Windows 10: Secondary monitor disconnecting and reconnecting intermittently and frequently

I've seen this issue reported here and numerous other places with no real solutions identified or posted, so I'll give it another shot.


I have two systems that experience this issue, one is a desktop with two monitors connected, the other is a laptop with two external monitors connected via a USB docking station.


On the desktop system where I will be concentrating this report, as I feel confident that if a solution is found, it will work on both systems, the secondary monitor will frequently go black for a moment and then recover as if it has lost signal very briefly with the computer. This will happen anywhere from one to half a dozen or more times in the span of 10 - 20 seconds, and then recover. This behavior happens extremely intermittently with no identifiable causes. There is no single program being opened or closed. There is no physical activity being done that results in the behavior. I've observed it happen when there is no interaction being done with the computer at all.


Things that I have tried:

- Swapping the monitor cables between the two monitors

- Swapping the port that the secondary monitor is plugged into on the video card

- Plugging the secondary monitor into the onboard GPU on the motherboard instead of the primary GPU that the system is using

- Doing a full DDU uninstall / reinstall of all graphics drivers

- Doing a full uninstall / reinstall of the monitor itself

- Replacing the secondary monitor with a completely brand new unit


Given that the problem happens when the monitor is plugged into a completely separate display adapter tells me the issue is not the video card or its drivers. If I plug JUST the monitor that I'm using for the secondary monitor in to the system by itself without using my normal primary monitor, it does not exhibit this behavior. This only happens in a multi-monitor configuration, and only happens on the non-primary monitor.


Some relevant hardware details of the primary system in question:

- Gigabyte Z270 MX Gaming 5 motherboard with Core i5-7600 CPU and embedded Intel 630 GPU

- MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super

- Samsung 32" curved 1440p 144Hz monitor primary

- Dell U2417H 1080p 60Hz monitor secondary

- Windows 10 Home 64-bit, 20H2, Build 19042.685 Note: secondary system is running Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit on mainline, non-Insider build, so the problem is not related to anything in the newer updates. Given that I've seen reports of this issue as far back as 2015, I am unconvinced that this is a "new" problem.


Things I have seen recommended that do not apply:

- Disable hybrid sleep in power options this option does not appear in the advanced power config panel here


Unsure what else to try at this point, but the problem is pointing towards OS level, as pretty much everything else has been ruled out.

:)

 

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