Screen goes black & internet connection is lost

[Sarovas]

Hi everyone,

I have been playing Cyberpunk for over 1.5 years and almost never had any issues whatsoever. However, since patch 2.0, I have a very weird issue I just cannot fix with whatever method I use:

When I boot up the game, initially everything looks good and the logo comes up. But as soon as the intro video is (supposed to be) played, my screen goes black. The weird thing: Not only will the monitor turn black, it seems as it turns off completely - the power LED is on, but the screen itself is not working at all. In random periods of time (sometimes 2 seconds, sometimes 60), the monitor will briefly display the game. Sometimes, the game shows the issue at startup, but I can get it to work for a couple of minutes until it goes black again. I have tested this on two different monitors, the issue persists.

To make it even weirder: My internet connection is lost on ALL devices in my home. My PC is connected via WiFi, as are other devices (laptops, phones etc.). When I have the black screen issue, NO device is able to connect to the internet anymore. You can see why this is all highly confusing to me.

My temps are normal, GPU @ approx. 70-75 C, CPU @ approx. 50-60 C.

The fixes I tried so far include:

- Optimize the game settings via GeForce Experience
- Turn off RT, lower crowd density, lower overall graphics, including resolution, turning off DLSS, turning on/off fixed FPS and/or VSync
- Delete the entire settings file in AppData
- Uninstall the game and clean reinstall
- Update graphics driver, with and without DDU (even in safe mode)
- Check Windows Update
- Check the file integrity via GOG
- Changing DP cable the monitor is connected to
- Changing DP cable port
- Monitoring the CPU/GPU usage

My specs are:

AMD Ryzen 5600X
NVIDIA RTX 3070
16 GB RAM
1 TB SSD (with > 120 GB of free space)
650 Watt PSU

Anyone with the same issue or with a definitive fix for this? I am getting frustrated here...

Thanks for any support!

 

[devivre]

I have never had the issue myself, so I don’t really know. The black screen could be PSU related but I am just speculating.

However, you can report it here:
https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/pc/sp-technical/issue/1700/my-game-crashes-7 (this is CDPR‘s official support website)

Click on „contact us“ to send a ticket.

 

[GrimReaper801]

I genuinely don't think there is much point in contacting CDPR support. This does not sound like a game problem at all, this sounds a lot more like a hardware issue.

So without the whole internet issue, this immediately smells of a GPU issue.

How long does it take to reach those temperatures? I assume it's not right as you start the game, correct? Because if that's the case, your temperatures at 70-75C are definitely not normal. Can you elaborate on that?

Have you looked at your GPU itself? I mean opening the case and unseating/reseating it? I have seen a GPU get a bit loose very recently with a friend's PC. Even the smallest of vibrations would shake the PC just enough to cause exactly what happens to you, black monitor that sometimes flickers back to life. I have also seen this with burnt wires. In both cases a restart would fix this and the black screen appeared totally random at first, which baffled me for a while because we don't typically expect hardware issues these days. Take a close look at your GPU itself if you haven't already.

Of course the internet issue is... very... weird but it is possible that whatever crashes on your end causes other issues that reverberate through your router and causes issues.

For both of these issues, what fixes it? Does a simple restart fix your black screen and your internet issues? What do you do to get it all working again?

Have you taken a look at your event viewer at the time of your black screens? Anything that stands out?

 

[Sarovas]

I genuinely don't think there is much point in contacting CDPR support. This does not sound like a game problem at all, this sounds a lot more like a hardware issue.

So without the whole internet issue, this immediately smells of a GPU issue.

How long does it take to reach those temperatures? I assume it's not right as you start the game, correct? Because if that's the case, your temperatures at 70-75C are definitely not normal. Can you elaborate on that?

Have you looked at your GPU itself? I mean opening the case and unseating/reseating it? I have seen a GPU get a bit loose very recently with a friend's PC. Even the smallest of vibrations would shake the PC just enough to cause exactly what happens to you, black monitor that sometimes flickers back to life. I have also seen this with burnt wires. In both cases a restart would fix this and the black screen appeared totally random at first, which baffled me for a while because we don't typically expect hardware issues these days. Take a close look at your GPU itself if you haven't already.

Of course the internet issue is... very... weird but it is possible that whatever crashes on your end causes other issues that reverberate through your router and causes issues.

For both of these issues, what fixes it? Does a simple restart fix your black screen and your internet issues? What do you do to get it all working again?

Have you taken a look at your event viewer at the time of your black screens? Anything that stands out?

First off: thank you so much for taking the time for the thorough response!

In the meantime, I also updated my BIOS, however without any significant effect.
To play along with the randomness of the issue, I also tried starting the game with the WLAN turned off. I felt like that somehow made a difference in terms of time it needs to crash, but did not resolve the issue altogether.

I therefore also suspect a hardware issue (which is weird given that the rig is quite young and not used to much, but you know how it is).

As to your points:

• The GPU starts the game at around 35-40C, quickly jumps up to around 60C and then climbs to max. 75C within a couple of minutes (when the game is playable). When I get stuck in the intro screen, it remains at approx. 40-50C.
  
  
• Naturally, I checked the usage of both GPU and CPU. The GPU seems not to be stressed so much when the game is loaded and even when it works for a moment, it will not exceed 80% usage. However, I found that the CPU jumps to 100% and even higher usages when I boot up Cyberpunk and when I try to start the game from the game menu. That the CPU exceeds 100% usage smells fishy to me, maybe it all has something to do with that?
  
  
• Both issues are fixed by a hard reset of the PC. The internet problem resolves itself within approx. 30-45 seconds after I restart the PC. I reckon that the PC somehow blocks the WLAN traffic, but still have no idea why that would be the case.
  
  
• The event viewer does not show anything severe. I only found a couple of notices concerning a failed start of GameInputService, but that does not seem significant (enough) to me (?)
  
  
• Next, I will definitely open up the case and have a closer look to my hardware ASAP. I read on another forum that the symptoms can be associated with a faulty / burned 8-pin wire, as you also suggested.

I will definitely keep you posted - many thanks again, Choom!

Post automatically merged: Jan 17, 2024

[SOLVED]

After taking apart all power cables and reseating the GPU, all seems to work great again (and even better than before)!

Temps are comfortable for my rig, GPU does not exceed 72C, CPU stays well under 60C with everything on high and RT off.
Hogwarts Legacy on Ultra + RT now even works its magic @ 70C / 50C, respectively.

I guess the GPU was in fact slagging a bit, as I realised that the clip screws could have been tighter.

Thank you so much for your help, @GrimReaper801