Driver from NVIDIA causes a one-minute gray display once Windows starts.
Driver from NVIDIA causes a one-minute gray display once Windows starts.
Hey there, friends. Recently I experienced an extremely slow boot time—about two minutes on my Samsung Evo 1TB SSD. I tried several fixes: first updating the BIOS and drivers, which helped a bit. Then I was stuck in a grey screen loop after the login screen appeared. My specs are pretty standard: NVIDIA 3080, Ryzen 7, 7800X3D, 16GB RAM, Corsair Vengeance M.2 drives, and a 1TB Samsung Evo SSD in the right slot.
I learned that removing the NVIDIA drivers via DDU usually clears the grey screen, but the monitors stay off at a low resolution (around 720p). After about five minutes, it would fix itself on its own. I also experimented with different NVIDIA drivers—like Game Ready, NVIDIA Studio, and even an older Game Ready drive—but each one caused the same issue. It seems my setup is sensitive to driver changes.
Are you referring to a founder edition or a version provided by an alternative board partner? For instance, ASUS graphics cards receive drivers from the ASUS website rather than directly from Nvidia.
Generally it's wise to visit the manufacturer's site when downloading drivers. However, this isn't always true, particularly for GPU drivers, chipset updates, or NICs, since these companies often release several revisions ahead of the latest version. The example above shows ASUS reporting driver version 577.00, whereas NVIDIA lists 581.57, with six updates in between—each improvement over the previous one. For real users, the key steps are: 1. Disable CSM 2. Enable Fast Boot 3. Turn off fast boot mode (for full PCIe setup) 4. Hide the resizable bar temporarily 5. Set PCIe speed to Gen 4 manually to prevent auto-negotiation 6. Ensure 4G decoding is active If the problem resolves, it was timing mismatches in the firmware. After fixing, restart, go through a clean reinstall (safe mode), choose custom installation from the NVIDIA site, reboot, and retest if needed.
It's proven to consistently deliver reliable drivers. Although they might lag slightly in some updates, they undergo refinements and testing, making them more dependable overall.