I cannot understand what is
wrong. Seemed to be multiple issues, maybe individual problem or
related to each other.
Device
Manager, monitor, VGA cable and new Intel graphics update?
The primary monitor (using VGA
port of integrated graphics of UHD 750 of a self-build i5-11500
desktop, Win 10 Pro) of my pair of 10-13 year old Acer X233H showed
intermittent flickering for a few weeks. The flickering was
particularly bad within the first 20 minutes after boot up. Seemed it
needed to warm up a little before stabled. To pin down the problem is
really with the monitor, I
made sure the VGA port connections to monitor and motherboard were
tight and I even changed to another VGA cable.
The night before I changed the cable, I had the Intel HDR update
performed with the Intel Driver and Support as it notified me of
such. The cold boot in the next morning ended up with the mouse not
visible on any of the screens.
What I have done so far:
1) After a few reboots, I found
out the mouse pointer was visible at the Hello Password screen for
just a couple seconds, and then it was stuck at the upper right hand
corner of the second, extended monitor, and 99% of time not visible,
sometimes I could see part of the mouse pointer, and right click
there gave me a small drop down menu about display. I could not close
it anymore with the left or right click. Also, sometimes when a
window opened there full screen (with that “X” for closing a
window close enough to the corner), I could close that window with
left click.
2) I even changed to a third, brand new VGA cable.
3) Thinking that it maybe just a
simple problem with a bad mouse driver, I managed to open the Device
Manager and tried to uninstall driver there just using the keyboard
and found that there were no yellow or question marks at all for all
device. Seemed perfect there. Gee! just could not remember how to
jump from place to place using keyboard combinations.
4) As I moved down to the Mouse section and tried to do something to
uninstall mouse driver, I found out that there was only one General
tab. Under the general tab there were only the “OK” or “Cancel”
options. All other tabs were missing. Checked other devices and all
of them only got one General tab.
So, THE DEVICE MANAGER GOT MESSED UP TOO.
5) Using a Restore Point dated a
few days before the Intel graphics update and restored successfully,
but problem persisted.
6) Booted up to a Deepin Linux
residing on another SSD in the same PC (even though graphics drivers
are still lousy, giving partly garbage display at the 2nd,
extended monitor, as that is still normal with Intel UHD 750
graphics) and everything was fine, including the mouse. I guess that
could rule out hardware problem. Booted to Deepin twice, and both
times worked normally.
7) Changed several mice and
inserted to different USB ports. I even tried to use an old PS/2
mouse with the PS/2 port, and the mouse problem persisted.
8) While trying to fix the problem, the PC was rebooted 20-30 times,
and at one time I have heard one long beep followed by three short
beeps. That usually signify hardware problem, but the PC did boot up.
That audio beep error just happened once, and no more.
9) Even tried to restore from a
system image stored August 2021. System image restored successfully
but the mouse problem persisted. Device Manager still got General tab
only.
It started with a simple monitor
flickering issue, turned out to be something more serious and a
system image restore could not fix it.
The other only option I can think
of maybe doing a clean Win 10 install. I hope that can be avoided, as
that means all the Windows updates and programs needed to be redo and
some data will be missing. Since the PC is a self-build,
hope I don’t need another license for a clean install.
Thank you guys in advance for pointing me to a possible solution.
@Billsey
@JackE
@egydiocoelho
Side note: Win 11 upgrade was ready for several months, and I kept
declining the update. Don’t know if it has something to do with the
bad Device manager.
