VN7-592G-77LB screen flashes black when running World of Warcraft

I just got a new VN7-592G-77LB and set up World of Warcraft on it, at 1080P Ultra settings. Unfortunately, at apparently random intervals while playing the screen flashes black for a fraction of a second. I've not managed to see any rhyme or reason as to when this happens - it can happen just as the game starts in the character selection screen, or while I'm actually playing. I can see tens of minutes without it happening at all, and then see a couple/three flashes in close succession, then nothing again for a few minutes.

It's very annoying. In searching on the web for this issue I've seen reports of other laptops with Skylake processors and NVidia 960M chips have similar issues, and I've tested all the options that have been reported:

- Updating Intel drivers to the latest version

- Updating NVidia drivers to the latest version

- Ensuring that the XBox Live DVR functionality is turned off.

- Ensured that I have the latest BIOS installed.

- Used the NVidia Control Panel to ensure that WoW64.exe is forced to use the NVidia GPU.

Does anyone have any ideas for anything I haven't checked?

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philetus

The next time it happens, note the time as close as you can, open Event Viewer, check the admin logs for a error.

Windows search type Event Viewer.

Tww1fa

It just flashed twice about a second apart. The time of the flashes was around 7:40PM (as shown by the taskbar clock when I immediately tabbed out of WoW). The Event Viewer does not show any Administrative Events or Syste Events since 7:37PM, three minutes earlier. The closest event to the time of the flash was a Security event at 7:39:02PM: "A security-enabled local group membership was enumerated."

philetus

I'd be curious if this happens before every flash:
https://www.ultimatewindowssecurity.com/securitylog/encyclopedia/event.aspx?eventid=4799

Tww1fa

I wish I could say that's the problem, but I got a whole lot more of the flashes and there was only one other occurrence of that message that was anywhere near (within 1 minute) of the flash.

philetus

Sounds to me like you might want to swap that one out if you're still in that time frame.

Tww1fa

Yeah. It's a pain, but it looks like I'll have to return it. I see at least one review on Newegg which describes the same problem.

pandalion98

I think that's the screen stuttering. Lower your graphics settings/resolution or disable any fancy graphics settings (anti-alias, etc.). Enable them one by one until you encounter it again. Once you identified the problem, just get rid of it.

Tww1fa

No dice. I turned graphics options down to "Low" and still got flashes. And even if it were a graphics settings option problem that should just cause lower framerate, not graphical glitches.

I bought this laptop specifically to play WoW on Ultra settings - if it can't do that without glitching it is defective in my opinion.

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