On an RTX 3090 - Black screen after booting into safe mode. UPDATE

[Akula]

Admins, apologies if this is in the wrong section so please feel free to move it if you need to.

_____________________
 

if you are running an RTX 3090 and on the latest Nvidia driver (580.97 as of August 16, 2025) and CANNOT get into safe mode, this might help you. 
 

problem: cannot get into safe mode

what is happening:

- In windows 11. 

- press start > select power icon to restart > hover mouse over restart > hold down left-shift and click restart to bring up troubleshooting window

- trouble shooting window comes up, no problem so far. 
 

- Select Troubleshoot > select Advanced Options > select Startup Settings > select Restart. No problem so far……. BUT!

The system boots to a black screen and there is no blue screen that allows you to select option 4 or 5 to boot into safe mode. 
 

Here is how I  *thought* I fixed it. 
 

- pressed Enter > Rebooted back into windows 11

- Used “Direct Driver Uninstaller” to uninstall the latest Nvidia driver (580.97)

- tried booting into safe mode again and this time it worked. I got into safe mode and used DDU again as a failsafe to remove every single trace of that POS driver. 

- Now back to windows 11

- installed driver version 576.52

- Tested again and I was able to boot into safe mode. 
 

fixed! Or so I thought.

A week later the problem returned but now it's going black screen, timeout and automatically shuts down. 

Nvidia seems to have crapped the bed with their latest drivers. I don’t care what anyone says, to me it looks like they are so into trying to revive the 50 series cards that their latest drivers are absolute shiiite for 3090 users. 

In light of the most recent findings. It could be an Nvidia issue or it could be a windows issue or a MB BIOS issue. So far, Google has not helped. Still looking into it.  
 

anyways, hope this helps someone. 

Edited yesterday at 04:14 PM by Akula

[Buzzer1977]

Jeez ... and i wondered why i suddenly got a black screen after a reboot once in a while and couldn't find anything in the eventlog. THX for the info.

[Buzzer1977]

On 8/17/2025 at 3:00 AM, Akula said:

if you are running an RTX 3090 and on the latest Nvidia driver (580.97 as of August 16, 2025) 

New driver is out since yesterday. might be too early to call, but the black screen didn't happen to me again since i upgraded.

Edited Friday at 07:44 PM by Buzzer1977

[Akula]

Thanks for the update. 

I should have posted a correction a long time ago. I currently running 576.52 and the problem came back so I'll have to troubleshoot further to see hat the problem is. If you don't mind, could you try it again? I'm just wondering if I was able to get into safe mode because the reversion wasn't followed by a restart prior to trying to get into safe mode. 

[silverdevil]

15 hours ago, Akula said:

Thanks for the update. 

I should have posted a correction a long time ago. I currently running 576.52 and the problem came back so I'll have to troubleshoot further to see hat the problem is. If you don't mind, could you try it again? I'm just wondering if I was able to get into safe mode because the reversion wasn't followed by a restart prior to trying to get into safe mode. 

hello.

not sure if it helps. although i have no need to boot into safe mode for windows, i am running the latest geforce driver 581.15 for my 3090. no issues with DCS.

note that some game titles are checking the system before installing their application. most recently for me was BF6 beta. i have always kept on the latest nvidia all along, and never had DCS problems. but again, i have not needed to boot to safe mode.

[Akula]

22 hours ago, silverdevil said:

hello.

not sure if it helps. although i have no need to boot into safe mode for windows, i am running the latest geforce driver 581.15 for my 3090. no issues with DCS.

note that some game titles are checking the system before installing their application. most recently for me was BF6 beta. i have always kept on the latest nvidia all along, and never had DCS problems. but again, i have not needed to boot to safe mode.

Thanks for this,

Im currently caught in an update storm. Nvidia, new MS update to address the corrupting Western Digital M.2 SSD drives as well as a BIOS update. I’m going to try updating EVERYTHING as it all just hit me at the same time. 
I doubt this will fix anything but if I’m wrong I’ll happily take it lol. 
 

I’ll update soon. Wondering if anyone else has the same MB and CPU on a 3090 setup. Also, my memory was stable as hell at 5400 vs 5600Mhz. As I’m running 4 sticks on a dual channel board (yes I know this is stressing the memory controller and yes I know I should be using 2 sticks instead of 4).  The memory is corsair vengeance DDR5 rated to 6400 in XMP but XMP is disabled to run the 4 sticks. Stay tuned

[silverdevil]

3 hours ago, Akula said:

As I’m running 4 sticks on a dual channel board (yes I know this is stressing the memory controller and yes I know I should be using 2 sticks instead of 4).  The memory is corsair vengeance DDR5 rated to 6400 in XMP but XMP is disabled to run the 4 sticks.

i have an alienware r12 which has an older mobo than your system. it is ddr4 with 4 sticks of 32. when i purchased it in april 2021 the system propaganda stated it would run at 3400. when i did the initial setup, the speed was show 2800. i called dell and they had me update the bios, and then i was able to get XMP1 enabled to get the 3400. maybe update of your bios will allow you to enable XMP.

[Akula]

40 minutes ago, silverdevil said:

i have an alienware r12 which has an older mobo than your system. it is ddr4 with 4 sticks of 32. when i purchased it in april 2021 the system propaganda stated it would run at 3400. when i did the initial setup, the speed was show 2800. i called dell and they had me update the bios, and then i was able to get XMP1 enabled to get the 3400. maybe update of your bios will allow you to enable XMP.

Thanks for the help, SD

Quick update although it may not last….

I updated my BIOS and since I can’t run all 4 sticks with XMP enabled and at its rated 6400Mhz, I backed off the memory speed from 5600 CL36 to 5400 CL36 and locked in my voltage to under 1.3, watts at 307

Still running my 14900k at 5.5Ghz

tested it twice and both times I was able to reach the desktop on safe mode to make my changes. If this changes or “breaks” I’ll report back.

conclusion: it appears memory timings and memory settings may affect windows ability to boot into safe mode but it’s just a guess. So far all things point to BIOS update since changes in the older BIOS wasn’t helping but we will see. So far so good