windows 7 and below, when you turn on your computer or laptop after the start window disappears, you need to press the F8 key several times, which brings up the start menu. In the eighth and tenth modifications, this technique does not work, so in the best case, you will have to use removable media with the distribution kit and, through system recovery, get to special boot options.
In the menu itself, for starters, you can select the download point of the last working configuration. It is possible that in this way it will be possible to bring the system to life, after which it will be possible to tackle the problematic driver.
How to roll back a non-working system?
But let's assume that the system did not boot, and instead, after installing the drivers, the black screen appeared again. Reboot the computer again, go to the start menu and select safe boot (Safe Mode). If the system loads its own graphical interface, call the “Control Panel” and go to the recovery section.
After starting the applet, either accept the rollback offer from the proposed recovery point, or display the entire list and select the one that preceded the failure.
What to do with a broken driver?
If you have a black screen after installing the AMD driver or any other model of video card, you will have to perform a few simple steps on a loaded system.
Call the standard “Device Manager” (devmgmt.msc), through RMB go to the properties of the problem adapter and click the rollback button on the driver tab. It may well be that a return to using the old driver will fix the problem.
Installing the driver using proprietary software
If you get a black screen after installing the NVIDIA driver, but the previous methodology did not give a positive result, you will first have to use the Display Driver Uninstaller utility to remove the existing driver.
Do not overload the system yet and do not pay attention to various messages from Windows that new hardware has been found. Now download the latest driver from the manufacturer’s official website, exactly matching the model of your accelerator and the bit depth of the operating system (usually installers are delivered as EXE files). Then, in Windows 7 and above, run the installer as administrator, but do not agree with the recommended parameters, but select manual installation.
In the list, check all the components that are there, and confirm the start of the installation process.
Finding the exact driver for your graphics adapter
Now let's see what measures can be taken in case a black screen appears after installing the driver for non-standard equipment that does not have the Microsoft support declared. In this case, of course, the easiest way is to use a special software disk. If it is not, you can give preference to automated applications that can update drivers (and absolutely all devices, and not just for video cards) like Driver Booster, or install the necessary software from the DriverPack Solution suite.
In the case of manual installation and the presence of two graphic chips on the computer, the discrete card driver is installed first, and only after that similar operations are performed for the built-in (integrated) chip.
If you still can’t find the driver, go to the “Device Manager”, call the properties section through the PCM on the video card, display the hardware ID on the details tab, copy the longest line with the identifiers DEV and VEN (usually it is listed first), and then search for the necessary driver using this information, then download and install the control software yourself.
What if nothing helps?
Finally, let's discuss what can be done if none of the solutions listed above give an effect. First, check the video card for operability. It may well be that she just failed. Secondly, in the start menu of the system boot, try disabling the verification of digital signatures of drivers (this applies specifically to cases with non-standard equipment), and then reinstall the driver. Thirdly, just in case, check the system components through the command line using the sfc / scannow combination for this . But I hope that this will not come to this, and the above methods will fix your problem.
Note: if a similar phenomenon is observed when passing or starting the game, try reinstalling it. It also does not hurt to abandon pirated assemblies and put the official version, and then experiment with the screen resolution and FPS settings (you may have to lower them a little, because the card just can not cope with the load).