Pop_OS Pulsing Blurry/Fuzzy Screen - Help?

So - heres a weird one.

Everything was completely fine until last night and I have no idea what has changed at all.

When my screen sits idle for more than a second it get fuzzy and blurry. Then it will pulse from fuzzy to clear about every second.

Every letter I type causes the screen to flash clear, but then immediately goes back to fuzzy after I release the key. Mousing over an entity that causes an interaction does the same thing.

It is not the HDMI cable. Ive tried 3 cables. Its not my HDMI switch, I've changed all the cable and swapped ports around several times.

I have a SAMSUNG 43 UHD TV (60hz) that I use as my monitor. It is set to Dynamic Display in Game Mode. This has worked with no issues at all for 6+ months.

I ran some system updates 2 days ago, but the issue didn't start until last night. Also - its intermittent - so I'm at a total fucking loss. Reboots/Resets of varying types have not seemed to help.

Any ideas? let me know what else you need from me - Im still a relatively new linux user so be gentle.

Thank you in advance

citrusface OP ,

I'm going to attempt an os refresh and see if that does anything.

Will report back.

citrusface OP , (edited )

So I turned off fractional scaling (i did that before as well and nothing changed) and ran more updates and then shut down and rebooted- issue seems to be stopped for the moment.

if it comes back, I will create an update post. Thanks!

edit - it did come back but see response below.

Telorand ,

I wonder if your Samsung TV got an update that is causing a conflict. Is it connected to the internet?

citrusface OP , (edited )

I think I actually fixed it?

i tried to do an os refresh but kept getting some generic error bc the backup partition wouldnt update?

after a bunch of fumbling around I actually slowed down and took a second to read the errors and saw an error for a game i had removed.

so after ducking around (intentional duckduckgo pun) i found the sudo apt purge command and zapped it

then i followed https://support.system76.com/articles/upgrade-pop/ and some things happened and downloaded and i rebooted

and its working now? I will know for sure if its working if doesn't start happening again in an hour.

but i think it might be good to go based on that experience.

Edit: continues to work. Might be solid. Will report back tomorrow.

citrusface OP , (edited )

Follow up - issue came back. I'm thinking it may be hardware or driver at this point. I am going to mess with that this evening and I will report back.

If that doesn't work - I will do the os refresh bc I haven't actually done that yet.

Edit: this is more of a log for myself at this point, but I am refreshing the os now.

edit two, the editing: refresh complete. will update tomrrow.

citrusface OP ,

Okay it's actually fixed now. Games are running smoothly and shaders are loading better. It must have been a funky driver.

keyez ,

Unrelated but reading through what might be the issue I'm stealing ducking around, idk how I never thought of that!

citrusface OP ,

Hahaha - update on issue, it was my switch, but not the switch, I think WHEN I used the the switch (like toggling between my other machine) it made things mad until I rebooted. Then when I rebooted it was fine until I used the switch again. So I just changed the things I used on the switch and everything is kosher now.

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