All screens go black when one is turned on or off

What the title says, but let me explain why this is annoying:

My current setup is:

• Nvidia GPU (RTX 3070)
• 2 monitors attached on my desk
• The 3rd monitor is the TV attached with an HDMI cable
• The TV does not get output most of the time (System \ Display \ "Disconnect this display")
• Occasionally I clone either display 1 or 2 to the TV ("Duplicate desktop on 1 and 3" or "2 and 3")

If any one of the screens is turned off, all screens go black for a few seconds.

What happens quite often is:

1. Someone wants to watch TV. They turn on the TV. Meanwhile, I am on my PC playing a game.
2. My screens go black briefly, which sucks when I am in a game.
3. Later, they turn off the TV or the TV turns itself off.
4. Both of the screens on my PC go black again.

I know, I could unplug the HDMI cable from the TV and plug it in as needed, but that is not ideal either. Is this an NVIDIA problem? Is this a Windows 11 problem? Is there a fix?

Ben Hastings said:

If any one of the screens is turned off, all screens go black for a few seconds.

Click to expand...

Not identical but similar... whenever I open Nvidia Control Panel and use: "Set up multiple displays", to disable multiple displays, my screen goes black for a few seconds also.
I've had this problem forever, on Win 10 and Win 11. The black screen lasts a few seconds longer on Win 11.

I don't think there IS a solution to this problem. I think it's just how Win 10 or 11 reacts to a change in "multiple displays".

Come to think of it... I don't recall having this issue with a 780 Ti using DVI cable.
If I recall... the problem started when I got the RTX 2070 and switched from Win 7 to Win 10.

Currently, I use display port for my monitor and HDMI for the TV.

Other than the problem I mentioned... the card, the screens and Win 10/11 work flawlessly.
Nvidia driver 516.94

I've always assumed the problem is related to display port weirdness.






When I say "display port weirdness", I'm referring to this issue that I noticed when first having to use display port cable on this vid card...






The point here is that when they started moving to only display port and HDMI connectors on these vid cards... something in the vid card firmware got coded weirdly.



Long story short... concerning the few second black screen issue, I've just decided to "deal with it".


Things in vid card world have been getting strange in the past 10 years or so. For example... EVGA cards used to have a lifetime warranty, and now it's down to three years. When you did need to RMA things you got NEW replacements.
Now you get refurbs.
Economics, market pressure and millions of people switching to smart phones, has ushered in a... "we can sell them unfinished junk" era.

Windows and most other non-mobile software are the same. We don't have to finish things properly anymore. We can sell them stuff no matter how incomplete. I'd guess this phase will end in 30 years or so, and quality hardware and software will surface again.

Think about it... laptop and phone batteries blowing up, power connectors on vid cards melting, and just the general cr*p that is Windows 8 through 11. There are many more examples, but these just spring to mind.

Ghot said:

When I say "display port weirdness", I'm referring to this issue that I noticed when first having to use display port cable on this vid card...

Click to expand...

This seems like another thing for which there is no fix. I believe the BIOS, which brings its own GPU driver (GOP - Graphics Output Protocol - driver), decides which monitor/port is used for the POST screen and you can't change that.

Ben Hastings said:

This seems like another thing for which there is no fix. I believe the BIOS, which brings its own GPU driver (GOP - Graphics Output Protocol - driver), decides which monitor/port is used for the POST screen and you can't change that.

Click to expand...

Yeah... the firmware.

BUT... for some reason, as I mentioned, that few seconds black screen thing is also there, and I don't think there's a solution for that... either. I've been trying to solve that on Win 11 for two years now.