So I've had this setup since 2015 and it's my first build. I use a Sanyo 1080i 60hz tv as a monitor and very rarely there are issues where the signal to the tv randomly drops out and the tv claims there is no signal, even though everything's plugged in.
Simply unplugging the HDMI cable and plugging it back fixes that problem though. Today however, I was playing skyrim and my DS4 controller came slightly unplugged and then jumped back to normal. This led to a black screen although I could still hear the sound of the game so I tried simply unplugging the HDMI and putting back as usual. It didn't work this time so I tried a hard restart.
Since that hard restart, my computer has been showing the Bios splash screen and then going to a black screen when trying to boot. I tried resetting the bios via the bios settings, other than that I'm kind of at a loss as to how to troubleshoot this problem because it's never happened to me before and all the threads I find have drastically different scenarios and drastically different solutions.
Do you have any other TV's or monitors to try out? Have you tried hitting F8 to get the menu to boot into safe mode?
You say this all went down after the controller started to come unplugged. Is it possible the machine got jostled by stress caused by the cord being pulled (unless I'm misunderstanding the partial unplugging circumstances)? If that is the case then you might want to reseat memory, graphics cards, drives (do these all show up properly in BIOS?), and all of the wires. It might not be a bad idea to unplug everything not needed to boot (such as the controller) to see if perhaps a bad connection or faulty wire is messing with the system.
If you have any other drives with an OS, or DVD/USB install discs or live distros then you could try one of those to see if the graphics card to TV connection is properly functioning, as it could just be something that has gone wrong with data (drivers?) on the drive.
You could also take the optical drive out of the boot sequence in case it is causing boot up issues that are parallel to the original issue that caused you to do the hard reboot.
I could try tomorrow to test on the living room tv. I just tried the F8 idea and instead of a plain black screen it's now showing blue specks jittering on the screen, kind of like on old burnt film in a theatre you know? Based on that I'm guessing some kind of picture is trying to get through but then again, that wouldn't explain why the BIOS screen comes up perfectly.
I already tried unplugging everything that wasn't necessary. However I am wondering how exactly the GPU would show up in BIOS? I see data for the CPU frequency and RAM frequency, should the GPU frequency have an entry on this same page? Also it's saying that total ram is 8192, but if I remember correctly, usually in task manager and other programs the GPU's VRAM is calculated in with the ram sticks? Maybe the problem is the GPU?
It's pretty late so I'll do the more heavy lifting stuff tomorrow and just try to do what all I can from in the box for now. Let me know if you have anymore ideas before then.
The POST screen from the motherboard BIOS doesn't show any GPU related stats. 8192 MB of RAM would be 8 GB of system RAM and nothing to do with the GPU. Given the graphical artifacts it definitely seems to be a graphics card issue.
Was the system jarred by the controller cable when it came partially unplugged? This seems to be the factor that occurred when the system went down and answering that question would narrow down the problem. Reaseating the graphics card and trying a new/different cable to the TV would be the first things I would try.
If a graphics card 'dies', it generally still works, but has specific issues that it can no longer do correctly. You can have perfect 2D performance but complete 3D failure. It could POST clean and then artifact like crazy and either not make it to a desktop or maybe it does but you can't see it because the card won't render it properly. They can have failures in many different ways where some things look fine and others look terrible or go blank, with or without locking up in the process. I even had one old card that the desktop looked miserable but played 3D games great.
If you leave the system, does it eventually make a startup sound? Does the machine have built in graphics or do you have another video card to replace the suspected bad component with a known good? Do you have a DVI to HDMI adapter or cable to test out other graphics devices should they not have an HDMI port? When you hit F8, did it show the menu? Did you try safe mode to see if you could get to a desktop? Do I ask way too many questions???
Yeah, switch HDMI cable, switch display, try running a single stick of RAM, then try the other one. If nothing works disconnect drives, cards, USB thingies and whatever isn't needed to just boot into the OS. If that does not work, disconnect the OS drive, plug in a live distro and check if that does anything.
When turning on the system I hear 2 short beeps and looking up the manual for my Motherboard, that message is supposed to refer to "Memory Parity Check Error"
