Question Screen flickering and showing another tab every 30 seconds or so. Happens both in game and just browsing web.

GHL100

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Jul 28, 2016
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First off it's very hard to tell you exactly whats happening since I'm not quite sure myself and have no way of showing whats happening. Basically occasionally I will notice that whilst using my pc sometimes, every 30 seconds or so it will flicker for a very very very short time and show another tab (like if I were playing CSGO, it'd show the chrome page I had open and go back within a very minute space of time, maybe a frame or two. Its only started happening recently, maybe about ten days total. I know its not a virus, I've done like 3 virus scans. My monitor is one of the few that got upgraded to g-sync but was freesync (asus mg278q) which I have enabled outside of csgo but disabled whilst playing csgo. I know it cannot be because of it as it happens when playing csgo and when I'm not. I use playstv which records gameplay and only gameplay and it doesn't show the flickering. I have the latest drivers for my graphics card (gtx 1060 3gb). If anyone knows why it could possibly be flickering please let me know.

Monitor Asus mg278q
GTX 1060 3gb
i7 8700k
650W gold evga power supply
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
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GHL100

Reputable
Jul 28, 2016
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4,635

GHL100

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Jul 28, 2016
87
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4,635
Try doing a clean boot and see if it still happens - read instructions carefully and make sure NOT to disable any microsoft services or windows may not load right: https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

if it fixes it, its possible cause is one of your startup programs, slowly add them back into startup (over a number of startups) to find the cause of problem.
ok so I did this, and disabled all the processes etc, seems its still happening with almost nothing running.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
so it is only what is showing on screen, since the video capture software doesn't have same problem.. have you tried using Display port or HDMI cables, which ever you aren't using now?

this could help - https://www.nvidia.com/object/nv-uefi-update-x64.html

what monitor do you have?

I can't say I seen this before, if box appearing was Command prompt, I could understand as sometimes windows flashes that up.

Games and Desktop are in different "desktop images" so its possible the buffer might show images from other desktop. I am just trying to figure out how it does it. when you alt tab it generally has to redraw desktop image from memory or hdd, depending how much free ram there is.

what storage/ram have you got?
 

GHL100

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Jul 28, 2016
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so it is only what is showing on screen, since the video capture software doesn't have same problem.. have you tried using Display port or HDMI cables, which ever you aren't using now?

this could help - https://www.nvidia.com/object/nv-uefi-update-x64.html

what monitor do you have?

I can't say I seen this before, if box appearing was Command prompt, I could understand as sometimes windows flashes that up.

Games and Desktop are in different "desktop images" so its possible the buffer might show images from other desktop. I am just trying to figure out how it does it. when you alt tab it generally has to redraw desktop image from memory or hdd, depending how much free ram there is.

what storage/ram have you got?
I have updated the drivers all fully. I've since updated the graphics one to a newer one without solving the issue. My specs are below. I am very confused as I can't seem to find anyone with a similar issue, it flashes in almost an instant and it doesn't seem to trouble the cpu usage or gpu usage and in that very brief window I am 100% sure it is another window is flashing at times due to seeing similar colours as the chrome tab I have had open whilst playing games.

Interesting side note is that I used to get a lot of bluescreens (almost every two/three days) due to driver problems it seems but come to think of it (would give driver irql not less or equal error or sometimes just straight up shut down the pc as if the power were unplugged and reboot), I haven't had one in at least 3 weeks.

Monitor Asus mg278q - I have tried with the gsync on and off, it doesn't seem to be the cause.
GTX 1060 3gb
i7 8700k
650W gold evga power supply
2x8gb ripjaw @2400mhz
240gb SSD Kingston (Boot drive)
2tb HDD Seagate 7200rpm formatted into two 1tb drives
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
what motherboard do you have? its only thing not mentioned so far :)

are games on hdd? it makes me think its a buffer thing as Video card ram isn't used to store desktop while you play games, It is stored in ram I guess, depends how much ram CSGO uses of your 16gb, if Win 10 needs to move parts of itself to storage, it might.)

How much ram do you normally use while playing CSGO?

I have seen something like this before but its not exactly the same, the person from memory was seeing images from 30 seconds before. I cannot remember what solution was

try running hdtune on ssd and look at health tab
try testing HDD with Seatools for windows
Try running memtesst86 on each of your ram sticks, one stick at a time, up to 8 passes. Only error count you want is 0, any higher could be cause of the BSOD. Remove/replace ram sticks with errors.
Try running INtel Processor Diagnostic Tool on the cpu

that is basically everything in PC that is data related.

Just in case BSOD start again - Can you follow option one on the following link - here - and then do this step below: Small memory dumps - Have Windows Create a Small Memory Dump (Minidump) on BSOD

that creates a file in c windows/minidump after the next BSOD
copy that file to documents
upload the copy from documents to a file sharing web site, and share the link here and I will get someone to convert file into a format I can read