Welcome to yet another Windows 10 update survival tips. This time, I’m covering the bugs introduced few version before to the actual May update 1903. If you are reading this, should any of these keywords (#black-screen-no-signal, #yellow-tint, #display-port-blackscreen, #exit-fullscreen-nosignal) happened to strike you – continue reading.
Now back to the story.. somewhere before the May update 1903 which took place right about the time I wrote this. Windows 10 introduces a few features to the core…
– Night reading mode (a yellowish tint that blocks harmful blue light from making our eyes tired useful for night)
– Full-screen games optimization (used to improve performance in full screen and smoothens the transition between Windows and Games making them seamless)
The problem is that it does comes with potential bugs that some of you may notice after upgrading. Here are some of the common symptoms listed below.
- Black screen with no signal happens after exiting a game with fullscreen [Especially if the game is set on 1080p and your desktop is not] (Apparently, it’s okay if you play it under window borderless or windowed mode).
This usually happened to a more modern setup of PC (AMD and Nvidia alike) where we have multiple monitor or video capture cards like Elgato acting like a secondary display and you are using some form of high resolution (beyond 1080p) and scaling of UI. For my case, my PC is using Elgato HDS and it acted as secondary and my monitor is a 4k 60fps monitor.
Cleaning up in Safe Mode with DDU and reupdating drivers does not work as part of the cause comes from Windows 10’s core – it may solved it temporarily it will likely to happened when you moved on to the next game etc. My scenario : Different type of resolutions, one that limits 1080p for recording (elgato Display 2) and my prime display 4k using RX Vega 56. - As soon as you start up a game, the screen gets tinted with some yellow screen like as if we are using night reading mode on our mobile.
- Occasionally, even using alt-tab will cause the black screen with no signal.
- Upon playing a game you might notice the screen turned into magenta or greenish-like screen. Sometimes exiting games also causes this.
Fortunately, there are immediate temporary fix and workaround for some of these problems and it has most likely nothing to do with your monitor, cabling etc.
We start with an immediate temporary fix.
- Restart monitor power cycle – Just turn off your monitor switch and wait for a few seconds. Turn it back on, the power cycle will reset whatever Windows is doing to the display. Note: This is just a temporary solution which allows us to regain control over the monitor display rather than, a lame no signal black screen. This fixes almost every problem temporary.
- If you are in Windows environment and screen started to act weird like turning yellow or green/magenta, just go towards Display Settings under Settings. Popping up the window will instantly fix this problem. Not sure why though. Apparently, they just released a fix for this problem.
A better fix
- For Elgato Users : Set Display Settings from 1|2 to extended if you not using any game recording. Setting it back to mirror will cause an issue (Windows is confused which one to use as passthrough and which one is the main display), but you can only use for OBS recording, switch it back to extended if you want a non-recording usage case.
- Windows seems to push games into borderless window mode for better performance, support for multiple monitors and smoother transition between Windows and the Game itself. Apparently, if you set your games to this mode, your screen will do fine. For games like Warframe, Tomb Raider or MK11, you can choose this method.
- However, for older games that do not have borderless window mode or games that suffer performance drop after using borderless mode, you need to find the exe file of the game itself. If the game is installed on Steam; for example, it is most likely found inside your Steam library\steamapps\common\<Game of Your Choice> folder. Right-click the exe file. Set it to Windows 8 compatibility mode, and check on disable full-screen optimization. See picture above. This will fix most of your gaming problem.
Try doing these methods first before, making a harsh decision to replace your monitor, graphics card or your cabling.