HDR on in Windows -- monitors go black for about 1 second then resume

Ok let's clear up the confusion here a little bit... Wow Microsoft, let me draw you a picture...

So all the problems are caused by Microsoft's AWFUL buggy HDR implementation (shock). Allow me to explain and prove....

I've been using HDR screens (plural) pretty much since release in the form of most of the high end ASUS ROG monitors and run a few gaming rigs around the 4070TI mark. The way windows works with HDR is in fact to ignore all preset/settings from applications etc. and to react to the actual lighting levels of the image on the screen.. ?! - Yes just as stupid and insane as it sounds...

So if you enable HDR (and AutoHDR it doesn't really care about either way it seems to apply it 'most' of the time if HDR is on) and load up a nice bright white image on your screen you'll notice the HDR is active. If you suddenly switch to a very low backlight image you'll notice the Monitor goes black, flickers and then resumes. This is because the geniuses at Microsoft decided that it was right to have HDR turn on and off on the fly depending on screen content :| .... Yes that's right...

Finally, if you jump on Youtube and search for HDR Screen Blackouts there are numerous videos starting to demonstrate this issue.

And so... Microsoft - why is this implementation built like this? Gamers represent a huge portion of HDR users and how can you not know monitors literally turn off and back on when HDR is enabled/disabled? Who in the good lords name does testing over there?

PATCH IT - AND FOR GOD SAKES REMOVE THE AWFUL "AUTO" FEATURE THAT LITERALLY BREAKS EVERYTHING :@ !!!

P.S. - To any junior developers out there - if you want an excellent case study of how to over engineer a feature from a "on - off" button to the point of breaking ££££'s worth of image enhancing technology to the point it's completely unusable... look no further.

When you enable or disable HDR, you should expect a momentary disruption.

Yeah. The problem is that happens on its own. If I set my monitors to HDR, they drop out of HDR for about one second (maybe less) about once an hour.

good so far after updating the driver for the monitor.

I noticed that in the device manager my monitor for my samsung was using a generic moitor driver that Windows had selected. So I went to the Samsung website and found the device driver for my monitor and downloaded it. I then created a folder in my documents called Samsung Monitor and extracted the folder into it.

I then went into the device manager, monitors and selected my monitor. I went to the driver tab and selected update driver and chose the option to browse my computer for driver. I browsed for the folder "Samsung Monitor" in my documents and made sure that it searched all sub folders in that folder. It then gave me the option to select 2 different drivers, 1 was for hdmi the other for DP(dispaly port) I am using a DP so I chose that option and it updated the driver.

I then restarted my PC and tried playing Diablo 4 for several hours because this is the game that I had noticed the issue the fastest. So far I have not had the issue again. I will update this post again if the issue returns.

Hanem, thank you for offering suggestions, but based on the generic response, it sounds like you may not be running your system in HDR. I'd love to be wrong about that. Are you?

I have been in contact with Gigabyte (makers of the Aorus monitor) and Asus (makers of my other HDR monitor), and both believe my configuration options on their respective monitors are correct. Gigabyte did suggest that HDR doesn't work well on some monitors while others are only running in SDR, but I have tried fully removing any SDR monitors from the configurations tested and that had no observable effect on the problem.

I did update the firmware in the monitors (and motherboard). I don't believe there's an independent firmware update option for the graphics cards -- that's handled by nVidia's driver updates (not certain on that, but I believe that's how it works). In any case, I've not seen any options to download graphics card firmware updates. If there is a place for this, please point me to where (currently using MSI nVidia. getting drivers from nVidia's GeForce Experience software).

The cables exceed the capacity of what's needed (they're 8K cables). Both are DisplayPort. As noted in my original post, I have tried other cables and swapping the cables between monitors. I have even tried 2 different nVidia graphics cards. None of these changes had any effect.

I have also wiped the OS and reinstalled Windows. No effect.

I have also reached out to MSI and nVidia. The closest response I get is that this is that they seem to imply this is a problem with Windows, but they don't come right out and say it. MSI has offered to RMA my graphics card, just in case, but by testing with another card and seeing the exact same problems, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't help.

Hence my question: is this working for anyone using nVidia graphics? For anyone for whom this works, did you ever experience the monitors falling out of HDR momentarily at random times, a little more than once per hour on average? If so, how did you fix?

I am having the exact same issue. I use a 1440 monitor from Samsung. I have a Asus motherboard and a MSI 4090. I had the same issue before this using an Asus rtx 2080 ti. I have had this issue for several years now. I had turned off HDR for over a year and decided to turn it back on recently. It worked great for several hours but now the same issue has come back. I was playing Diablo 4 and after about 30 minutes my screen went black. It then showed the same thing it always does. that HDR is enabled. It then happened again about 5 minutes later and this time it shut off HDR. I ald tabbed out and turned HDR off and on in windows display properties. It fixed the isseue for about 10 minutes and then it happened again. Looks like I'm going to be disabling HDR again. It feels like such a waste getting an HDR monitor only to have this happen so that you can't use the feature that you got the monitor in the first place. I would love to find a solution but like you I have been looking all over the internent and never found a solution. The generic responses from windows support doesn't offer much hope either.