Random black screen, reboot only way to restore desktop

About 2 months ago, I bought an ASUS RTX 4070 Super OC and a Samsung 24" 1080p 144hz display. The display was running fine until about a week and a half ago when, during a game, I was randomly dropped back to the desktop, sort of like game focus was lost. I could click on the game in the taskbar and resume. Then about a week ago, I would be randomly dropped to a black screen, no matter whether I was gaming, or looking at the weather. The only way to recover was to reboot.

Looking at the error logs really didn't show anything exact except I saw a couple of times that DWM.exe or the display driver would drop and recover. I did the following:

1. Replaced the HDMI cable. No effect.
2. Replaced the 24" 144hz display with a 21" 60hz display. No effect. Hooked 24" back up.
3. Ran CyberPunk 2077 (ran GPU at 174 F). Game ran fine for an hour.
4. Ran Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 (ran at 130 F). Ran fine for an hour.
5. Left PC overnight at normal Windows idle. Came back the next morning and display had crashed again.
6. Removed HDMI cable and replaced with Display Port cable. Ran fine until the next morning when I had to reboot.
7. Installed nVidia driver 2 back from current version. Black screen/reboot.
8. Installed PCIe power cable from another PSU rail. Black screen/reboot.
9. Did a repair/upgrade of Windows, install of latest nVidia driver. Start game and black screen/reboot.
10. Dropped refresh rate of display/Windows to 60hz. Played games several hours, no issues. Left overnight. Next morning black/reboot.
11. This morning had updates KB890830, 5028705, 5028851, 5026372, and 4023057. After those installed, ran OK for 4 hours then black/reboot.
12. Removed 4070 and installed RTX 2070 Super OC (which I had never ever had a problem with). Started game and immediate black/reboot.

My power configuration is balanced. Problem happens on 2 different graphics cards, 2 different displays. The 4070 ran fine for 2 months, the 2070 for a couple of years. Can't find anything in the error logs other than the DWM or display driver errors either.

I also ran DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth and sfc /scannow but both came back clean.

MY PSU and Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro WIFI mobo are several years old. Could the PSU randomly affect the GPU like this? I don't know what else I can try.

Windows 11 Pro 64bit v22H2 build 22621.1992

V2 and DM log files are greater than 2mb so they won't attach.

rzn6jw said:

2 and DM log files are greater than 2mb so they won't attach.

Click to expand...

You have to zip the logs, upload the zipped files to any cloud storage, then provide a link to the files in this thread.
Blue/Black screen of death posting instructions listed at the top of this forum category.

@rzn6jw You posted the sign in page for google. You need to post a link to the file. Here's how.
1. Using your web browser, go to drive.google.com and log in with your Google account, if necessary. Open your “my drive” and locate the zipped file you uploaded..

2. , right-click the file to open the dropdown menu and click the “share” icon. When you select a file, the “share” icon also appears in the menu bar above the file. Clicking this icon will open the share options.


It will take you to this screen. Click on "COPY Link". Paste the link into this thread. @zbook or someone else proficient will analyze your logfiles.

Google Drive: Sign-in

Thought I had done that. Sorry.

Also, I ran a reliability report and it showed that between 7:54 and 8:54 yesterday morning, QMLRenderer.exe stopped working with exception c0000005 at the same time DWM.exe stopped working with exception 0x8898008d. This was repeated each minute for that specified time period. I attached a small sample (looked like they were in a loop). Until I hit post, the 'Google Drive: Sign-in' was the actual link. I hit post and it changed to what is there now. I clicked on it and it took me to the file.

Calling it a night so if you post something, I'll get back with you in the morning.

MS KB5028185 installed on 7/13. Since then the PC has been running without any issues. Don't know why????????????????????????????
Since we're not getting anywhere on this thread anyway, I'm going to close it as unsolved.