Windows 10 - certain apps cause my screen to go black when focused

Question

I have an issue which most often occurs with apps installed from the windows store. When I click into certain apps the entire screen the app is on will go black. My other monitors will generally stay on, but occasionally two or all three will go black too.

I have a multi-monitor setup with three 4k monitors.

Windows 10

32GB Corsair DDR4 RAM

5600x AMD CPU

nVidia 3080 Ti graphics card

3x 4k monitors via displayport, 2 landscape, 1 portrait

When I click out of the app that caused the screen to go black (e.g. by moving the mouse to another screen and clicking there), even if the app still displays on that screen, after ~10s the screen will come back on. If I leave the app in focus, eventually the screen will come back on but go black again a few seconds later and just repeat this.

When I take screenshots while the screen is black, everything appears normal.

When I remote stream with something like nVidia Game stream, everything works normally on the stream, even if the actual screen itself is turning black.

Example apps this happens with:

Windows Remote Desktop (both with RemoteDesktop_1.2.4582.0_x64.msi version and windows store version) - it always happens with this app

Adguard (main window with settings etc) - sometimes

Deepl (windows store app) - sometimes

Calculator - rarely

This sometimes happens when playing video games, it doesn't seem to depend on how hard my graphics card is getting used. Happens in Factorio as well as Starfield.

This never happens with web browsers such as chrome, firefox, edge

Usually a reboot solves the issues with apps that sometimes cause the screen to go black, but e.g. for Windows Remote Desktop the app is basically unusable for me as my screen goes black every time I click into it, and it's terrible if I go fullscreen across 3 monitors. I also use Citrix Workspace (exe installer) and that doesn't cause this issue.

This issue has been occuring for me for a few years, but I can generally avoid running into it by using installer apps rather than windows store apps.

I generally keep my graphics card driver on the latest version, and install relevant windows updates.

I've reinstalled windows twice during that time, once with a repair and once with a completely fresh install and disk wipe.

In that time I also upgraded from a 3080 to a 3080 Ti and the issue occured with both cards.

I'm guessing this is a hardware issue since it's survived multiple windows installs, but I don't really know what could cause it. Power supply? RAM? Guessing not the graphics card since it's happened with two.

Answer 1

Check the Event Viewer on both the local and remote computers for any error messages related to Remote Desktop. This can provide valuable clues about what might be causing the issue.

Ensure that any firewall or antivirus software on both the local and remote computers isn't blocking Remote Desktop traffic.

You can lower the display resolution to see if that helps.

Answer 2

Make sure you are using updated version, I was facing the same issue then I update GB whatsapp now for editing files to proceed in the PC in normal way.