vive pro screens suddenly not working after months of working fine

[pariah]

got a vive pro 4 months ago and for the most part its been working fine. but now in the last few days ive start having major problems despite not having changed anything on my (win 10) system. when i turn on steamvr like normal, the headset light will display red, then turn the dim green of standby, but the screens will be black. steamvr will say 'move the headset to wake it up'. the instant i move the headset, the light on the side turns red. the screens stay black. steamvr will say 'your headset is tracking', and act like everything is normal. loading up a game using the desktop will show that the headset is tracking properly, and audio will come out of the headset speakers, but the light remains red while the headset is moving, and the screens stay black.

i tried everything i could think of or find online, plugging the DP cord into different ports on the gpu, changing usb ports, uninstalling steamvr usb devices, restarting headset, rebooting steam, rebooting the PC, nonsense with direct display or super sampling, nothing helped. sometimes after resetting the headset steamvr would never fully stop and could not be reopened. every once in a while steamvr would crash with error 203.
i got it working again the first time by fully reinstalling steamvr. once vr booted the right eye was showing major glitching and tracking seemed laggy, but restarting steamvr fixed that. the next day the headset screens were back to being blank. that time i got it working by deleting the vrsettings config file and rebooting steam. same issue with the tracking being laggy afterwards until restarting steamvr again.
that worked for two more sessions. today its doing the same exact thing, but now NOTHING is working. the previous fixes are not fixing it this time, and i really dont want to be reinstalling and rebooting constantly to get this thing running.

anyone run into this before? internet searches and steamvr support pages have been singularly useless.

[pariah]

i got it working twice just now by turning on gpu profiling and direct display in the dev settings, and twice by turning off the bluetooth settings in the devices tab. sometimes it would run at 90hz, sometimes at a stuttery 60hz with the right eye glitching out.
now the headset has stopped connecting altogether, Headset Display Disconnected 208, and i cant access any of the settings anymore. i have no clue what the heck it thinks its doing. reinstalling steamvr didnt even help.

[Bob Loblaw]

Check here
SteamVR support wizard https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGame/?appid=250820

If that doesn't work, test with just one monitor at a mundane resolution and refresh rate, and consult this:
===snip===
Prior causes/fixes of SteamVR Error 200, -203, 204, 208, 210, 215:
AMD GPU error 200, change bitrate ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/11/4038102936180242093/ )
HMD plugged into motherboard instead of GPU
GPU drivers. Do a clean uninstall and install of the latest,
Use a different port on the GPU,
Plug in only 1 monitor, try different refresh rates on it.
Bad adapters on the video cable,
Linkbox issue (bypass it) ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/4356743146672090646/?tscn=1711568860 )
Pet chewed your cable,
SteamVR overlays of any kind (ovr, etc),
Security software,
Auto-overclocking software (like Razer Cortex Auto Boost)
Enabling re-projection on WMR (try disabling it)
WMR needed SteamVR set to DX11 + restart ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/4515506834330086955/?tscn=1723268870 )
Enabled Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (disable HAGS) ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/2/3187992458108815903/?tscn=1708472861 )
Optimizations for windows games in GPU options (disable it) ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/4293692546845646378/?tscn=1711311480 )
Laptop video port not directly controlled by GPU
Need to disable AMD integrated graphics in BIOS ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/15u862z/vive_pro_2_w_wireless_adapter_worked_perfectly/ )
unconfirmed: try running steam as admin
Thunderbolt port is not SteamVR compatible with i12 cpu or later ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/17v59wn/vive_pro_2_black_screen_error_210/ )
ref: intel gen
error 215 from windows internet set to public instead of private ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/4036979713112601939/?tscn=1704207190 )

[pariah]

installed new GPU drivers, went into the bios and found one USB setting to change (xhci), no effect. nothing else in the steamvr support wizard worked or was applicable. headset was still not recognized (208). deleting steamvr usb devices caused the computer to reinstall the headset, but it still showed as disconnected, and every few seconds my monitors would flicker and the mouse would be reset to center. i eventually got the headset to be recognized again by resetting steamvr using the 'enable direct display' button in dev settings, and the headset currently is recognized, but is still exhibiting the red light blank screens problem.

the vive pro does not use steamlink so cannot access any bitrate options.
all monitors and the HMD are plugged in to the GPU. no arrangement of monitors & HMD in different ports effects the problem.
plugging in only 1 monitor does not effect it.
the vive pro's HMD cable is not HDMI or DP, its something proprietary. i cannot bypass the linkbox.
removing ovr and fpsvr has no effect.
disabling security software, windows defender firewall, etc had no effect.
i do not have any overclocking software.
vive pro does not use WMR, i do not have any WMR reprojection or DX settings.
my windows graphics options menu does not contain any gpu scheduling options. research suggests this varies by gpu and driver.
desktop pc, no laptop video ports.
mobo has no integrated graphics.
i always run everything as admin. specifically using the run steam as admin options had no effect.
no thunderbolt ports.
windows internet is private network.

during todays testing, after i used enable direct display to get the headset to be recognized at all, enabling direct display again caused the whole thing to work properly exactly once until i restarted steam vr, but now i cannot reproduce it. nothing is consistent, nothing fixes the problem more than once in a row, and sometimes other parts are exhibiting bizarre inconsistent behavior. while restarting steamvr using the direct display button, sometimes steamvr closes and doesnt come back. sometimes it causes all of steam to reboot itself, and STILL doesnt come back. even when it does come back its now not consistently causing the headset to work.

given how utterly nonsensical this seems to be, physical cable damage is, i guess, possible. but when it DOES work, i can play a perfectly normal multi-hour vr gaming session with plenty of cable movement and it functions completely normally with no problems for hours at a time...until i turn steamvr off and back on again. i would think if the cable was damaged it would exhibit connection problems while playing, wouldnt it?

im out of ideas and i'd rather not shell out the ungodly amount of cash vive pro cables cost on a hunch.

[Bob Loblaw]

Originally posted by pariah:

i would think if the cable was damaged it would exhibit connection problems while playing, wouldnt it?

im out of ideas and i'd rather not shell out the ungodly amount of cash vive pro cables cost on a hunch.

I think so, too.

[pariah]

i think ive narrowed it down. it seems to be a combination of a software issue AND a hardware issue. the hardware issue seems to account for the way its so inconsistent.

the tl:dr is this - no software fixes do anything to consistently effect the issue. but one thing that DID seem to give slightly better odds of it booting properly was unplugging everything from the vive pro link box then plugging them back in before restarting steamvr. this suggested a hardware problem. later, with steamvr on and the headset running at 60hz with blank screens, i fiddled with the power cable connector in the link box and the screens turned on. the headset was still stuck at 60hz which made the image blurry and stuttering since the software and HMD are hardwired for 90hz. but if i reboot steamvr with the screens working at 60hz without touching the cables at all, it has a near 100% chance of booting properly at 90hz with the screens working.

this is very strange behavior, and i didnt consider a hardware problem specifically with the power cable because even when the screens werent booting, the headset WAS receiving power. the lights turned on, windows recognized the device, steam recognized the device, audio came thru the built in headphones, and if i turned on the vr view window on my desktop i could see that the headset was tracking normally. so power WAS being received by the HMD. and when it did work, no futzing with the cables could make it STOP working, which youd expect if the headset was literally receiving insufficient electricity from a bad cable.

so what im suspecting is a combination of a loose connection with the linkbox and power cable, and some deep BIOS weirdness in the HMD. i suspect that when the HMD is booting it looks for some kind of signals or power measurment from the power cable as it boots up but before booting the screens and telling the PC what refresh rate its running at. and for some reason sometimes even tho its receiving more than enough power, something deep in its BIOS is telling it that its not got power so it doesnt boot the screens and then steamvr defaults to some other refresh rate like 60hz. and even if the screens boot later it doesnt refresh that with steamvr and gets out of sync. but since ive NEVER been able to get it to stop working once its working short of pulling the cables entirely out, leads me to believe that the power cable is actually entirely fine and supplying enough power the whole time, but the HMD is somehow ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up something with regards to monitoring its own voltage or something of that nature, but ONLY when booting and not during regular use.

so wiggling the power cable to get the screens running, then immobilizing the power cable and linkbox to ensure that they dont move, then rebooting steamvr, seems to mostly solve the issue for me. i should probably replace both the cable and the linkbox, but its mostly working under these assumptions. who knows how the headset worked so consistently for months before this cropped up. i cannot imagine that i just never once managed to bump the power cord in the wrong way for that long.

im sure others have encountered similar issues, and its hard to find info on this online because the results are so inconsistent. but if software fixes are inconsistent hardware is definitely the place to start. start wiggling your cables. the real headscratcher for me was that the cables actually seem to be working, but the headset itself was failing to recognize that consistently, and ONLY during booting. if the headsets power metering functions and it boots fine, it seems to literally stop checking for this potential power problem and it works for the entire session with no problems, if not then it has to be restarted again.

weird stuff, hope this helps someone else in future