Screen On/Off Flicker and Windows Move

Question

There is an moderately annoying issue I've been in the past few months when I put the computer to sleep or wake it from sleep:

1. the screen goes black as it should
2. in a split second the screen turns back on and then turns back off

If I wake the screen up within a few seconds things are just as normal.

However, if I wait a few minutes (especially after a sleep) all off-screen windows reposition themselves into the nearest window.

I've spent tens of hours trying to diagnose and fix this issue (all failed):

• Clean installing the display drivers from website as well as automatically by windows (after completely deleting)
• Disabling DHCP and Link assurance on all monitors
• Killing apps one by one--nothing non-system level is causing it
• All 4 monitors are 60hz. No special settings.
• Occurs even if only 1 monitor is connected

My next troubleshooting ideas are:

• Removing some sound drivers and any unnecessary drivers
• Try to find the older display driver where I didn't have this issue.
• If that fails, try to find the older BIOS where I didn't have this issue.

I'm pretty sure that will help fix things because the issue didn't occur after any specific app was installed.

Any other suggestions or workarounds?

Answer 1

After much troubleshooting I found out the solution (and it was not anything else): power delivery issue.

The issue went away when I turn push a button on the monitor to wake it up first BEFORE waking up the computer.

I have a lot of devices connected to the same extension cord so this probably means that the extension cord I have is overloaded by all the devices (100W desktop, 4 monitors, etc.).

I will need to replace it to confirm this answer 100% but meanwhile above was the workaround! Older BIOS and display drivers were rabbitholes that resulted in the same error.