Black Screen following reinstalling windows on fullscreen flash video at around 18 minutes in

I reinstalled the OS on my m17x r3 due to malware I wasn't able to remove eating up large amounts of bandwidth

Problem: Viewing a video in a flash-based player (such as Youtube, mp4upload, Dailymotion, etc) runs fine but between 16 to 23 minutes in the screen goes black. Pressing Esc removes the black screen/exits fullscreen, and pausing/unpausing the video allows you to immediately return to fullscreen as if nothing ever happened.

There are no popups or warnings, no other oddities that I've been able to observe.

Regular players like Windows Media Player and Realplayer don't have this problem, nor any games

My first assumption was that I installed the drivers incorrectly, so I reformatted a 2nd time. The problem persisted, and I reformatted a 3rd time, this time only installing the "Important" windows updates, excluding 3 that were not automatically selected [Internet Explorer 10, Malicious Removal Tool, Activate Antiexploit]


As far as I know, this only occurs following using Realplayer to download a video. (Upon reading that, you might be left wondering 'Why the hell did I just waste my time reading this post?'. Well, prior to reformatting, this never occurred; hence I could only think there is somehow a problem with my Display Driver, Video Card, a conflict between the latest Flash/Realplayer releases [unlikely due to Google yielding nothing], especially since I just reformatted my laptop) but it's not like the black screen occurs as soon as the download completes, and closing realplayer still yields the black screen occurring on other videos, also not limited to one browser

Following the thought that a conflict in those 2 programs was a problem, it's obvious to downgrade one or both and see if that remedies the issue, but neither offers older versions to do so (previous RP release hosted on the site is not comparable with Chrome, Adobe just made 11.3 the minimum release, and getting one from a random mirror might return me to the situation I was in before I reformatted to begin with), but the idea that the effect of this would be delayed by ~15 minutes seems stupid

I also considered if maybe I skipped an important driver, but am unable to find any

I installed:

Intel HM67 Cougar Point Chipset
NEC USB 3.0
Intel Rapid Storage Technology
Intel Management Engine Interface Chipset
ST Microelectronics DR351DL Free Fall Sensor
Alienware OSD On-Screen-Display
AMD Radeon HD 8870M [Intel HD Graphics was included]
Atheros AR8151 LAN
WiFi Link 6300
IDT 92HD73 Audio
Dell Wireless Bluetooth Module
Synaptics Synaptics Touchpad
Realtek RTS5209 Card Reader
Alien-Command-Center

In that order, followed by DirectX, Flashplayer, Java, and then Windows Update

(The first OS installation I used Device Managar to update all the drivers, and the 2nd and 3rd times I installed the latest versions off of Dell instead of using the Utility Disc)

2 of the Optional updates from Windows Update were "Intel - Other Hardware - Intel(R) Management Engine Interface" and "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc - Display - Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000" which for whatever reason gave my screen an exaggerated brightness and bloom effect

This was the first time I attempted to reinstall the OS, so I know nothing of it other than the guides Google had available
Not a single blue screen of death

 

It seems to be a compatibility issue between those 2. I found the same issue here.

Also, a quick Google search brought many items with the same issue.

My recommendation, look into the FlashPlayer forums to try to get an answer to that, you are not missing anything that might cause this.

 

thanks for confirming the drivers not being the cause

most of those results pertain to Firefox issues, but I wasn't aware that Adobe themselves provide warnings to disable or uninstall Realplayer