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!

It's a really strange problem, I even thought it depended on the faulty adapter but that's not the case. The second monitor (TV) has a resolution of 1920x1080 even if it is actually HD ready and therefore has a native resolution of 1280x720, when the resolution of the video to be reproduced is higher they start BS. I also noticed that with VLC the BS frequency is much higher, probably that software doesn't get along with Windows 11, finally with the media player (that has replaced Groove, not the other "classic") of Windows 11 seems to have solved the problem problem, Black Screen disappeared. Energy saving of the PC. Opting to suspend computer "never" does not cause any BS.

I've just upgraded to Windows 11, in the hope of seeing the back of this problem, but a day later...it's back. It's always the same monitor. There are 3 displays connected to my graphics card (ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB): AOC Q27B3MA QHD monitor - connected via Displayport (this is the one that goes blank) AOC Q27B3MA QHD monitor - connected via HDMI (this is the main display, and never goes blank) Hisense HD TV - connected via Displayport with an HDMI adapter (this never goes blank, and is turned off 99% of the time). I have the refresh rate set to the lowest value (59/60HzHz) on all displays, and have disabled G-Sync on all displays using the Nvidia Control Panel. I was really hoping that Windows 11 would have resolved this :0(

Does not depend on G-Sync and refresh rates. By disabling PC suspension from the power saving options, the problem disappears. In my case, the black screens occurred approximately 15 minutes apart, precisely the period between turning off the PC. The black screens appear to be an attempt to turn off the PC during multimedia playback, which should be prohibited in the power saving options. Try disabling PC sleep from the power saving options.

As it's only one display that is going blank I was assuming that it wasn't related to Windows sleep settings?

Me too, only the second one which is an HD ready TV. There will probably be a "reverb" somewhere between GPU management (Nvidia or AMD) and Windows settings that the cable adapters can't handle. In any case, the problem persists with VLC software but disappears "almost" definitively with the Windows Media Player (the one instead of Groove). Sometimes I had the impression that it could also depend on the type of encoding used for editing the video being played. The native resolution frequency setting of the monitor reduces Black Screen times overall, with the "native" setting only a few microseconds, WMP it manages reproductions better, VLC is now old and not updated to the latest Windows it seems to me.

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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Anonymous

2024-01-19T21:17:38+00:00

It's a really strange problem, I even thought it depended on the faulty adapter but that's not the case. The second monitor (TV) has a resolution of 1920x1080 even if it is actually HD ready and therefore has a native resolution of 1280x720, when the resolution of the video to be reproduced is higher they start BS. I also noticed that with VLC the BS frequency is much higher, probably that software doesn't get along with Windows 11, finally with the media player (that has replaced Groove, not the other "classic") of Windows 11 seems to have solved the problem problem, Black Screen disappeared.

Energy saving of the PC. Opting to suspend computer "never" does not cause any BS.
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Anonymous

2024-01-25T18:54:39+00:00
I've just upgraded to Windows 11, in the hope of seeing the back of this problem, but a day later...it's back. It's always the same monitor. There are 3 displays connected to my graphics card (ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB):
- AOC Q27B3MA QHD monitor - connected via Displayport (this is the one that goes blank)
- AOC Q27B3MA QHD monitor - connected via HDMI (this is the main display, and never goes blank)
- Hisense HD TV - connected via Displayport with an HDMI adapter (this never goes blank, and is turned off 99% of the time).
I have the refresh rate set to the lowest value (59/60HzHz) on all displays, and have disabled G-Sync on all displays using the Nvidia Control Panel.

I was really hoping that Windows 11 would have resolved this :0(
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4 people found this answer helpful.

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Anonymous

2024-01-25T19:11:43+00:00

Does not depend on G-Sync and refresh rates. By disabling PC suspension from the power saving options, the problem disappears. In my case, the black screens occurred approximately 15 minutes apart, precisely the period between turning off the PC. The black screens appear to be an attempt to turn off the PC during multimedia playback, which should be prohibited in the power saving options.

Try disabling PC sleep from the power saving options.
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Anonymous

2024-01-25T20:27:54+00:00

As it's only one display that is going blank I was assuming that it wasn't related to Windows sleep settings?
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2 people found this answer helpful.

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Anonymous

2024-01-26T11:12:34+00:00

Me too, only the second one which is an HD ready TV. There will probably be a "reverb" somewhere between GPU management (Nvidia or AMD) and Windows settings that the cable adapters can't handle. In any case, the problem persists with VLC software but disappears "almost" definitively with the Windows Media Player (the one instead of Groove). Sometimes I had the impression that it could also depend on the type of encoding used for editing the video being played.

The native resolution frequency setting of the monitor reduces Black Screen times overall, with the "native" setting only a few microseconds, WMP it manages reproductions better, VLC is now old and not updated to the latest Windows it seems to me.
Was this answer helpful?

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