Display driver failed to start, black screen and loud fan noise

Question

Hello everyone, 

I have got a problem with the pc i built 5 months ago and i hope to get some insight about the root of the problem. Never had this problem before but it has occurred twice in the past two days.

Basically, I was gaming when the monitor would show no signal, there is a loud fan sound (GPU fan would be going full powered). I can still hear the game running in the background for a minute. Have to restart pc and the problem would be gone temporarily.  

In the event viewer, i see the warning "Display driver failed to start"-event 4115 and error "The description for Event ID 14 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found" event 14. 

Havent changed anything about the pc and this started happening. I perform the Furmark3D stress test for 20 minutes and the temperature of graphic card was stable at the maximum of 67 degree C so i dont think its a graphic card failure due to intense gaming (had played the game many hours in the past and no problem) 

Build:

motherboard: asrock b250 pro4

graphic card:MSI armor gtx 1060 6GB

PSU Thermotek 650W (the recommendation for the build was around 480W)

It would be great if anyone has had a similar problem and got a solution. 

Also can the display driver failed to start warning be caused by a hardware failure or is it independent of a faulty hardware? 

Would love to read your replies.

Thank you

Answer 1

June 9, 2018 have had the same issues for a month, used DDU from 3DGuru to remove display drivers installed newest driver, appeared to work for 1 hour then same issues came back, unexpected black screen, GPU fan full max, and a hard reboot to bring back to normal operations.

EVGA 1070 hybrid

WIN 10 1803(OS build 17134.48)

Gigabyte UD3 Ultra

NVIDIA driver 389.11

Answer 2

I have had the failure in safe mode today, really! I was in safe mode and it failed....

Answer 3

I also have the same problem, including the fan going full throttle.  Also, when this happens, this computer cannot be accessed by other computers on the network.  So this problem has NOTHING to do with the display driver.  The message is simply what the computer software interprets the problem to be.  The fact that the fan speed can no longer be controlled and the computer cannot be accessed over the network is evidence that the Windows program has ceased to operate.  I don't know the answer, but I am expecting another call back tomorrow by a Microsoft tech.  This person will be the third level of escalation.  I'll report back if the problem gets solved.

Answer 4

Having the exact same issue with my comp.  Built it back in March, ran fine fine until June when i got my first Driver failed to start error. Black screen, fan goes full throttle, have to do a hard reboot.  I took it to my local PC rapair shop and they could not isolate the issue. They said its possible it may be caused by the monitors or even the video cables. Unfortunately this was not the case, i tested two monitors and cables and the error is still happening.  My last option is to do a clean install of windows but i doubt that will work because i believe windows is the cause of this.  If anyone discovers a fix PLEASE post it.

Answer 5

I've literally given up gaming altogether because of this issue. I cannot even play for half an hour the games I used to play for hours on end without a glitch on Windows 7. Enter Windows 10 and its disastrous updates. Suddenly my "display driver failed to start", and then the same happens to my onboard video, and then comes MS Basic Display Driver and now I don't have a proper computer anymore. Windows 10 has destroyed my computer life. Maybe that is MS's plan. To make people stop using computers.