Second monitor is flickering

[Rusger]

Hi!

I have a strange problem... I changed the wallpapers of both of my monitors and on my second one the wallpaper startet to flicker. It looked like the old wallpaper was still playing in the background, while the new one was playing at the same time. So it startet to flicker between both of them.

I noticed, that it stopped, when I took a wallpaper which was on both monitors (so, I mean a dual monitor wallpaper) and this worked fine. But I wanted 2 different wallpapers.

I reinstalled the program, but now it flickers black. Like there is a black wallpaper in the background and the other one is playing over it, like the first time (but this time in just black).

My first monitor is working fine. I've made a video of it:
https://youtu.be/--TlI6ExVfk

Does anyone have a solution?

Thanks!

[Biohazard]

Are both monitors plugged into the same graphics card?

Does it happen with any type of wallpaper or i.e. only web/videos?

[Rusger]

Hi!

Thanks for the fast respone!

Yes, both are plugged in one graphic card. It happens with any type of wallpaper. It's only not flickering if I take a dual wallpaper (3840 x 1080). I just made an update of my graphic card, but there is still the same problem...

[Biohazard]

Which graphics card do you have? Do you have any overlay programs installed or Afterburner/Rivatuner?

Do you know if the wallpaper is completely restarting or if it turns visible/invisible? I.e. if you use a video, does the video always start from the beginning while this is happening?

[Rusger]

I have a Geforce GTX 970.
No Overlay programs.

A video keeps running, but is flickering as well...

[Biohazard]

Do you have Game DVR or Game Bar still enabled in Windows, does turning those off make any difference?

Can you download this https://www.dropbox.com/s/o2jth39bcvvej57/ListDlls.zip?dl=0 and run the .bat file in there? It should create an out.txt. Can you paste that on www.pastebin.com and share the link here?

[Rusger]

Hi!

I tried as you said.
Take a look: https://pastebin.com/14sbz6Ym

(A lot of programs running there anyway...)

[Biohazard]

Thanks, I don't really notice anything there that usually leads to display problems.

Are both monitors the same model? Does it happen even if you only put a wallpaper on the second one?

Maybe you could also try this: Use the split button on the first monitor and then put two wallpapers one the first one only. I wonder if this is caused by having two wallpapers or if it's actually just on the second monitor (if that makes sense).

[Rusger]

Both monitors are exactly the same model.

I tried this:
Monitor 1 (the working one): I used the split button and took 2 different wallpapers: Everything is fine.
Monitor 2 (flickering): I did here the same. This first wallpaper isn't shown. It's just black. The second one is flickering.

Maybe... When I reinstalled the program, steam said, that there are 2 different... "versions"? Or saves? It asked me to download it from the cloud, or from the existing data on my PC.
Maybe I can deinstall the program, delete all hidden subfolder and install it again without using the cloud?
Can you tell me where to find all datas? Or is everything in the steam common order?

[Biohazard]

Hm did you mean in the very beginning that it flickered between two live wallpapers? Then indeed just deleting C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\config.json or resetting it in the options would help.

If this is it, could you send me the log from C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\log.txt ? Because in theory it shouldn't allow two wallpapers to overlap, so it's strange that it happened at all, the log should have some information about how the monitors were detected.

[Rusger]

Ha!
That worked!
I just deleted that file, now everything is fine again!

Hiere the log: https://pastebin.com/bf9AbBhe

[Biohazard]

Thanks, apparently Windows detects three active monitors, with two in the position of the second one, so that explains it. Except that it really makes no sense it returns these, maybe due to a previous clone setting? But the next patch should have disabled the duplicate either way, I already noticed Windows messes this up with clones suddenly.

[Rusger]

Oh, no wait!
I totally forgot, that my TV is also connected to my PC! The TV is a duplicate of the second Monitor.

[Biohazard]

Alright, then it was the clone issue all along.

That issue should be fixed in the beta already, but Windows doesn't tell me which monitor is the 'clone' and which is the 'original', not sure how much of an issue that will become. I imagine it could be a problem if cloning is often enabled or disabled, because it may detect a different monitor then depending on that state.

[Rusger]

Hey, now I've got a new error:

https://picload.org/view/rwipwwdl/error.jpg.html

This comes every time I play a game...

[Biohazard]

But this wasn't happening before?

It means that Windows' video player is faulting though. Could you send me the mdmp to [e-mail] ? Then I could check whether this is something that can be fixed somehow or if it's an issue in Windows or the driver. Also, did you change the video loading option or is it still the default? If it's not the default (from disk) anymore, you could try changing it back and see if that makes a difference.

Either way, you could probably avoid it by using the 'stop' option for fullscreen. It could be happening because the game takes full control of the graphics card.