Flash Player Causes New Monitors to Lose Signal in Chrome/Firefox/IE

[kevint63494630]

Hi all! I've just received new monitors at work. They are bigger and nicer than before. The computer is the same. Previously, I had no problem playing videos on any major streaming service. Now, I can only watch YouTube on any browser and Netflix on IE and Firefox (but not Chrome, and I do mean IE, not Edge). Any other streaming service (Amazon, Hulu and Showtime Anytime) does not work. Spotify's web player also has the same problem.

The issue is that as soon as I start to play a video, the screen will immediately go black and after a few seconds, both monitors (same model number) will indicate that they have lost signal from the computer. I can hear the sound playing in the background. If I alt+F4, the browser will close and the monitors will reconnect. I am running Windows 7.

Interestingly, if I restart my computer I can once again play a video in any browser, but only for a short time. After a while, the monitor will once again disconnect.

Any thoughts? My tech support is at a loss but have narrowed it down to probably being an issue with Flash.

[John T Smith]

Do not count on Windows to be fully up to date when it comes to device drivers

Go to the vendor site to be sure you have an updated driver for your graphic adapter

•nVidia Driver Downloads http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

•ATI Driver https://www.amd.com/en/support

There are also intermittent reports that the newest driver is not always the best driver due to driver bugs or compatibility issues, so you MAY need to try an earlier driver version

[jeromiec83223024]

A couple observations.

On Chrome Version 73.0.3683.75 (Official Build) (64-bit):

• Hulu uses Flash
• Amazon and Spotify do not

All of the stuff you're talking about is copy-protected.  It would be interesting to know if you had the same problem with free content.

My guess is that this is a video card driver problem, perhaps something to do with how well content output protection works (or doesn't) with the combination of your new monitor and graphics card drivers.  See High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection - Wikipedia for details on what's going on under the hood.

If you're on a 64-bit copy of Windows 7, then Chrome is probably 64-bit, while IE is typically 32-bit unless someone has jumped through hoops to distribute the 64-bit version.  If you've never upgraded the video card drivers, it might be that it's a 64-bit driver bug that never gets tickled when you're on a 32-bit browser.  Given the behavior you're describing, this feels right to me.

You could try disabling Hardware Acceleration in Flash, and/or the browser to confirm.  If the problem goes away (performance will suck, but this is a test), then you know that it's a driver bug.  If the problem persists, and hardware acceleration is disabled in both Flash and the Browser, that's a more interesting problem, and an inventory of your machine would be super helpful.  (I'll probably have to find/buy a comparable setup to reproduce it.)

Instructions for disabling hardware acceleration in Flash are in the video troubleshooting guide below.  if disabling hardware acceleration doesn't help, providing the output of dxdiag would be super useful.  You can either just paste the contents into the body of a reply, or just post a link to a file sharing link, like adobe send/dropbox/google drive/pastebin/etc.  If you don't want to share that publicly, you can click my username and send me a private message.  Just include a link to this thread so that I can find it again.

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/video-playback-issues.html

[kevint63494630]

Thank you for reaching out!

I'll first note that I can view YouTube videos just fine. I assume most of those don't require HDCP.

My version of Windows is 64-bit.

I did try disabling Hardware Acceleration in Chrome and the problem definitely still persists, so I suppose it might be a driver bug. I'll reach out to my IT department to see if they'll install updated drivers directly from nVidia.

As for the dxdiag, I know sharing it with you is likely safe but our IT department has been cracking down on security and I'm positive they wouldn't want me to share that information. I can certainly run one. If I do, would you be able to tell me or link me to a guide that will show me what to look for?

Thanks for all your time.

[jeromiec83223024]

kevint63494630

Comments Inline:

> I'll first note that I can view YouTube videos just fine. I assume most of those don't require HDCP.

Yeah, we're thinking along the same lines.  That problem would exist between the Graphics Driver/Hardware and the Monitor.  A driver update (or maybe a firmware update on the monitor) *might* fix it.

Do you run into this problem when streaming?  Its a streaming video example from Akamai.  It's not using DRM.

http://wwwns.akamai.com/hdnetwork/demo/flash/default.html

(You'll need to enable Flash by clicking on the Info icon / "Not Secure" word in the address bar, choosing Site Settings > Flash > Allow, and then reloading the page.)

If you see the same problem there, then that blows up my HDCP theory.

> My version of Windows is 64-bit.

Cool.  That's typical, but I didn't want to assume without explicitly confirming.

> I did try disabling Hardware Acceleration in Chrome and the problem definitely still persists, so I suppose it might be a driver bug.
> I'll  reach out to my IT department to see if they'll install updated drivers directly from nVidia.

Do it in *both* Chrome and Flash and see what you get.  Chrome *should* supercede anything Flash wants to do, but it's worth being super sure that you're getting a valid result.  Going in circles because we had a bad data point is no fun.

> As for the dxdiag, I know sharing it with you is likely safe but our IT department has been cracking down on security and I'm positive

> they wouldn't want me to share that information. I can certainly run one. If I do, would you be able to tell me or link me to a guide that > will show me what to look for?

I'm not looking for dxdiag to diagnose a problem.  I want the enumeration of hardware on the machine so that I can go find something comparable to see if I can reproduce it here.

Thanks!

[kevint63494630]

The Akamai video plays just fine. No issues there.

I've now disabled hardware acceleration in both Flash and Chrome. The problem does persist.

I've actually only tried streaming, I'll note. I don't have any video files on this computer.

I'm still working with my IT to get them to install the newest drivers. That might take a day or two.

[jeromiec83223024]

Cool, so regular hardware-accelerated video seems like it works fine.

With DRM video, the graphics card and monitor negotiate an encrypted connection so that you can't siphon off, say, a perfect high-fidelity copy of a blockbuster movie with a piece of hardware stuck in between (that's the HDCP stuff). 

There's not really anything we can do from software to make your monitor freak out unrecoverably, so I'm leaning towards something in that neighborhood.

If you have additional ways to hook the monitor up (different cable type, etc.), it might be interesting to see if the problem reproduces.  It might also be worth just trying a single monitor.  If it reproduces, try a different cable and/or cable type (even if it's sub-optimal).  If you can find whatever that inflection point is, it would be a really interesting piece of data for whoever is troubleshooting it.