[German]Today a short blog post, addressing Windows 10 users with a multi-monitor configuration. I recently run over some posts, that reporting, the last December 2017 update will cause problems with multi-monitor environments.
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What's the problem?
It's (was) just a vague feeling, but within a few days I read two cases, that reported problems with the power supply of the second monitor after wake up from standby. The monitor remains dark and is not activated. One case came to me as a comment to my blog post Windows 10 V1709: Issues with Update KB4051963.
New multi-monitor problem created by the latest 10 update (December 7th). I have 2 monitors. Windows does not turn on my second monitor on startup or when recovering from sleep mode. If I cycle power on monitor #2, the display comes up and works fine – so Windows recognizes the monitor – until the next time the computer is restarted or comes out of sleep mode. Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks in advance…
Windows 10 Professional (x64) Version 1709 (build 16299.98) with an Nvidia GTX 1080Ti graphics card (with latest software updates).
It wouldn't have catch my attention, if I haven't read a couple of hours before this German forum post at Microsoft Answers. A user writes (freely translated)
Sind a few days my monitor remains black after awaking from sleep mode. I can only reactivate it by completely restarting the laptop.
Also individually this forum contribution would not have triggered anything with me. However, the coincidence of the two posts made me pay attention. Notebooks comes with two graphics chips – so boot posts seems to addressing the same issue – but maybe I'm wrong.
It looks to me as if the graphic driver doesn't control the second monitor output after waking up from standby. Therefore, I would have guessed on graphic driver problems and suggested switching off the fast boot. But that didn't help.
Older cases from 2017
Searching the Internet brought me only to older forum posts, addressing similar issues. A MS Answers post from June 2017 is slightly different. There are issues with a 2nd DVI monitor. The posted a workaround: Press Windows+P, select within the display settings mirroring the primary monitor to the 2nd display and revert back. That invokes the 2nd monitor.
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Another MS Answers forum post from September 2017 describes a similar problem. Switching off the quick start does not help here either. A user mentions that KB4038788 is the problem and that after uninstalling his system works. If that's true, the error might come back after every cumulative update.
A workaround could be to press the key combination Ctrl+Shift+Win+B to reset the video driver. A MS Answers forum post from November 2017 (here) describes something similar. There was someone else hinting to cancel the power-saving options for some drivers via Device Manager.
So my question: has anyone come across something similar? And is there a fix or update that fixes this problem? Addendum: I've published the German edition of this blog post yesterday (see the link at the article's head). A few hours after publishing I received confirmation from German blog readers, that this seems to be an issue. Some users reported, that re-installing the graphics driver helps. Others claiming, that a BIOS/UEFI update heals that.
Similar articles:
Fixes for Windows 7 SP1 Multi Monitor Bug
Windows 7: KB4039884 fixes dual monitor rendering bug
Windows 10 V1709: Update KB4051963 (dot matrix printer fix)
Same problem after Dec 2017 Win 10 64 update; thank you very much – Ctrl+Shift+Win+B trick helped me.