Windows 10: Random Black Screens While Using Laptop

Before I begin, I want to note that my computer, just this past week, got upgraded to build 1607 of Windows 10 and a couple batches of updates installed in the next couple of days. At the moment, I have disabled updates because I am trying to see if I can produce my errors myself in my current configuration.

I have in the past had issues after playing games and coming out of hibernation for my next session. This was before my update to the latest build, so if this continues to occur, I'll address it later. I'll address that in another thread. Yesterday, I had a STOP error playing a Youtube video right after coming out of hibernation. I wonder if it's an isolated incident to something I had to reboot for and again, will address it later. (It hasn't happened yet today.)

The problem that IS continually recurring is the occasional black screen of nothingness. My top row does have a button that can immediately allow a user to black the entire screen, so provided I don't actually push that, what I'm getting is a sudden black screen at random while using the PC (15 minutes ago I was typing an e-mail, and was idle for maybe two seconds reading what I'd typed). The black screen does seem to be temporary; it comes back with a sound like I had just connected something to the computer. My guess is that it was a graphics card somehow disengaging, but my AMD Radeon R7 M2600X (built-in laptop card) seems to be functioning normally. In fact, in the device manager, i see absolutely nothing wrong. Something seems to be unplugging itself, and reinserting itself, over time. And I'm confused.

I cannot for the life of me begin to guess how to address this issue. The black screen issues have never occurred before (nor has the STOP error I mentioned earlier). And again, the errors all seem to be coming with recent updates; this is why I only download updates every few months, not letting the thing run normally. At the moment, the error occurs once, maybe twice a day, and I'm fine otherwise, so it's notthing more than a mere annoyance; however, I don't want to simply sit and pray it will go away. Does anyone have any ideas what I can do here or what I can check to see what the cause is?

Unrelated, while typing the above message, I went to type in the windows search box and it vanished, as if ceasing to exist. Clicking the Start button brought it back, but it's also weird.

:)

 

Laptop wont start correctly after interrupted restart.

Random thing that i discovered, while stuck on the black screen unplugging or plugging in the laptop will cause it to beep.

 

Screen problems when using mouse

I just updated to windows 10 a notebook computer. This notebook was already slow and with some problems, but no graphic problems. After the update, while using the mouse, random black lines appear on the screen making it painful after a while to even look
at the screen.

What can I do? Now using it is almost impossible.

 

Bumping for help. It happened again today. I think I have a graphics card, or something, disengaging and reengaging once a day, shortly after I come out of hibernation. It may not be a graphics card, but I'm starting to think that because I got a STOP error while watching a video on the one occasion. Today, it happened again while typing, and while idle for less than a second (I may have still been typing).

EDIT: While I was AFK momentarily, my computer apparently BSODed and rebooted itself. I finally checked the Event Viewer and it confirmed the unexpected reboot, though when I checked the Updates section I found it had installed driver updates, which might have been related to my screen blacking out briefly as I found three different updates between yesterday and today. What I can't figure out is why the drivers are being updated every single day. Even more confusing, at the time that these updates occurred, I had actually disabled the Windows Update, so if my reboots are related to the drivers malfunctioning during attempted use, I had no way to know they were even updated in the first place. Can we not even properly disable Windows Update the hard way now? It worked like a charm on the previous build.

 

What video driver are you using? Are you using the generic Windows or are you downloading from amd.com ? Use the AMD driver.

 

Sorry, just saw your reply after I edited in the reboot that just occurred above your reply. That will provide some details suggesting what the blacking screen might have been (a driver update is now my guess).

As for the video driver itself, the updates installing are for AMD Radeon R7 M2600X (my display adapter) and seem to be occurring on an almost daily basis. I'm also seeing the other adapter mentioned, which just says AMD Radeon(TM) R7 Graphics. Both are getting daily Windows updates. Which doesn't make sense. I thought the main drivers for display adapters didn't update that frequently, so it suggests there are lots of bugs with the drivers from a layman's view, though this is the first time I've seen display adapters get so many updates. I could show you my update history since build 1607 was installed and I think I already have at least six or seven, maybe more, in there. I'm almost 100% sure my problems are coming from all of these installing updates. I did also grab a text file of the reboot events in the event viewer and can share that with you (the black screen this morning seems to be when events showed a driver update in the viewer).

 

• Right click on start, then System
• Click Advanced system settings from the left sidebar.
• Select the Hardware tab.
• Press the Device Installation Settings button.
• Choose No, and then press the Save Changes button.

 

The little secrets you learn from time to time...I was wondering how to disable that. Thanks! I'll possibly re-enable it to update them once in a while, but otherwise that should take care of the black screens issue. If I get the gaming issue again, or other weird BSODs, I'll post about those. If I see something else on my PC related to this, I'll post it as well, but I am wondering if all the recent BSODs were related to the driver updates. I hope that's what the cause was, so I can get back to deducing the gaming ones.

 

I do have more information. This time, I checked the event viewer immediately when I hit another black screen today, and apparently Windows Installer worked on its own to do something in the Catalyst Control Center. I see multiple opened events for starting an installation and ending an installation all over a roughly 10 second window. Here's one of the events.

Additionally, Windows Update has turned itself back on and was running. I did ensure it was disabled last nite. For some reason, it's turning itself back on, which is where I think this Catalyst thing came from.

 

Sounds like you may need to use something like: Display Driver Uninstaller Display Driver Uninstaller Download version 17.0.6.6 This uninstalls the Video driver completely (uninstall in safe mode) and then reinstall the Video driver after a reboot.

 

Let me add something else. I just had a blue screen again.

I checked the updates window. Last checked: today, 10:14 a.m. The edit above shows an event that occurred only five minutes later. And this blue screen was a critical structure problem.

To make things even more interesting, none of my installed updates are appearing anymore in Windows Update.

So yes, the blue screens are caused by something trying to update in the drivers, and I seem to be having daily BSOD at this point. I've changed to a metered connection and I believe that will stop me having any further updates until I choose to have them and reboot myself. It's rather silly that I can choose to disable a service and the system can blatantly tell me no, we're not letting you turn that off. That's the most shady thing M$ could do. I'm sure the drivers are fine, and rebooting after any update would give me absolutely no problems, but updates should not be downloading automatically like that.

 

Aren't you having northbridge errors in event viewer everytime that reboots happen by any chance?

You can always try, besides avoiding MS defualt drivers, to install the latest chipset drivers for your board, in my case, that did the trick, I got those + latest video drivers from AMD, no more crashes, Bsods or black screens.

Oh... forgot to tell, if the setting for not using MS drivers doesn't work, hide the update with this:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-in-windows-10

There is a link to download the troubleshooter, download and execute, if you find anything related to AMD drivers, hide it, no more pesky drivers...

 

I only had what I posted, and I found two blue screen events similar to that. In the past, I saw a critical in the event viewer, but this time there was no critical or "restart unexpected" even though it was a BSOD. It's strange.

I'm extremely interested in what the laptop does this morning. Metered connection is on, and using video services, I had the best evening of viewing I think I've ever had without downloads in the background (I lagged heavily once while sending an e-mail, so that was on me). So I might be on to something. Provided my computer doesn't decide no, it's time to unmeter your connection and get the medicine we insist you must have...

Again, the drivers seem to be fine, the problem is that Windows thinks it's appropriate to disobey my demand to not have updates installing first thing in the morning, causing me to BSOD an hour later, and more importantly insists it has the right to update drivers while I am using them. I was watching a video very early in my day once, in fact, and BSODed right in the middle of the video. I can only assume Windows tried to update the driver while I was watching the video. Given the events I'm finding in the viewer, this makes perfect sense.

 

Use the tool to hide driver udates, that should stop Windows from doing that. I did it, zero problems.

 

You mean the post above? That didn't do it. I disabled driver updates and my drivers still updated mid-use.

I haven't BSODed today, however. Metered connection seems to be the solution. I also had, as noted, great online use of video services yesterday, better than I've ever had before. I'm going to disable metered periodically to update things, but I still think it's weird that Windows can literally interrupt your activities like that, let alone automatically turn Windows Update back on after you disable it, something that should not be possible. Metered option might be better as I might have to use Windows Store in the near future, and I tested and learned items don't download if Windows Update is disabled. So at least this way, it should work, though I should try with metered connections on and make sure.