Solved: Screen Blackout Issue (Unknown Cause?)

RachelS95

FIXED?: I just got the latest window update and installed it. That seems to have fixed my black screen issue.
I wanted to play some games today to stave off the quarantine boredom, but when I start anything up, my screen goes black intermittently when the game is either in fullscreen or borderless window mode. I know the system doesn't turn off or stall because I can still hear sound while the screen is black and can fix the issue momentarily by Alt+Tabbing to my browser/another app. The real issue is is that I can't easily tell if this is an issue with my monitor or my graphics card or something else. We had a storm yesterday where my computer was forcibly shut off due to a power outage twice (once during the storm and the second time was a while after the storm passed likely caused by the electric company shutting off the power so a repairman could fix a line somewhere without warning), which has a high possibility of causing the issue. My computer is theoretically protected by a surge protector that's between it and the wall outlet, but I'm still unsure. My computer works as normal otherwise, but I would appreciate any help in identifying and troubleshooting this problem.

TSTonyV

What kind of computer is it? Since the issue seems to happen specifically when you open a game, the most likely issue is a graphics-driver related problem. If you uninstall and reinstall the drivers for the GPU, that may fix it. 

RachelS95

TSTonyV said:

What kind of computer is it? Since the issue seems to happen specifically when you open a game, the most likely issue is a graphics-driver related problem. If you uninstall and reinstall the drivers for the GPU, that may fix it. 

It's a PC I built myself with a Radeon RX 560 series GPU. After you suggested it was a driver problem, I did some digging and saw that an update released around March was causing people to have similar problems.

AlexS

Have you been able to find an older driver you could roll back to for your RX 560 or have you updated the driver to the most recent release?

RachelS95

AlexS said:

Have you been able to find an older driver you could roll back to for your RX 560 or have you updated the driver to the most recent release?

I was ready to do that, Radeon has a version backup library of previous updates, but then I got the latest windows 10 update and that seems to fix my issue. If I have a similar issue in the future, I'll keep these helpful tips in mind, thank you!

AlexS

Sounds like a plan!  Glad your problem is gone!