Over the weekend Microsoft pushed out a Windows Update for graphics drivers on some of our customers computers.
This update resulted in disabling some of the monitors leaving some of our customers with only 1 or 2 working screens and all others showing just a blank screen.
To fix the problem the correct graphics driver needs to be reinstalled, this is a quick task and will instantly switch back on all screens.
The steps to complete the driver reinstall are below:
1. Please download the following graphics driver to your computer: https://www.nvidia.co.uk/download/driverResults.aspx/180642/en-uk
2. Once downloaded please double click on the file to being the installation procedure.
3. During the install please select ‘Custom (Advanced)’, then on the next screen please tick the box to ‘Perform a clean installation’.
4. Once the installer completes all screens should switch themselves back on, if they don’t please shut down your PC and then restart it.
Help, All Of My Screens Switched Off
If all of your monitors switched off because of this problem it generally means that you need to move one of your screens into a different graphics port on the back of the PC first.
Take a look at the back of the PC and find where you have your monitors connected, you should see some more monitor ports slightly higher up the back of the case.
Move one, or two of your monitors into these higher ports, that should reconnect those screens and they should start working again, you can then follow the instructions above to get the remaining screens back working.
Why Did This Happen?
Windows Updates happen on your computer all of the time and are generally no problem. Occasionally Windows will update drivers for certain hardware components, like your graphics card.
In your computer are two very similar but slightly different graphics cards, a primary nVidia GT 1030 and then 1 or 2 secondary nVidia GT 710’s.
The problem here is that Windows has put on a new graphics driver for your primary graphics card which is an nVidia GT 1030 however the particular driver they installed will not support a GT 710 card, so it basically switched off your secondary graphics cards.
The fix detailed above puts on a graphics driver which can run both the GT 1030 and the GT 710 cards.
Will This Happen Again?
It is hard to say, it is certainly not unheard of for Windows Updates to cause problems, a large percentage of software problems we see occur after some kind of Windows Update.
Putting on the correct driver like we have done above should block the update from coming through again however we have no control over future Windows updates. The good news is that the fix above should resolve all future issues like this.
We did see a similar issue to this once around 5 – 6 years ago (with different graphics cards) however we have not seen a large scale problem like this since then, so hopefully this means there should be no further issues for the foreseeable future.
If you are suffering any further issues or the steps detailed above don’t work then please contact us and we will get straight back to you.
Written by Darren @ Multiple Monitors
Last Updated: September, 2023