I was about to watch a friend's stream in Discord when I clicked on their screen. At that moment, my second monitor—where Discord was open—started freezing and lagging badly. I couldn't move my mouse across to the other monitor, although I could still use the taskbar and open the Windows menu with my keyboard. The cursor also changed into a split, distorted I-beam shape before separating completely.
This has happened twice, both times after interacting with Discord streams, but the incidents were months apart. Discord became nearly unresponsive during the problem. Could this be a graphics driver, hardware acceleration, memory issue, or something more serious like malware? My antivirus has not detected anything unusual, but I'd appreciate some reassurance and troubleshooting suggestions.
2 Answers
Discord can sometimes use a large amount of memory or cause system-wide lag, especially after streaming for a while. Check Task Manager while the problem is happening and see whether Discord or another process is consuming unusually high RAM, CPU, or GPU resources. You could also try using Discord in a browser for a while to see whether the desktop app is responsible.
Given that the issue is rare and seems tied to opening a stream, though, I’d investigate hardware acceleration and the graphics driver before assuming it is a memory leak.
The cursor artifacting and the second monitor becoming difficult to use sound more like the graphics or display driver temporarily crashing than malware. Try disabling Discord’s Hardware Acceleration in the Advanced settings, and also check the video or streaming settings under Voice & Video. Updating your GPU driver—or rolling it back if the issue began after an update—would also be worthwhile.
If it happens again, press Win + Ctrl + Shift + B. That resets the Windows graphics driver and may cause the screens to flicker briefly. If the display immediately returns to normal, that strongly points to a GPU, driver, or rendering problem. Since this has only happened twice months apart, a memory leak is possible but not the most likely explanation.
Thanks, I get pretty worried about problems like this because the computer was expensive and took me a long time to save for. My antivirus hasn’t reported anything, and I haven’t noticed other suspicious activity, so I’ll try the graphics and Discord settings if it happens again.