Guide - Differentiating between Blue screen and Black screen when blue screen apperas as black screen

Certain AMD video drivers can make BSODs appear corrupted or as plain black screen which can make it hard to distinguish them from regular display driver hangs or (integrated)monitor connectivity issues.

To diagnose issues correctly it's a good idea to enable MiniDump and disable automatic restart on system failure:

Go to sysdm.cpl (search for it in the start menu) than advanced tab, startup and recovery settings, select small memory dump and disable "Automatically restart" checkbox

BSODs

• Block all input devices and sound
• Do allow for system shutdown with a single short power button press.
• Can generate a MiniDump in %SystemRoot%\Minidump. MiniDump may not get generated if you shutdown too soon and don't let a BSOD "run" for some time (1 minute should be safe) or saving data to disk has failed. To read minidumps you can use BlueScreenView from nirsoft

Display Driver Hang / Black screen

• Usually block all input devices and sound
• Do NOT allow for system shutdown with a single short power button press. You have to hold it to shutdown
• Don't generate a minidump, you may want to search the eventlog

(integrated)Display connectivity issues

• Input devices and sound works as system continues to function.

Edited July 24, 20242 yr by TSNH