TRS19 Crashes to Black Monitor Screen

jrfolco

Route Builder
When working in TRS19 Surveyor, I occasionally experience a sudden black monitor screen. The computer is still running, so I have to force it to shut down. After this happens, I have to go into Backups and reload the latest backup of the route file. Although I save the route often, the latest backup is always a half to 3/4 of an hour earlier then the last save in Surveyor, and I end up losing a lot of work.

I use HW Monitor to check the temperatures of the CPU, GPU, and a Samsung 1TB SSD, and the temperatures are all normal. (App 50 degrees Celsius) Also, only 1/3 of the SSD (340 GB) is used up. This crash doesn't occur when in TANE, or any other program on my computer. It only happens while working in TRS19, and it has occurred ever since I purchased the game.

Has anyone else experienced this black screen crash?

Thanks,
Joe

Intel Core i7 4790K
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
Samsung 1 TB SSD
WDC 1tb HDD
16GB DIMM DDR3
 
Last edited:
This sounds like a Desktop Window Manager crash. These can normally be identified using Event Viewer by looking under DWM.

Do you get a mouse cursor during this time?

Shane
 
This sounds like a Desktop Window Manager crash. These can normally be identified using Event Viewer by looking under DWM.

Do you get a mouse cursor during this time?

Shane

No, nothing but a black screen. The monitor acts like it is completely turned off, but the computer is still running.

Joe
 
That's interesting. The other possibility is a display driver crash which may also appear in Event Viewer.

Shane

I opened event viewer and could not find errors relating to a display driver crash. I recently updated my GeForce display driver with the latest dated 3-1-19.

Thanks,
Joe
 
jrfolco - I have a similar system spec to yours on one of my machines here, including the i7-4790k, 16Gb RAM etc and a GTX card (in my case an Asus GTX-1070 8Gb OC) and used to experience similar crashes-to-black-screen events in T:ANE betas.
Could still hear the game running, but there was no way to access the machine. Required a forced shutdown to recover.
(Not seeing this at all in TRS19, however, as you seem to be).
This was mostly due to a display driver crash (but which was not always recorded by Event Viewer or the Windows 10 Maintenance utility).
I reported this several times via the bug reporting system but without any resolution until a newer beta was released that appeared to remove the trigger for this event.
(So we still don't know what caused it!)
One possible physical causative issue, however, that could potentially trigger this type of black-screen event is that your PCIe graphics connection for the GTX 980 is imperfect.
Try moving the card to another 16X slot, or reseating it properly in the existing one.
I had my GTX-1070 housed in a fairly restrictive HTPC case and when I moved the components to a new Cooler Master Mid-Tower case with heaps of extra room for the long GTX card this issue went away completely, even in T:ANE.
As always, it pays to install the latest nVidia WHQL drivers for your card and keep up to date with latest versions of both Trainz and Windows 10.
 
jrfolco - I have a similar system spec to yours on one of my machines here, including the i7-4790k, 16Gb RAM etc and a GTX card (in my case an Asus GTX-1070 8Gb OC) and used to experience similar crashes-to-black-screen events in T:ANE betas.
Could still hear the game running, but there was no way to access the machine. Required a forced shutdown to recover.
(Not seeing this at all in TRS19, however, as you seem to be).
This was mostly due to a display driver crash (but which was not always recorded by Event Viewer or the Windows 10 Maintenance utility).
I reported this several times via the bug reporting system but without any resolution until a newer beta was released that appeared to remove the trigger for this event.
(So we still don't know what caused it!)
One possible physical causative issue, however, that could potentially trigger this type of black-screen event is that your PCIe graphics connection for the GTX 980 is imperfect.
Try moving the card to another 16X slot, or reseating it properly in the existing one.
I had my GTX-1070 housed in a fairly restrictive HTPC case and when I moved the components to a new Cooler Master Mid-Tower case with heaps of extra room for the long GTX card this issue went away completely, even in T:ANE.
As always, it pays to install the latest nVidia WHQL drivers for your card and keep up to date with latest versions of both Trainz and Windows 10.

Thanks PC. That was very informative. I will check my display card and see what happens.

Joe
 
It could also be power-related. If the power supply is marginal, then the higher current draw caused by a harder working video card can cause a crash. I saw this in a much older server many years ago. Everything worked fine until a database application was put under heavy use, which put the hard disks into extra use. All was great then suddenly the machine rebooted.

In this case, the system monitoring tools sent me an alert to my pager (Yes it was that long ago) that the power supply had issues, and I ordered a new one from Compaq (later HP) for the Proliant server we were running. Unfortunately consumer hardware doesn't have that, especially power supplies, so we have to do the sleuthing. We are lucky that some power supplies, and motherboards, have test points to put a DVM on and check the voltage, but if that's unavailable it's a pain to do and you need the system to be plugged in not only to the mains, but also internally to the components because switching power supplies need a load in order to operate.
 
It could also be power-related. If the power supply is marginal, then the higher current draw caused by a harder working video card can cause a crash. I saw this in a much older server many years ago. Everything worked fine until a database application was put under heavy use, which put the hard disks into extra use. All was great then suddenly the machine rebooted.

In this case, the system monitoring tools sent me an alert to my pager (Yes it was that long ago) that the power supply had issues, and I ordered a new one from Compaq (later HP) for the Proliant server we were running. Unfortunately consumer hardware doesn't have that, especially power supplies, so we have to do the sleuthing. We are lucky that some power supplies, and motherboards, have test points to put a DVM on and check the voltage, but if that's unavailable it's a pain to do and you need the system to be plugged in not only to the mains, but also internally to the components because switching power supplies need a load in order to operate.

Hi John
I'm using a760 watt Seasonic platinum power supply that I purchased and installed four years ago when I updated my computer to the specs shown in my original post. So far, it hasn't failed. At least to my knowledge. However, I do have a power supply tester, and I may go ahead and test it to see if I'm getting the proper voltages.

Thanks,
Joe
 
Google "GTX 980 black screen" for more help, I had this way back and can not remember what I did, think a resedit timing.
 
Google "GTX 980 black screen" for more help, I had this way back and can not remember what I did, think a resedit timing.

I Googled GTX 980 black screen, and someone in one of the forums stated that activating "Debug Mode" in the Nvidia control panel solved his identical GTX 980"Black Screen" problem. So I tried activating "Debug Mode", hoping that will solve the problem. In the meantime, I Googled "Debug Mode" and here's what I found:
"Beginning with driver version 355.82, Nvidia has added a new feature called "Debug Mode", which will downclock any factory overclocked graphics card to Nvidia reference clock speeds. This is a great feature to help determine problems with the card, or for games that are sensitive to overclocked video cards. May 10, 2017"

What puzzles me is I've had this GTX 980 card for four years and never had any problems until I installed TRS19 last year.

Yesterday after leaving this forum, I opened Surveyor in TRS19, and in less than a minute I experienced a black screen crash. Well, so much for the Nvidia driver update, I thought. However, I worked in Surveyor for the next six hours, and did not experience another crash.

In any case, I've have my work cut out for me. If I can't solve the problem, I just may upgrade to a later model graphics card.

Thanks Whitepass, and thanks to everyone else for your suggestions,

Joe
 
I had similar problems with my NVIDIA GTX 1080. But they weren't limited to Trainz, but also to some other 'graphics intensive' software. Making a fair statement I uninstalled for this reason my Trainz-installation completely from my system. The 'Black screen' remained. I also had a look into the physical connection between PC and monitor (swapped DP and HDMI connection). Sometimes it can also be a 'plug-problem' when you encounter this independently from installed software, e.g. even when booting...

As a conclusion the devil isn't necessarily always Trainz! In my case, trying some different Nvidia drivers - WHQL of course and *no overclocking* - helped to solve the problem, at least for now (since three months al least). At the moment all is OK with installed driver version GeForce 417.35 WHQL - [r417_18-14].

The only thing within my Windows 10 environment _I_ configured by myself was:
NVIDIA control panel / 3D Settings / Program settings tab/ . There I selected ''Trainz: A New Era (tane.exe)'' from the drop down list.

And: voila ... :)

_______
Josef
 
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