Windows 10, monitors lose signal and PC freezes

Posted in PC Matters on Feb 23rd, 2018

My pc began to lose signals to monitors and freeze following a power cut. The issue got progressively worse over time. Tried a few of following to no avail:

1. Updated graphics card drivers

2. Removed graphics card from device manager and reinstalled

3. Physically removed graphics card, cleaned and reinstalled

In desperation, I tried a fix from answers.microsoft.com that was suggested for what seemed to be a different issue and the fix for the old Vista windows release.

Quote

“ Problem: a thing called TDR checker monitors the computers hardware, particularly the GPU, is say the GPU stops responding with the computer for 2 seconds TDR checker restarts the driver. The TDR checker was good on paper but did not work in the real world. as a gpu can stop responding when it is working hard. “

The first fix of setting TdrDelay to 8 seconds worked beautifully for me as the system has been stable for the last 72 hours. Hopefully I will never have to try the 2nd fix.

I have copied the fix here in case the thread ever gets removed:

Quote

Here is the solution
Exit all Windows based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Search box, and then double-click regedit.exe from the results above. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Browse to and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002 (sometimes called ControlSet001) \Control\GraphicsDrivers

On the Edit menu, click New, and then select the following registry value from the drop-down menu specific to your version of Windows (32 bit, or 64 bit):

For 32 bit Windows
Select DWORD (32-bit) value.
Type TdrDelay as the Name and click Enter.
Double-click TdrDelay and add 8 for the Value data and click OK.

For 64 bit Windows

Select QWORD (64-bit) value.
Type TdrDelay as the Name and click Enter.
Double-click TdrDelay and add 8 for the Value data and clickOK.

Close the registry editor and then restart your computer for the changes to take affect.

This puts a delay on the tdr checker of 8 seconds thus the gpu can stop responding for 10 seconds, usually this fixes the problem, if you are still suffering from this issue (after updates or a reinstall of drivers, you know all that annoying driver stuff)
Then do this, do the same thing but instead of “TdrDelay” type “TdrLevel” enter the data value as 0 (it is set to that natively, but double check) then delete the TdrDelay,

Restart

That completely turns off Tdr checker, so now windows 7/vista/8 now works more like windows XP

Posted to answers.windows.com  by Raymond Javier