Black screen flicker in Windows UNLESS external monitor connected

Hi All

I've got this old-ish Toshiba L50C with intel 5500 graphics which started flickering black screens, sometimes garbage, seemingly in Windows only. I tried reinstalling drivers with DDU - makes no difference.
However, all is fine once I connect an external display via HDMI. Bizarre. Any ideas what could be wrong and if any quick fixes might be worth trying?

@Tech Junky

 

Well, if you used DDU to purge drivers the only thing that comes to mind is voltage being reduced w/ the external monitor hooked up bringing the panel into spec.

I would test with a Linux liveCD thought o rule out Windows causing the issue. I had an issue with power that I ruled out using this method finding W10 Kernel issue causing random reboots. I never really did figure out exactly what was wrong w/ Windows causing the issue. I did switch to the OE power supply and the issue went away since it only happened with a new PSU I had ordered to test out performance / charging with.

 

Thanks. Interestingly the behaviour is different in Linux, the blinking and artefacting is very rare, the laptop is quite usable, but it's there. OTOH the laptop is unusable in Windows. I can't see anything when in BIOS, but when running memcheck86 (which completed with no issues), I can see some very fine and sparse random pixel artefacting. Guess I will open the laptop up to see if there is any obvious internal problem. Perhaps repasting the CPU might help? Not sure given that the laptop is running quite cool - 65C max.

 

Well, if Linux works at ~99% then it's likely not a HW issue. Repasting probably won't do anything for Windows as your temps are good.

I would be looking at the drivers and run DDU in safe mode to purge them and grab the latest release. I would also be looking in event manager to see if there's something that catches my eye with the critical alerts.

Opening things up and looking for something doesn't seem to be needed. The best option might be wiping the drive and reinstalling a fresh version of windows 11 to get rid of any lingering bugs from the history of use / updates installed over time.

 

Opening up and repasting didn't do anything as expected, however, installing Ubuntu 20.04 pretty much eliminated any gross artefacting (there is still some occasional sparse fine grain visible on blacks, but practically unnoticeable in normal use). The underlying HW issue is still there, so there is no telling how much longer this otherwise fine laptop will continue to serve, but if it does go it will do so 133t style

 

Good update on less issues. There seems to be a QA issue with all of these huge driver releases lately. Why they need to bloat to nearly a GB in size doesn't make much sense to me.

I've opted to skip releases at this point and only check for updates maybe once a month or every other month if I remember to check. The new releases aren't producing any changes I'm noticing in daily use at this point and it's just a waste of time / space. There might be some enhancements for a smaller sample of people w/ specific use cases that triggered the updates in the first place.

I'm finding Linux to be a very handy quick debug tool lately when it comes to this sort of issue. Whether it's Windows or the drivers being used in windows is yet to be determined but, it's saved me $ on replacement parts I thought might be an issue and turned out to be buggy code somewhere else. Then again sometimes when we're nerding out we find things to fix that don't need fixing.

 

I see myself completely switching to Linux soon. The sheer amount of value, the fantastic, super-configurable, window managers, the raw performance and smaller footprint. Standalone Windows instance is hardly ever needed anymore (for my use cases, I'm not a gamer), particularly given that one can run a fallback session in a VM with drag and drop and clipboard inter-operability.

 

Yeah, Linux has made some real progress in a short time compared to the likes of MS / Apple. The ability to tinker more w/o the bloat makes it more useful to some. In reality most systems run on a *nix with an overlay. Apple runs atop a similar kernel structure but it's captive source code being used with their systems.

Even just a few years back Linux was still the red headed stepchild when it came to getting functionality of devices working around the same release time. If I didn't mess around with my server all of the time it would have infinite uptime compared to all the constant BS with using Windows requiring reboots either due to patches or because it bloats and consumes way too much RAM. I tend to reboot windows every week or two just to regain resources and my Linux server just hums along for weeks at a time. I do weekly kernel upgrades on the server though since it's directly connected to the internet as a router among other things it's used for.

Using linux though opens the doors to more functionality if you're willing to put in some effort to make things work outside of the box. I actually have it running as a router / wifi / firewall / media streaming / media recording / NAS / etc. with peak performance from a networking standpoint since I put in a 4-port 5gbps ethernet card to bump things up. With the NAS portion running Raid 10 it pushes 400MB/s which makes the 5gbps ports just enough with overhead to not be a bottleneck. With the rebuild I was contemplating doing a Raid 1 on the system drives for the OS but, instead opted for a cron job to sync the 2 drives for backup purposes. To get the secondary drive working in the event of a failure wouldn't take too much effort with a USB drive to boot and make some parameter changes.

Linux unlocks a lot of options though besides networking. As you said the raw power of the kernel unleashes the full potential of the HW it's running on. It's sleek when it comes to resources whereas Windows is greedy and consumes whatever is available. I put 16GB in the server and it's typically only using ~3GB at any given time where windows just booting to the desktop is hitting ~4GB w/o any apps open for the most part. The paranoia of intruders and attacks on windows goes down as well with linux as it's not typically as big of a target due to it being open source and patches hitting faster to close those holes than the others.

If I didn't have a couple of high use programs that need windows / perform worse in a VM I would get rid of windows completely. Waiting out the devs / coders to make options for *nix is a bit futile as there's not a big demand for them to make the changes to another OS. If more people adopted *nix the demand would force their hand and open the possibilities for not needing to do extra things for compatibility. It would be nice to have a higher market share of people using it though and put some pressure on the other 2 to actually improve things rather than just collect on the sale for profit.

 

There has been significant adoption of Chromebooks, so we are a step away from pure Linux. I have seen fairly non-technical people have very enjoyable time with Linux, but such users would need to have the software pre-installed and require access to support. In the meantime, using Linux remains a sign of elevated technical savvy, direct or by association.

 

Support comes in a different form than what most are used to. forums and threads vs phone / computer techs. If the adoption comes so will the support. pre-installed vs installing it these days is becoming more and more common. Some marketing might help people become more aware that it exists. When there's new releases on the other 2 you get bombarded with reviews and press releases everywhere to the point you want to shut everything off. Since it's not corporate based it doesn't get the same exposure to the open market unless it's word of mouth usually.

It might take another 10 years or so to catch on

 

We have already had major OEM(s) offer Linux pre-installed, then (or before?) came System76 and a couple other small brands.

Zorin OS, and others presumably, offer pure software paid support options already.

I would not worry about timelines. Linux just needs to continue gaining ground and reach some respectable market share like 5-10% so that the outstanding software gaps are plugged. The rest will quickly become history.

 

Dell offers Linux on both desktop / laptop units.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/shop/linux-desktop-computers

Lenovo
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=30E0CTO1WWUS2

Intel NUC
https://itsfoss.com/linux-based-mini-pc/

And a few off brands like you mentioned System76 offer linux pre-installed out of the box. They're just not as prominent in advertising wat they offer. You have to look for them but, yes, they're out there in the wild.