Semi-random black screen when opening some applications

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merc68k

Semi-random black screen when opening some applications

Post by merc68k »

Hi all,

A friend of mine (who is a first-time Linux user) just installed Mint 17 Cinnamon on his new Core i7 system. It's an Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark II motherboard and he's running the Intel integrated HD 4600 graphics. The system seems to work well except for one fairly strange and annoying issue.

When certain applications are opened (for example, the Deluge torrent client seems to be very likely to cause this), and particularly when the window fills the width of the screen or is maximized, the entire screen will go black. There still seems to be signal to the monitor when this happens, since it doesn't go into power-save mode, and everything seems to keep running, as sounds will still play, but there is no display.

If you press alt-f4 to close the application that was just opened, or can manage to blindly un-maximize or resize the window with the mouse, the display will consistently come back and all is fine. Also, switching to the text console with ctrl-alt-f1, etc, will work and display correctly, but switching back to X will display the screen for a few seconds and then it will return to blackness.

I installed the XFCE desktop to see if the problem was isolated to Cinnamon, but the issue occurs there as well. It occurs with and without the XFCE compositor enabled.

To me it seems like it must be a video driver issue, but I have not been able to find any other reports of this issue online, and I'm sure there must be plenty of other people running the same integrated graphics.

So, does anyone have any ideas what might be the problem or how to fix it?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
anandrkris

Re: Semi-random black screen when opening some applications

Post by anandrkris »

Not sure if this is related, sharing it anyways....It is perhaps caused by the “Acceleration method” used by Intel driver. The old method is UXA (Unified Acceleration Architecture) and the new method is SNA (Sandybridge’s New Acceleration).

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 76#p802188
merc68k

Re: Semi-random black screen when opening some applications

Post by merc68k »

After further investigation it seems to be that the KVM was the issue, for some reason. Going directly from the motherboard to monitor with HDMI the issue disappeared.
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