Persistent issue w/ violent laptop screen flickering. Starts/stops (resolves itself) on its own.

[ocbball516]

I have been experiencing random, intermittent episodes of violent screen flickering with my laptop over the past 9 months. There is (always) flickering when I start or restart the computer. Once the computer is turned on, the screen will either [A] continue flickering for hours after startup, [B] stop flickering for several minutes before resuming, or [C] stop flickering, allowing me to use the laptop screen for hours of sustained use before randomly starting back up again. 

I am convinced that there are issues with the graphics drivers and/or conflicts between windows updates and existing computer programs. My roommate is a software engineer and he is puzzled by this issue--particularly since onset of the flickering is so random/intermittent. If there is a graphics problem, it does not make sense why the screen stays clear for long periods before the flickering resumes again. It also does not make sense why the flickering resolves itself or resumes on its own in such a random manner.

I have been using two external monitors (Dell 23) so that I can continue to use this laptop. The flickering only occurs with the primary (laptop) monitor. When hooked up to the external monitors, the primary monitor will start/stop flickering on its own. The external monitor pictures always remain crystal clear. There is no definable pattern in flickering onset/resolution. The flickering begins and ends on its own, no matter what I am doing with the laptop (or if the laptop is not being used for long periods of time).

The flickering on the primary screen is so heavy that it is hard to see the screen icons or cursor. If I am trying to navigate the screen while it is flickering (and I am not somewhere where an external monitor is available) I am most successful using the laptop's touch screen. If I try to click an icon during these flickering episodes, I have to aim about 1 inch below where the icon visually appears on the screen in order to click this desired target. It is hard to see the icon due to how blurry the screen appears during these episodes. I basically have to aim at shapes/outlines made by the icons. However, it IS possible to click the icons if you are successful in locating its true position. Usually, this takes multiple tries and results in me accidentally clicking other icons surrounding the target icon, which is always fun.

Sometimes, if I use the laptop's touchscreen and feel my way to the "display settings," cycling through the four screen orientation settings (horizontal, horizontal [flipped], portrait, portrait [flipped]) can cause the flickering to stop. However, this method does not always work. Even if this DOES work, the clear screen may only last for a short period of time before the flickering resumes again. 

I check for Intel and NVIDIA graphic driver updates on a regular basis to ensure that everything is up to date.

My laptop has two GPU's (Intel and NVIDIA). Although this may be inconsequential, I have noticed via the Task Manager that there is rarely any activity with my NVIDIA GPU, even when playing high definition YouTube videos. 

As mentioned previously, I believe that the flickering may have something to do with windows updates. Prior to installing the latest Windows Update (2007), the flickering has not been (as) much of a problem. However, I just completed the new update, restarted my computer as directed, and the flickering on my laptop screen has resumed and has been persistent for the past hour.

**Update: About 1 hour and 15 minutes post restart (while putting my finishing touches on this support entry), the primary screen finally stopped flickering. At this time, the primary screen is crystal clear, as if nothing happened.***

When the laptop has gone through a period of several days with few flickering episodes,  I create restore points to try to preserve this state. 

One of the recommendations that I have found was to restart the computer in safe mode, delete graphic drivers, and then reinstall them. I have not been able to do this because safe mode prevents the use of external screens. I have tried to memorize the relative positions of the safe mode icons so that I could "feel" my way through the procedures using laptop's touch screen feature. However, the procedures required to uninstall and reinstall the current Intel and NVIDIA graphics drivers are too numerous and intricate to complete on a flickering screen.

Please help! This was an expensive laptop and I only got about 14 months of use out of it before this problem arose! 

Any advice or support you can provide would be most appreciated.