Intermittent Black Screen

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Greetings All –

I have an MSI Z390-A Pro board, an Intel i5-9600k processor, and 32 gigs of Corsair  Vengeance DDR4 memory.  Graphics is UHD 630, driver 31.0.101.2111.  Windows installation is WIN 10 Pro, 22H2, with November updates.  I’ve been noticing for awhile that my monitor (LG  24MP59HT-P) occasionally goes black for normally about a second, sometimes a bit longer.  The duration of the blackouts seems pretty constant, but the events now seem to be recurring more frequently.  A couple weeks ago, I had the PC apart, and when I put things back together, the monitor was not recognized.  I eventually took the Display Port/HDMI cable down to Best Buy and had them check it out.  Bad cable.  A new one put me back in business, but I still get the intermittent blackouts, normally (I think), when I click on something to open it, although sometimes it just happens if I’m watching a movie.  I can’t find anything in the Event logs, but I may not be looking in the right place.  I suspect the monitor itself may be failing, but that’s just a guess.  It has served me well, but it is getting a bit long in the tooth.  I don’t remember for how long this has been going on, but I’m pretty sure it also was happening with 21H2 with October updates.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Casey H.

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The simplest way to check out the monitor would be to locate a suitable TV/ cable box and plug the monitor in there and see if it behaves or not (watch some festive entertainment..). A lot of monitor problems relate to the backlight or power supply (and are usually a bit thermally sensitive, so set it up in a warm place in case lower resolutions cause less warmth). If its fine then the problem is elsewhere or maybe an inappropriate resolution?

The other problem can be simply be poor connections – unfortunately its not impossible the failed cable met that fate due to contact contamination, and may have left residue in the monitor connector, but most cases that means at least initially the act of moving the cable would make the problem go away. Unfortunately cleaning those connectors isn’t easy at all – but from what I could see motherboard variants have a second HDMI or a DVI port (which can be adapted to HDMI) so you could try another port maybe?

Nvidia did release some driver updates last month but I couldn’t find an explicit match to your platform (CVE-2022-34669 and CVE-2022-34671 ..) but it might be worth checking the malware protection is OK in case something is trying to elevate through those flaws and disturbing driver operation.. even though your system may or may not be be affected by the actual vulnerability..

 

 

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Casey H

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I saw a problem very similar to yours. The problem was the monitor power cable. Replaced the power cable and the problem went away. I would also check to make sure that the monitor power cable is plugged in fully to the monitor.

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Casey H

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Great advice.  Thanks all.  It would seem that the problem was in the monitor’s HDMI connection (oldguy’s response). I plugged the cable into the monitor’s 2nd HDMI connector, and the problem seems to have gone away.  Perhaps I didn’t have the connector pushed in all the way either.  At some point I’ll probably swap connections again just to check.  I’ll also verify that the power connector is firmly seated.  Thanks again.

Caasey

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Actually I was a little premature in my assessment.  The problem persisted although seemingly not so frequently.  The monitor continued to go black for between about one and three seconds, frequently upon moving the mouse.  I did find a solution, but it was not really satisfactory.  I had the sleep setting for the screen set at 15 minutes.  When I changed it to never, the problem went away.  That led to needing to shut the computer down if I didn’t want the screen to be on when not in use.  Then I discovered the real fix.  I was in device manager and noticed that the driver for my monitor was labeled as “Generic PNP Monitor.”  I though that strange as I had installed the LG driver years ago.  Anyway, reinstalling the LG driver fixed the problem.  I have not had a black screen since, and i have the sleep setting for the screen once again set to 15 minutes.  Considering the length of my issue, I suspect the October update removed the driver.  I just need to remember to check my installed software and drivers after every update.  This is not the first time that something has been removed following a Windows update.

Casey

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Problem actually resurfaced.  Came across some advice saying the sleep settings can become corrupted, so restore the factory defaults.  I did that, then readjusted the settings to my liking.  No black screens since.

Casey

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