Computer black screens when waking up from sleep and have to restart computer via power button.

Title: Troubleshooting Black Screen Issues on Windows 11 with AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

Introduction

Experiencing black screens after waking your computer from sleep mode can be a frustrating ordeal, especially when it necessitates a hard shutdown via the power button. This issue not only hampers productivity but also raises concerns about hardware stability and driver compatibility. In this article, we explore a real-world scenario of such a problem, analyze potential causes, and outline effective troubleshooting strategies to resolve it.

System Overview

The affected system is built around high-performance components, including:

Graphics Card: ASRock Taichi OC Radeon RX 9070 XT
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7700X
Motherboard: ASRock X870 Steel Legend Wifi, BIOS version 3.30
Memory: 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 at 6000 MHz
Storage/PSU: Corsair RM1000x power supply
Operating System: Windows 11, version 24H2
Monitors: Two 1440p displays (240Hz and 180Hz) connected via DisplayPort

The user reports that the system was stable for the first four months but has recently started experiencing frequent black screens post-sleep, often accompanied by the motherboard’s VGA indicator lighting up, indicating potential graphics or motherboard issues.

Steps Already Taken

Several troubleshooting steps have been attempted to diagnose and fix the problem:

Re-seating GPU and power cables to ensure secure connections
Testing with an alternative power supply (SAMA XP 1000W)
Using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) in safe mode to completely remove GPU drivers before reinstalling the latest drivers
Modifying Group Policy settings to prevent automatic driver updates
Confirming HDR is disabled in Windows and on monitors
Disabling AMD Crash Defender service to eliminate interference

Performance and Observations

While gaming remains smooth without crashes, the black screen issues persist intermittently after sleep. Notably, during the blackouts, the AMD motherboard watchdog reports indicating kernel-level events are logged, with no minidump or memory dump files generated during crashes, suggesting the system does not always induce a BSOD but rather becomes unresponsive.

Error Reports

The Event Viewer consistently logs a “LiveKernelEvent” following black screens with the following signature: