My screen flickers black and returns with 'display driver has recovered'
Windows restarted the GPU driver; on purpose, to avoid a full crash. Once a month is normal, daily is a signal.
Try this first
- 1Update the GPU driver directly from Intel/AMD/Nvidia, not via Windows Update. Windows versions often lag.
- 2On Nvidia: use the 'Clean install' option during setup. That clears old driver remnants.
- 3Test whether it happens with specific apps (browser video, Teams, a particular game). Document the pattern.
- 4Temporarily disable hardware acceleration in Chrome and Teams to test if those are the trigger.
When to bring us in
Driver crashes multiple times a day, even on the latest driver: often hardware. We run memtest86 and stress tests, about half a day of work but it gives certainty.
See also
- My laptop is suddenly slowThree main suspects: a runaway background process, near-full disk, or a Windows update in progress.
- One specific application is slow for everyoneIf an app is slow for one person: local. For everyone at once: server side or vendor side.
- Opening files from the file server takes minutesOften the server itself is fine and the issue is network routing or stalling DNS resolution.
None of the above fits?
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