Flashing black screen

[Adept PC Repair]

I've had 3 customers computers this week all with this issue, I also had it on my own computer.

The computers have all been either Windows 8 or 10.

The behaviour is rather odd, as follows.

Some only gave a display when input was given (such as moving a mouse or typing a key) and then would quickly turn the display off again.

Others the opposite, including my own machine (display okay until you move the mouse or type a key, then it blacks out).

All machines fixed by fully installing every pending update available.

Anyone else seen this?

 

[GTP]

Yes, but only on laptops using Synaptic software/drivers. Updating to the latest fixed it.

 

[Adept PC Repair]

This happened to my desktop pc with a standard optical mouse

 

[GTP]

Hmmm...
It's only ever happened to me with laptops.
Haven't come across it on a desktop yet.

 

[Metanis]

Any chance the graphics are AMD chipsets?

 

[frase]

I havnt seen this personaly, but I would turn off automatic driver updates within windows 10

 

[Adept PC Repair]

Graphics on the laptop I recently did was intel hd graphics from the cpu.

 

[jack-ant]

I had this on a Windows 8 laptop when running on battery. Updates did not help.

I found a temporary fix through 'Power Options > Edit Plan Settings > Change Advanced Power Settings > Graphics > On Battery' and selecting Maximum Performance.

This was also Intel graphics. I've had similar unusual issues where a laptop failed Prime95 or some 'Performance Test' graphics tests and are only solved by doing this tweak. Even reinstalling the operating system did not help in that case.

It's not ideal as you miss the presumed power savings but seems to be the only option.