Second monitor keeps on temporarily going black at random

Hi fellow black blinking screen enjoyers,

Can confirm this is NOT a cable issue, this DID NOT happen when I booted onto another disk which still has Vista installed (lmao).

It is NOT unique to Windows 11, I am running Windows 10.

I am inclined to think this is a POWER related issue as I ONLY have this issue on starting my computer.

I live in the UK and our electricity circuits are in parallel, meaning to my US based dangerous serial electric friends, unplugging the fridge in the next room should not be the issue either.

Whats more, BEFORE I have even logged in, when the other screen is grey, I can still see it doing it, going from black to grey.

The problem used to resolve itself, but then when it was going on for over a minute or two, I tried messing around with the refresh rate for the second monitor. This did seem to fix the issue, however it no longer fixes it, the monitor remaining on steady for about 8 seconds, before the blinking continues again. It is now happening for a very long time on startup and is getting seriously annoying.

I am running an AMD card, with AMD adrenalin software, confirming it is not unique to nVidea either.

My right monitor is a curved MSI (165hz) connected with DISPLAY PORT, my left monitor (with the issue) is a very old BENQ (60hz) monitor connected via HDMI. The refresh rates are different and changing them to the same value or the lowest they can got DOES NOT fix this problem.

Indeed the only constant from this forum is that everyone is using Windows (either 10 or 11). From reading this whole thread I can only conclude that it is something to do with power usage and its settings in Windows.

My PC is in need of upgrade and I will soon be replacing the motherboard and CPU, so I might just buy another hard drive and install windows 11 on it and hope the problem never resurfaces.

Hope this helps someone come to a solution 🤞🏻

I experienced the same problem and found out it is my fridge in the next room that causes the screen to go black for a few seconds.

See potential solutions:

https://lifehacks.stackexchange.com/questions/6193/my-monitor-turns-off-when-fridge-starts-how-can-i-stop-this

Problem detected. The monitor has reached the end of its useful life. The tube inside is dead. The tube has been replaced and continues to be used.

I'm having this same issue using two different PCs both with Windows 10.

• Both are iGPU only, so no NVIDIA/AMD graphics card control panel such-and-such to configure.
• One is intel CPU and one is AMD CPU, so it's not a brand specific problem.
• I have a 4k VA monitor (Sceptre) that has never had issues running at 60hz (max 60hz @4k).
• The monitor with issues is a 4k IPS monitor (KTC) that currently is set to 30hz (max 144hz @4k).
• The monitor is compatible with G-Sync but has no way to turn it off from the monitor settings.
• The monitor is the only thing plugged into a power strip other than the other monitor. this power strip previously handled multiple PCs and network devices just fine.
• Power settings for both PCs are set to max performance, and no screen turnoff.
• All drivers are freshly updated on both systems.
• Both PCs are currently using HDMI cable to connect to the monitor.

I suspect it's a compatibility issue between certain monitors or HDMI itself and Windows. My power setup is fine. No reports of faulty power on these models of monitor. Using an expensive high quality surge protector. Many are having this with a multi-monitor setup, and many are having to set their monitor to match the one with minimum refresh rate or minimum G-Sync/FreeSync settings. So it seems that Windows has an issue with using two monitors with different refresh rates and different G-Sync/FreeSync capabilities. People are reporting the problem sometimes goes away when the monitors are set to the same refresh rate, usually the highest rate of the lowest quality monitor, and sometimes it goes away when G-Sync/FreeSync are force-disabled. People also seem to run into this problem when using two different monitors as opposed to exact same model. Some have also fixed the black screen by only using one monitor. This corroborates the possibility that Windows 10/11 are incorrectly handling two monitors with different capabilities unless the settings are forced so that they match one another in terms of performance.

Multiple people have recorded an HDMI event happening in logs around the same time as the black screen. So whatever inside the Windows kernel that communicates with the HDMI firmware is having some kind of glitch and potentially triggering a 'reset' or renegotiating the initial handshake. This is why the problem persists regardless of manufacturer drivers from GPUs, CPUs, or monitors. This could only happen if it was something more integral to how Windows communicates with hardware (ie the kernel). This is probably why Microsoft is reluctant to fix it. The kernel is the main thing they want to touch THE LEAST compared to just pushing a basic security update or fudging up the UI/UX again and again. Linux users also experience this but the problems seem to be less common. I didn't experience this glitch when using both monitors with Debian, but different distros have different modifications that can affect how the basic Linux kernel treats certain hardware.

People with DisplayPort or USB-C have occasionally experienced this, but it seems to be a problem that most people are having when using HDMI (even when replacing cables, and switching to a different port). So based on all of the evidence it looks to me like Windows 10/11 have sporadic issues when communicating a complex monitor setup between multiple HDMI ports.

Please correct me if I'm off-base with any of this analysis!

One thing that I haven't seen people mention is how they have their monitor settings inside the monitor itself configured. I just turned off OverDrive and HDR inside my monitor and I'll report back whether that helps at all.

Ever since I received a new work issued laptop in Feb 2024, all 3 of my monitors, randomly flicker off for roughly 5 seconds. This never happened with the same monitors & cables when I had the old laptop (also work issued). I've spent hours web searching how to fix this and haven't tried much because I don't want to make things worse. I did reduce the refresh rate to 50hz and that didn't work. This is beyond frustrating because it not only interferes with my productivity, but it has happened when I'm presenting my screen to people at work. I absolutely HATE Microsoft products because of the constant OS updates/patches & buggy quirks like this, not to mention all the "feature enhancements" that make me use more keystrokes & time to complete work than before the update was pushed.

New laptop has: Windows 10 Enterprise edition
Old laptop had: Window 7 Enterprise edition

Monitors are: 1 LG & 2 Samsung, all with Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics card