Menu Close

After Windows Update I Lost Displays

This article applies to AMD Radeon video cards but the procedure could be the same for other video cards as well. If you lost displays after you did a windows update, here is a solution.

The Problem:

After a recent Windows 10 update, you lost some of your displays. This often happens when Microsoft tries to update drivers on multi display video cards.

We have also seen where they disable one of the video cards in device manager which may look something like this (note the icon that looks different) :

Video card disabled after Windows Update

When this happens you will lose some of your displays temporarily. In the example above these are both 4 port video cards for a total of 8 outputs. One is disabled, that will drop you down to 4 displays. But do not worry, we have a fix for you.

The Solution:

Fix #1:

Try this easy solution first it could fix it for you. Open Device Manager (Start/RIGHT click on ThisPC then left click on /Properties/Device Manager). Scroll down to Display Adapters and expand it. It should look something like the picture above.

Now RIGHT click on the item with the different looking icon. In the example above it is by the red arrow.

Notice it is showing that this selected item is Disabled. Just click on the Enable Device button.

Enable video card

If your screens light back up, you are done! If that does not do it or does not hold, move on to Fix #2 .

Fix #2:

This involves updating the video card drivers. The proper way to do a clean install of any video card drivers, is to first remove all of the old drivers first. Here is how to do that on AMD Radeon video cards

  1.  Close all programs if you have anything open.
  2. Download the AMD Clean Uninstall Utility from their site.
  3. Run the utility which will remove all current video card drivers. You will temporarily lose displays during this process but hang tight.
  4. Back to the AMD website to download the correct drivers for your video card. In this example navigate to the Radeon WX3200, and click on Submit. How to download AMD video card drivers
  5. On the next page choose your operating system, in this case Windows 10 64 bit
  6. Click on Download to get the very latest version of the AMD video card drivers that they offer for your card .
    1. NOTE:  We have found that sometimes the very latest drivers is not always the best.Before you download, if you look at the very bottom of that same page, under the Linux drivers you will see “Previous Drivers” link. This will take you to a similar looking page BUT it gives you the option to CHOOSE slightly older and often times more stable version of the drivers. This is your call.
  7. In either case, to proceed click on the downloaded file to install the new video card drivers.
  8. Once complete, reboot your computer and all of your displays should light up as normal. You may need to adjust your Screen Resolution Settings if your mouse is not moving across screens correctly.

Hopefully this solution has helped you correct your video display issues.