I am working off of a laptop and have a second monitor to extend my displays. I have been using this set up for two years now and have not had a problem until last night. It seems that my attached monitor only (main monitor on laptop is not affected) will go black for a few seconds before turning back on and showing my screen. It should be noted that my laptop does not reset the display to place the windows back onto the main screen when this happens but the extended monitor goes black at random. Note that I am running Windows 10 and unable to upgrade to Windows 11 as of now. So far, I have tried the following solutions but still cannot figure this out. Bought brand new chords (HDMI + Adapter) Bought a brand new second monitor (issues happening with both old and new monitor) Checked for updates on all drivers Reinstalled both graphics drivers Rolled back graphics drivers Checked basic settings (sleep/power/screen saver settings) Disabled all services in background apps in "System Configuration" Restarted Windows explorer This means I have spent time replacing and even buying new equipment to get around this issue but cannot seem to figure it out! This is very important since I work at home as well. Please let me know if there is anything else I can possibly do outside of hard resetting the computer (which I cannot do for a few reasons). Thank you!

FIXED IT! I have two monitors, both on DisplayPort. My primary display blacks out / turns off at random moments, and you can hear the notification sound that a hardware device is removed, force pushing all my active windows to the other display. Less than annoying when I'm doing office work, more so when I'm gaming. Initially I thought it was the GPU - and everyone on the internet suggested so - but nothing in the logs showed that and everything graphical works fine actually. Then I figured, since I game on the primary display, I need to swap it with the secondary display so if the primary blacks out, at least I don't need to turn my head to the secondary, waiting for it to switch my active window back to the primary. I wanted to physically swap the displays, believing the monitor was faulty, so I pulled out the power cable and the Displ.. Wait, I need to isolate the PSU first and check that. And without physically swapping the monitors, I only swapped the PSU plug that goes into the monitor. That's how I finally found out that the culprit was the power supply unit: the cable that plugs into the monitor was chewed on by one of my cats, barely visible. Indeed, now the other, secondary display blacks out. There's nothing wrong with either monitors. And when it does happen I only need to wiggle that chewed part a bit and I can force the display to turn on again. FFS. I ordered one new PSU.

Thank you but i only have one other moniter and I connect it to my laptop and even when I duplicate my laptop screen it still goes on for 2 seconds and then suddenly goes black but thank you though

I use two monitors as an extended desktop outside of a laptop, and today monitor 2 went black again. The last time it happened it somehow worked itself out after half a day. Somehow the solution today was to duplicate the laptop screen onto monitor 2, which at least produced an image. Then I reset monitor 2's settings to once again be an extended part of the desktop, and it stayed that way. Good luck to all!

Thanks for the feedback. Disabling G-Sync didn't fix it for me, though

Just wanted to let you guys know that disabling G-Sync, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread fixed it for me. So I guess it's a driver issue related to G-sync that's causing this, as I've had G-sync on for more than a year and this only started about a month ago.

Second monitor keeps on temporarily going black at random

Anonymous

I am working off of a laptop and have a second monitor to extend my displays. I have been using this set up for two years now and have not had a problem until last night. It seems that my attached monitor only (main monitor on laptop is not affected) will go black for a few seconds before turning back on and showing my screen. It should be noted that my laptop does not reset the display to place the windows back onto the main screen when this happens but the extended monitor goes black at random. Note that I am running Windows 10 and unable to upgrade to Windows 11 as of now.

So far, I have tried the following solutions but still cannot figure this out.

Bought brand new chords (HDMI + Adapter)
Bought a brand new second monitor (issues happening with both old and new monitor)
Checked for updates on all drivers
Reinstalled both graphics drivers
Rolled back graphics drivers
Checked basic settings (sleep/power/screen saver settings)
Disabled all services in background apps in "System Configuration"
Restarted Windows explorer

This means I have spent time replacing and even buying new equipment to get around this issue but cannot seem to figure it out! This is very important since I work at home as well. Please let me know if there is anything else I can possibly do outside of hard resetting the computer (which I cannot do for a few reasons). Thank you!

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157 answers

Anonymous

2024-08-30T09:06:51+00:00

FIXED IT!

I have two monitors, both on DisplayPort. My primary display blacks out / turns off at random moments, and you can hear the notification sound that a hardware device is removed, force pushing all my active windows to the other display. Less than annoying when I'm doing office work, more so when I'm gaming.

Initially I thought it was the GPU - and everyone on the internet suggested so - but nothing in the logs showed that and everything graphical works fine actually.

Then I figured, since I game on the primary display, I need to swap it with the secondary display so if the primary blacks out, at least I don't need to turn my head to the secondary, waiting for it to switch my active window back to the primary. I wanted to physically swap the displays, believing the monitor was faulty, so I pulled out the power cable and the Displ.. Wait, I need to isolate the PSU first and check that. And without physically swapping the monitors, I only swapped the PSU plug that goes into the monitor.

That's how I finally found out that the culprit was the power supply unit: the cable that plugs into the monitor was chewed on by one of my cats, barely visible. Indeed, now the other, secondary display blacks out. There's nothing wrong with either monitors. And when it does happen I only need to wiggle that chewed part a bit and I can force the display to turn on again. FFS. I ordered one new PSU.
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Anonymous

2024-08-27T02:54:43+00:00

Thank you but i only have one other moniter and I connect it to my laptop and even when I duplicate my laptop screen it still goes on for 2 seconds and then suddenly goes black but thank you though
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Anonymous

2024-08-06T20:34:17+00:00

I use two monitors as an extended desktop outside of a laptop, and today monitor 2 went black again. The last time it happened it somehow worked itself out after half a day.

Somehow the solution today was to duplicate the laptop screen onto monitor 2, which at least produced an image. Then I reset monitor 2's settings to once again be an extended part of the desktop, and it stayed that way.

Good luck to all!
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Anonymous

2024-07-27T18:01:40+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Disabling G-Sync didn't fix it for me, though
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Anonymous

2024-07-27T16:48:19+00:00

Just wanted to let you guys know that disabling G-Sync, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread fixed it for me. So I guess it's a driver issue related to G-sync that's causing this, as I've had G-sync on for more than a year and this only started about a month ago.
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