Black screen running startx

[Frank Eskesen]

Easy to see problem symptom: When running xinit, the full-screen window 
has a white border.

I have an older machine with an "ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770" graphics card.

The problem was either with the NVIDIA Windows display driver or some 
underlying Windows update. Fixing it was a problem:
- Reinstalling a back-level driver *did not* fix the problem.
- Deleting the device driver *did not* fix the problem.
At first, Windows installed a basic windows driver and xinit worked and 
the screen was visible. However, after a short time the window turned 
all white. Examining the "(Control Panel/Device manager)machine/Display 
adapters" showed that the NVIDIA driver had been reinstalled. I found 
(with some difficulty) a Windows tool (wushowhide.diagcab) that's 
*supposed* to prevent driver reinstalls. It found the NVIDIA driver in 
the brief window between when the driver was deleted and before the 
automatic reinstall but *did not* prevent the re-install. Additionally:
   - Control panel delete of all NVIDIA programs (including device 
driver) didn't work.
   - Renaming all "C:/Program Files/NVIDA*" and "C:/Program 
Files/X86/NVIDIA*" folders to "../xxNVIDIA*" folders didn't work.
   (Windows still found "restored" the useless driver from a 
DriverStore/Repository.)

 > Disabling the NVIDIA driver finally fixed the problem. Drastic, but 
at least removing the video card wasn't required.

(Whew.)

On 3/16/2024 5:39 PM, Frank Eskesen wrote:
> When I ran xinit, I got the following events in the Windows event log:
>    Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully 
> recovered.
>
> Kernel diagnostic event: 
> =====================================================
> Fault bucket LKD_0x141_Tdr:6_IMAGE_nvlddmkm.sys_Kepler_3D, type 0
> Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
> Response: Not available
> Cab Id: a6403500-eabe-4cd3-b903-6bb2b419deb1
>
> Problem signature:
> P1: 141
> P2: ffff860f28aef050
> P3: fffff805298bc9b8
> P4: 0
> P5: 0
> P6: 10_0_19045
> P7: 0_0
> P8: 256_1
> P9:
> P10:
>
> Attached files:
> \\?\C:\WINDOWS\LiveKernelReports\WATCHDOG\WATCHDOG-20240316-1657.dmp
> \\?\C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\WER-327258125-0.sysdata.xml
> \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERA8C5.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml 
>
> \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERA8E5.tmp.xml
> \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERA8F8.tmp.csv
> \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WERA956.tmp.txt
>
> These files may be available here:
> \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\Kernel_141_6cdced420649f37203e03acc79a72eda67e51_00000000_cab_efab5333-8f8d-44e4-a528-6ae62b848c4d 
>
>
> Analysis symbol:
> Rechecking for solution: 0
> Report Id: efab5333-8f8d-44e4-a528-6ae62b848c4d
> Report Status: 268435456
> Hashed bucket:
> ============================================================================== 
>
>
> Why this suddenly appeared is a mystery, but it's a Windows mystery. The
> ReportArchive information summary is:
> ReportDescription=A problem with your hardware caused Windows to stop 
> working correctly.
>
> So, the problem appears to in the Windows display driver. Please hold off
> looking at this problem, at least until I can get more usable 
> information.