Second monitor keeps on temporarily going black at random

I've experienced this at work on the laptop they gave me when I first started working in my current role. I tried fiddling around with the cords and it kind of helped.

Every so many years we get new computers at work. With that, I really hoped the problem would be long gone, but it persisted. I grabbed some new monitors from an empty cube, so at this point I have a new computer, new docking station, new monitors, and new cables. I even plugged in a new keyboard and mouse for good measure. So a completely new set up. IT STILL STARTED HAPPENING. That's when I looked up the issue to see if I could find a fix and stumbled across this help page we're all on here. I tried some of the solutions recommended and it still didn't help, so I got to thinking. I swapped out everything and it's still occurring, so then what is the one thing I didn't change? THE POWER STRIP! I snagged a new one and viola! The problem stopped.

ITS THE POWER OUTLET!!!!!!!!!

TL;DR I swapped out the power strip that everything is plugged into for power and the problem was fixed.

Hi!

I have almost same problem: my laptop display goes black when my external display is connected as from yesterday. Tried updating, restarting, etc.

I have a Asus Vivobook only 2 months old and the Win 11 that came with it.

Thanks for the extensive answers, but both my monitors only have a 60 hz range, non changeable, so not the solution for me.

Please, Microsoft, since you charge for this, be kind and solve it!

Hello, I was just helping a friend of mine who just bought a new monitor and found turning off G-Sync for both monitors to be the solution.

Friend buys a 2nd monitor that was Free-sync (AMD) compatible with a Nvidia Ge-force Graphics card. The first monitor that was being used was G-Sync compatible, 2nd was not. The system kept trying to push G-Sync through both monitors causing the G-Sync monitor to black out as it was acting as if it were reverted back to an old setting. The 2nd Free-sync AMD monitor worked fine. Even though I had read somewhere that Free-sync worked with Nvidia settings I have a feeling not all firmware was updated or created this way.

The work around was to disable G-Sync through Nvidia control panel, (Go to Nvidia Control Panel>> Set up G-Sync>>Uncheck G-sync>> Hit Apply).

Then on the AMD monitor, physically pressing the menu buttons to Freesync and enabling Freesync basic or extended mode. All of which worked and they no longer had the randomly blacked out screen.

Not sure if this will work for everyone but I just did this for GFs laptop and the second screen is no longer having issue.

Specs: Windows 11, GPU Geforce 1050, external monitor is a Samsung 1080p 60hz (sorry don't have the specific name right now)

• go to settings System>Display>Graphics>Default Graphics Settings
• turn off all settings in there (hers had some GPU assistance turned on
• restart laptop as instructed.

In my case I'm using two 4k Dell monitors both plugged to a desktop with a RTX 3090 via DisplayPort (very thick cables that came with the monitors). I get the issue in one of them as well. Always the main screen in Extend mode. Neither of the displays have G-Sync support.

What I notice is that the issue is not totally random. When it starts happening, the screen goes black mostly when I trigger any sort of UI animation such as hovering the mouse over windows buttons, taskbar preview popups, etc. Even if the animations happens in the secondary screen (not the one that blinks). If I keep everything static, the issue won't happen. It does look a lot like OS/driver issues to me.