x17 R1, screen resetting

Question

Since yesterday, my laptop (~2 months old) started doing this thing where the screen resets (just like when you change graphics settings), but every few seconds.  Sometimes it stays very regular, resetting every ~4 seconds, but other times the resetting stops and it eventually hangs (no cursor movement, everything frozen) until it resets again (which can be minutes or more), at which point it goes back into this resetting loop. I suspected a bad windows update, and rolled back the recent updates to no effect.  I tried progressively more severe system reset options until I did a fresh reinstall from the Alienware boot thing that reinstalls a fresh OS (and didn't keep settings or data).  Each time the issue is resolved until a few minutes after windows lets you in, at which point it recurs. At this point I determined that the issue goes away when I disable the Nvidia 3080 graphics card driver in Device Manager, making it seem to be very much like this issue: https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware/x17-R1-screen-frequently-switches-to-black-and-then-back-to/m-p/8138884/thread-id/49605  I suspect that the reason it takes a few minutes to recur after a fresh install of windows is that it is still installing/setting up this driver. I also tried disabling 'Enable Hybrid Graphics/Advanced Optimus' in the BIOS as suggested in that thread, but when I do that I just get a black screen on boot. At this point I suspect a hardware issue causing a software issue, since the issue persists after fresh reinstall, but any thoughts on other things I should try before I call dell tech support?

JOcean · Accepted Answer

I would suggest running diagnostics first (tap F12 immediately at boot) just to confirm the hardware is good or possibly to detect a problem. That way at least you will have some data when you call Dell tech support, which I would also suggest.

charlesbward · Accepted Answer

So, I left the driver disabled for a while and let windows update and alienware update finish their installing and rebooting cycles, and then I re-enabled the driver. And, surprisingly, things seem to be OK now. It doesn't entirely make sense to me that the issue started on an up-to-date system and persisted through a fresh re-image but then disappeared after updates...but it's working again now at any rate.

Hopefully this is not something transient and it will return. Fingers crossed.

Alienware

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