Having dolphin open causes whole screen to blink every ~3 seconds

07-23-2019, 10:24 AM #1

Whenever I even open dolphin, not even run a game, it causes my entire screen to turn black every 3ish seconds. It happens on both dolphin 4 and 5, but does not happen on Faster Melee, which is a modification of dolphin made for super smash brothers melee. Any help would be much appreciated, and I'll be glad to share any more details if necessary. Thanks!

***MayImilae*** · 07-23-2019, 12:40 PM #2

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**JonnyH** · 07-23-2019, 01:52 PM #3

Is this the whole screen, even if dolphin is windowed?

If so it's likely a gpu driver issue (make sure you have the latest drivers from the vendor's website, not just windows update), or a monitor issue - does it support any adaptive sync? Is it set at the expected refresh rate and color format in the windows settings & gpu control panel?

07-24-2019, 03:54 AM #4

(07-23-2019, 01:52 PM)JonnyH Wrote: Is this the whole screen, even if dolphin is windowed?

If so it's likely a gpu driver issue (make sure you have the latest drivers from the vendor's website, not just windows update), or a monitor issue - does it support any adaptive sync? Is it set at the expected refresh rate and color format in the windows settings & gpu control panel?

It's the whole screen. I dl'ed an up to date driver from nvidia and got the same issue. I don't think it's a monitor issue because it happens when I'm not even running a game, just having the dolphin startup window open causes the issue. 60Hz refresh rate and color formats are all default. An interesting observation is that the screen doesn't turn off, it's still illuminated (if that makes sense), there's just nothing being displayed. If I have a youtube video up while it happens, the video's audio stutters and sometimes encounters an error and stops, which would suggest that it's not a monitor issue but something else.

**JonnyH** · 07-24-2019, 06:43 AM #5

(07-24-2019, 03:54 AM)diego_umejuarez_69 Wrote: It's the whole screen. I dl'ed an up to date driver from nvidia and got the same issue. I don't think it's a monitor issue because it happens when I'm not even running a game, just having the dolphin startup window open causes the issue. 60Hz refresh rate and color formats are all default. An interesting observation is that the screen doesn't turn off, it's still illuminated (if that makes sense), there's just nothing being displayed. If I have a youtube video up while it happens, the video's audio stutters and sometimes encounters an error and stops, which would suggest that it's not a monitor issue but something else.

It sounds like the GPU may be experiencing a fault and trying to recover, though if it thinks the monitor is being disconnected it may cause issues, as having that many disconnect/reconnect events is probably poorly tested in most software. Are there any related errors in the windows Event Viewer app?

Do you have another monitor (and/or monitor cable) to test with anyway? It may even be a faulty hardware issue - this certainly isn't normal - so make sure nothing is overheating or overclocked? If we're sure it's not software (you've tried a fresh install of windows with new drivers), then you'd need to track down exactly what hardware is faulty - CPU, GPU, RAM, Motherboard and any PCIe add-in cards may all cause problems.

07-25-2019, 01:13 AM #6

(07-24-2019, 06:43 AM)JonnyH Wrote: It sounds like the GPU may be experiencing a fault and trying to recover, though if it thinks the monitor is being disconnected it may cause issues, as having that many disconnect/reconnect events is probably poorly tested in most software. Are there any related errors in the windows Event Viewer app?

Do you have another monitor (and/or monitor cable) to test with anyway? It may even be a faulty hardware issue - this certainly isn't normal - so make sure nothing is overheating or overclocked? If we're sure it's not software (you've tried a fresh install of windows with new drivers), then you'd need to track down exactly what hardware is faulty - CPU, GPU, RAM, Motherboard and any PCIe add-in cards may all cause problems.

I tried downloading new drivers for both integrated graphics and nvidia, and I checked the event viewer and turns out there were a whole lot of "Display driver igfx stopped responding and has successfully recovered." events. Seeing as that suggests it's an integrated graphics problem, I went into the nvidia control panel and set the global default to be my nvidia GPU to be the default for everything (though I'd already set dolphin to run on my nvidia before) and now I'm not running into the problem. Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it![url=https://twitter.com/GOLSynphony/status/1153876099073359872][/url]

**mbc07** · 07-25-2019, 06:59 AM #7

Keep in mind however that your battery life will be negatively impacted as the discrete GPU will be running all the time. I suggest you try completely uninstalling both GPU drivers using DDU (Google it) in safe mode then reinstall the latest version available on the Intel/NVIDIA website. I recommend downloading the drivers and then disconnecting from the internet before using DDU to avoid Windows Update automatically reinstalling outdated drivers...