Black screen whilst in dungeons (display driver failing?)

kroberts · September 2016

After reinstalling ESO, I was able to play without any kind of problems for a long time. But now there's a recurring problem of my screen going black but I'm able to hear the sounds of the game in the background. This almost exclusively only happens during dungeons, either silver or gold pledges. However, there have been a few instances where it happens when I'm running around questing or something like that. Someone mentioned to me that it was my display driver failing. So after doing research to see what fixes it and implementing those fixes, my problem is still happening. I tried the "regedit" thing and downloaded DDU and ran that and still no success. Anyone have any advice or fixes or know which driver update is the most stable?

Nestor · September 2016

First, check a couple of things.

1. Make sure the video card is fully seated. Heat Creep over time can actually unseat the video card. While in there, make sure the power connectors are fully seated.
2. While you have your case side off, take a can of compressed air and blow out the dust from the video card heatsinks. You may want to take your PC outside first, you can thank me later.

If this is a laptop, you can still blow out the dust, but the video card is soldered in. You may need a laptop cooling pad (about $20). Check the bottom of your laptop when you get a black screen, is it really hot to the touch?

Usually, your system will update the video card drivers, and sometimes the newest set is not all that stable. You can try a Driver Rollback from the device manager, or manually install an earlier set of drivers if you have the latest ones.

kroberts · September 2016

This is in a laptop and it was running really hot for a while. I used some canned compressed air and cleaned out the interior and it cleared up all my problems, for a time. Now it's doing this black screen thing but it doesn't feel hot to the touch, but I'll double check the next time I get a black screen, I downloaded Speccy for that very reason. My graphics card is also ancient from when I bought the laptop back in 2011-2012-ish. It's a NVIDIA GTX 560M. Any idea on a stable driver?

kroberts · September 2016

Update: I get black screens while doing delves in Cyrodiil and while running around and questing. Seriously, anyone know of the most stable driver they've had with a NVIDIA GTX 560M?