Question Laptop screen randomly flashes black while gaming in full-screen ?

[dkpepper]

I got a gaming laptop about a year ago to finally be able to play all the games I've had on my list, and it's been having this issue whenever I play in fullscreen:
The game will freeze for a couple seconds, then the screen turns black for a couple seconds, then comes back. I game with an Xbox controller and this also makes the mouse cursor show up/causes cursor issues where I have to tab in/out a few times, or have to restart the game to fix it. On some games it also minimizes them, or makes the game go into windowed mode. This problem happens maybe 2 to 4 times within 3 hours, and could start happening within 10 mins to an hour into it.

MSI Raider GE76
CPU: i7-12700H 2.70GHz
RAM: 32 GB
iGPU: Intel Iris Xe Graphics
GPU: RTX 3070 Ti 8GB Laptop
Screen: 17" 1080p 360Hz
OS: Windows 11 Home

-Thought it might be the 360Hz refresh rate but I've been playing Fallout 4 which requires me to turn down to 60Hz to make it work and the issue still happens
-Also thought it might be a heating issue, but this still happens in less intensive games/2D games (eg. Katana Zero) where the laptop doesn't get that hot
-Whenever this issue occurs the Event Viewer shows Error Event 1000 for the Desktop Window Manager, dwm.exe
-I used Windows Focus Logger to see if another program was taking focus to cause this but it didn't show anything
-The laptop is always plugged in on best performance when I use it, and it's kept stationary on a table
-Windows 11 is up to date
-Nvidia drivers are kept up to date

I've been trying to google a solution to this for many months but only found other black screen issues that don't seem to apply to me

 

[helpstar]

update the BIOS if available

 

[dkpepper]

update the BIOS if available

Dang I was hoping that was it. Looks like the BIOS is already up to the current version so there's no update.

 

[helpstar]

try an external monitor, to check if the integrated display has a problem

 

[dkpepper]

Thanks for your suggestions @helpstar

Sorry I couldn't find time to respond sooner. I can't believe I finally got the answer after months of searching from here:

[SOLVED] - Xbox Series controller doing strange things to my computer (black screen, possibly graphics card related)

So this is a bit of an odd issue. Whenever I play games with my Series controller plugged in (bluetooth latency is awful), every once and a while, both of my monitors will flash black and then come back. This can (but not always) cause both Steam and Discord windows to turn black, so that even...

forums.tomshardware.com

So looks like if you use an Xbox One/Series controller with a wire and have this issue, try updating your controller's firmware. I've done some gaming since then and the issue hasn't occurred. So weird a controller would cause a graphical issue, and an official Microsoft one no less.