External monitor loses signal while gaming

[Isa3455]

Hi,
I’ve been having this problem for 5 days, basically whenever I start playing a game (specifically genshin) after 5 minutes my external monitor loses signal, but audio is still playing, what’s also interesting is that my laptop display doesn’t turn black, I can still see and move the cursor but the system remains unresponsive, so I have to perform a hard reboot. I’ve tried playing without my external monitor connected and didn’t experience any crashes so far. Coincidentally I also experienced some audio crackling problems just before this problem started.
Looking at event viewer it says this:

Faulting application name: dwm.exe, version: 10.0.19041.746, time stamp: 0x6be51595
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.19041.2913, time stamp: 0xa1c3e870
Exception code: 0xe0464645
Fault offset: 0x000000000012d862
Faulting process id: 0x460c
Faulting application start time: 0x01d98b83cb1856e3
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\dwm.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 8361626b-8eb2-4e0c-8918-6590eee7edb3
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

These are my laptop specs.
https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GE62VR-6R.../Specification
I got this laptop in February 2017, only notable differences are that my cpu is an i7 6700hq, I have the 3gb version of the 1060 and have 16gb of ram

Thing’s I’ve tried:
-Updated Nvidia drivers
-DISM/Online & sfc/scannow
-Changed some settings in power plan
-Changed visual effects for best performance

[Bruce]

g’day and welcome.

Let’s get your complete PC specs.
get Speccy from here; Speccy - Download Builds
in Speccy, click File > Publish Snapshot (hit Yes if prompted to proceed with publish) > Copy to Clipboard > Close.
now you can paste (Ctrl+V) that link into your next post.

also, what is make/model of the external monitor, and how is it connected to the laptop?

[Isa3455]

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/hOIWPHpwBvDriGHosIsK83O

the monitor is a Samsung S22F355FHL and was connected using an HDMI cable

[Bruce]

is it always at the 5 minutes mark, and give or take a few seconds, is it 5 minutes on the nose?
and is it only when paying games?
does it happen when browsing, or using Word, etc?

try changing the Power Profile to High Performance, that will change when the monitors are turned off.
admittedly if the PC is in use, that shouldn’t be happening, but maybe the external monitor isn’t playing by the rules.

another long shot - remove Kaspersky, it can always be reinstalled if removing it doesn’t help.
the inbuilt protection in Win10 and Win11 are as good, or better, than the paid-for products these days.

other things to try - another monitor, another HDMI cable.
if the laptop and monitor allow it, also try another cable type, like DVI, or DisplayPort.

[PeterOz]

Also you have run out of space on c drive.
You need at least 35% free and you only have 13%free space.
Are you running MSI after burner?
If yes get rid of afterburner
You have to address the low space first of all in my opinion.

[Rustys]

abandoned closed