Since updating my graphics drivers, my Windows 11 Pro gaming PC has started displaying severe monitor glitches during startup. Both screens flicker with black flashes and green pixel-like squares, and sometimes the lock screen appears stretched into the upper-left corner. The only temporary workaround is to start the computer with both monitors unplugged and reconnect them afterward. Rolling back the NVIDIA driver and running SFC did not help. Disabling the Windows multi-plane overlay optimization also made no difference. The system uses a Ryzen 5 5600X, 32 GB of RAM, and a GTX 1080 Ti with two displays: a 1920×1080 monitor at 180 Hz and a 1440×900 monitor at 75 Hz.
3 Answers
Because one display runs at 180 Hz while the other runs at 75 Hz, start with both at 60 Hz and disable HDR, adaptive sync, and hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling temporarily. If that stabilizes the system, raise the refresh rates one at a time to identify the setting that causes the problem. Make sure the high-refresh monitor is connected directly to the graphics card rather than the motherboard video output.
Do a genuinely clean NVIDIA driver installation rather than a normal rollback. Remove the current driver in Safe Mode with a reputable display-driver cleanup utility, restart, and install a known-stable driver using the custom installation option. If the artifacts still appear before Windows starts, test another graphics card or power supply if possible, because green blocks and distorted images can indicate failing VRAM or a hardware connection issue.
The symptoms sound more like a display handshake, cable, or GPU-output problem than corrupted Windows files. Try swapping the cables and ports, testing each monitor by itself, and temporarily setting both displays to 60 Hz. If the issue only appears with both monitors connected, the mixed resolutions and refresh rates may be triggering a driver problem. Also check whether the glitches appear in the BIOS or only after Windows loads.
Disabling multi-plane overlay is worth trying, but since it did not change anything here, I would prioritize testing the cables, each monitor separately, and whether the artifacts show up in BIOS.