haplo wrote:ok rt here's my computer problem, how do I fix it
every now and then my computer gets in this state where 3d applications stop working. the window will open but it's a black screen that hangs forever (or sometimes the screen never opens at all, but the process is still running in task manager) and I have to kill the application. all 3d applications (games) stay this way until I reset my computer. as a bonus, trying to reset or power off my computer when it's in this state causes Windows to hang on the "resetting..." screen forever and I have to flip the actual the power switch on the tower. after resetting it's good for a while but will randomly happen again. sometimes it's within a day, sometimes it take a week. on a related note, I've never woken up to my computer being in a hung state from windows update trying to reset it - that process has always succeeded
interestingly you can press windows key ctrl shift b to restart your graphics driver. i would do that first. shit goes black try reseting the graphics card. if it comes back great. i suspect that this wont work though because i think maybe windows is trying to reboot it itself
i dunno why i'm suspecting the driver, but it sounds like the graphics driver is failing, right? but if your graphics driver were failing, it wouldn't then only black screen a window, or a game. like, you know what a failing graphics card looks like. there should be effects beyond one window. but then that would be the card itself actually breaking, right? who knows with the driver. and if you can get into task manager then your whole screen isnt going black, which is unfortunate because that'd be easier to troubleshoot.
and i'm guessing the card isn't failing at all / overheating because you'd def be getting more there too, like a bluescreen
edit - you could still get
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html just in case, though
for windows not restarting, again suspect graphics card driver because windows could be infinitely trying to reopen the thing, which it can't do, and so you cant restart your computer because it's in the middle of trying that. do you get anything when windows is restarting? like please close <this> application
in any case we could maybe use the windows event log, or heck maybe there's something else in the windows event log that could help us. i doubt it, but it doesnt hurt to look. fortunately, hard powering off your computer gives us an absolutely fantastic bookmark because your doing that will appear as a windows critical error, or something like that. and then we can just see, like, what's before that event
it would be really cool if you could make the black screen happen because then we could have the error, and then shut down, and then jump into the event log just to see
but, uh, if the ctrl shift b thing doesnt work, probably wont, then you could also just do general stuff and hope for the best, like: run cmd in administration mode -> chkdsk /f -> yes i'll run it the next time windows starts. reboot. get into windows -> cmd admin -> sfc /scannow. and then you could do a pass of rkill and adwcleaner.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/rkill/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
and then even if none of that works, we're at least starting from a pretty clean spot.