Second monitor keeps on temporarily going black at random

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.

1. Bought brand new chords (HDMI + Adapter)
2. Bought a brand new second monitor (issues happening with both old and new monitor)
3. Checked for updates on all drivers
4. Reinstalled both graphics drivers
5. Rolled back graphics drivers
6. Checked basic settings (sleep/power/screen saver settings)
7. Disabled all services in background apps in "System Configuration"
8. 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!

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.

This stopped the black outs,

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).

To enable freesync ,

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.

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.

Any ideas for when we’ll get this fixed? Having same issue and this is the only forum that has described my exact issue.

This solution helped my situation and fixed other issue I was having for months:

Changing of the Refresh Rate on Windows 10 and also Windows 11, fixed my problems.

And Also fixed on both computers my OLD problem with unresponsive mice, before the change I had to click several times on selected items but now the mouse single click works like a charm.

I went to the lowest Refresh Rate on Windows 10, but on Windows 11 and selected one rate before the lowest because the screen was showing a thin tiny line on the top of the screen, But both computers with different Operating Systems versions now are working FINE.

My Equipment:

Windows 10 is a very old Dell-XPS-8700 with 16 GB/RAM; Intel Core i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz.

Windows 11 is a very new MeLE-Quiter3Q with 8.00 GB/RAM, Intel Celeron N5105 @ 2.00GHz.

Thanks for providing this solution, It was driving me crazy!!!

I have 2 x 1440p monitors - 1 x with 144hz and the other 165hz

I was having this same issue, this is what worked for me:

I brought the 165hz monitor down to 144hz. This helped, but was still experiencing the flashing black screen less regularly.

Next I turned off G-sync for both in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Haven't had the issues since.