Monitors suddenly switching off after 10-15 mins when in use??

katie279 · 9 Jan 2022 at 17:30

Hi all,

Have an odd one, not sure if it's a monitor, graphics card, windows or other issue.

Basically have a PC that I've lazily had in always on mode for years and it's been working fine, have been looking at saving on electricity costs so I turned on the windows power saving mode yesterday.

Now I'm getting a strange issue where all three monitors turn off after I've been using windows for about 10-15mins. It's like it's going to sleep mode, but it's whilst I'm using it and moving the mouse/keyboard doesn't bring it out of sleep.

Restarting the pc works fine, but it'll switch off again after 10-15 mins.

Has anyone got the foggiest what's going on here?

PC sounds like all still running, don't think it's overheating or anything (checked with CPUZ) and only using basic programs (not been switching off for last few years playing intensive games)

Scratching my head a bit on this, but very annoying!

Semple · 10 Jan 2022 at 07:41

What happens when you power the monitor off and back on?

Also do you have the same behavior when only one monitor is connected?

Hanuki · 10 Jan 2022 at 08:43

Hmm, have you had a look at the Event viewer?

Does your system have a onboard graphic input, and ofc does your setup support it?

Maybe plug in 1 of 3 monitors directly into the motherboard to elliminate you graphics card, troubleshoot from there

katie279 · 10 Jan 2022 at 09:41

Semple said:
What happens when you power the monitor off and back on?

Also do you have the same behavior when only one monitor is connected?

Powering on/off does nothing - I get the hdmi notice on screen as if no signal. Will test with just one monitor later and see if any difference

katie279 · 10 Jan 2022 at 09:42

Hanuki said:
Hmm, have you had a look at the Event viewer?

Does your system have a onboard graphic input, and ofc does your setup support it?

Maybe plug in 1 of 3 monitors directly into the motherboard to elliminate you graphics card, troubleshoot from there

Yes ,was musing this - just strange it started this after I switched on energy saving. If plugging into motherboard works, then not sure if that helps as still means I can turn on sleep mode etc!

Semple · 10 Jan 2022 at 09:52

Why not just shut down anyway. Presumably you have SSD/NVME in the PC, so bootup shouldn't be very long at all.

katie279 · 10 Jan 2022 at 09:55

Absolutely - that's what I was doing, but this is just shutting down monitors whilst I'm using the PC! Ie it's not after 15 mins of inactivity!

Hanuki · 10 Jan 2022 at 19:43

Surely you can amend the power saving for the monitors (Dont know if NVIDA or AMD has controls for this in the control panel) - out of curiosity when they turn off, if you was to unplug 1 of 3 monitors from the GPU, and replug it in does that monitor spring into life?

Haha, not used windows for a good 2 years since moving onto Linux - but I recall the power-save features on Windows were temperamental.

katie279 · 11 Jan 2022 at 09:12

Hmm - you saying that the monitor power saving is separate to the windows monitor power saving? If so, good idea - might give that a try.

Also was thinking about just upgrading to Windows 11 (sometimes a windows 'reset' every now and then is a good way to flush out all the impossible to solve quirks.... although tends to introduce a few more...

)

Would happily use Linux, just doesn't run half the stuff I'd need annoyingly!

katie279 · 16 Jan 2022 at 11:29

To close this off - upgrading bios seems to have solved this problem, now waking from sleep as expected...!