Screen goes to black and fans go to full speed when launching games

[OM24]

When I launch certain games I am having an issue where the screen goes to black and the fans in my PC go to full speed. I cannot control the computer at all but the keyboard and mouse are still on. The only way to regain control of the computer is to do a hard shut down by pressing and holding the power button. There is an audible hardware disconnect tone that plays through the PC when this happens and sometimes the audio also crackles for a second just as the screen goes to black.

I have updated to the latest version of Windows 11 and the Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card driver but am constantly facing the issue.

It has only started doing it in the last few weeks and I'm not sure what is causing it.

[BeemerBiker]

Not good.

This happen before updating to windows 11?

Game probably not tested for windows 11 and / or  NVIdia driver may had a bug.

If the game allows disabling or reducing hardware acceleration see if that helps.  This assume you can start the game and set that option if it exists

I have 496.76 DCH driver with my win11 rtx2080.  I just checked and NVidia released 497.009 December 1 for win11 "game ready".  

Maybe "game ready" for spider solitary or plants-vs-zombies ?

[OM24]

Thanks for your reply.

Yeah had the issue on Windows 10 and after not being able to fix it I decided to update to Windows 11 to see if that made any difference. I am suspicious of the Nvidia drivers as it definitely seems to be graphics card related. I even tried switching to the studio driver to see if it made a difference, I'd say it probably crashes even easier now so definitely seems to be related to that.

Running 497.09 game ready driver currently - I did also try the reducing hardware acceleration a few days ago but didn't have the option in the game.

Reading online a few people have mentioned trying a BIOS update but didn't really want to do that unless I absolutely had to.

[itsmyname]

@OM24 -- I am having an issue where the screen goes to black and the fans in my PC go to full speed. I cannot control the computer at all but the keyboard and mouse are still on. The only way to regain control of the computer is to do a hard shut down by pressing and holding the power button. 

That seems to be a hardware-related "crash" of your computer, followed by a reboot.

But, at the start of the reboot, the POST (Power On Self Test) is launched.

One task of the POST is to run the fans at 100% speed, with 100% noise.

If the POST completes successfully, the POST slows-down the fans to "appropriate" levels, based on the internal temperatures (motherboard, processor).

Yes, a "hard-power-off" is necessary.

But, why the POST runs properly after that "hard" reset is a mystery to me.

Have you run the HP Hardware Diagnostics immediately after that "hard" restart, to check for hardware issues?

>  a few people have mentioned trying a BIOS update but didn't really want to do that unless I absolutely had to.

That is wise. Updating the BIOS is not a "cure-all", and there are too many threads in this discussion forum about a failed BIOS Update that turned the motherboard into a "brick".  Ouch!

[OM24]

Thanks for your reply!

So I tried running the hardware diagnostics fast test after the POST you mentioned and it shows no issues with any of the hardware components.

It is very odd, I've been speaking to Nvidia and we tried a clean install of a previous graphics card driver but to no avail. Everything else works fine on the PC, can stream 4K video without any issues but as soon as I try to enter the world of a game the screen goes to black. There was a point last week where it would play for 30-40 mins before it did that but it's gone back to just a few seconds of gameplay now.

I can load all the main menu of a game without issue, so it just seems to be when I try to actually enter the game world as I say.

Yeah that's what puts me off the BIOS update!

[itsmyname]

@OM24 --  I can load all the main menu of a game without issue, so it just seems to be when I try to actually enter the game world as I say.

Almost any video-card should be able to display the main menu, and to display a streamed video -- such work is not "taxing" of all the capabilities of the video-card.  But, when you "step on the gas pedal", and you start to run software that really exploits the full capabilities of a graphics processing unit (GPU), you seem to be crashing.

If you have a "spare" disk-drive, I suggest:

1. disconnect the current disk-drive
2. temporarily connect that spare disk-drive
3. disconnect the Ethernet cable from your computer
4. install Windows onto that spare (no Ethernet cable means no Windows Updates)
5. Install the specific software for the GPU
6. Install your game software package
7. reconnect the Ethernet cable, to update that game software 
8. launch the game
9. does a "fresh" installation (Windows, device-driver, game) still "crash" ?

Maybe, if you have some other similar GPU, repeat the above 9 steps, with that GPU installed, replacing your current GPU.  Does this configuration "crash" ?

Also, run the Windows Event Viewer (from a  Wnidows command line: EVENTVWR ) to see if Windows has recorded any "events" just before it crashed, with any details.