Forum Discussion
Edge Beta black out
On a new Surface 6 Pro.
Edge Beta quite regularly goes black, the whole application. I can three finger swipe to see the desktop apps running, Edge Dev shows black, no other app exhibits this behavior. I can start/stop all other apps and browsers without issue.
sometimes it will come back, but mostly not and i have to close the window.
When I close Edge Dev, sometimes it flashes on the display as it is closing, other times not
On a completely unrelated issue - my work disallows the dev version but allows the beta version - I got the new beta version last week and now that is blocked - discussed with our client gpo guru, they haven't changed anything in that policy. Possible the dev signature got pushed to the beta channel?
Greg Hejl Do you mean the entire Edge Beta window goes black & blank, like this?
If so, yeah, this happens to me every couple days. I'm pretty sure it only occurs immediately after signing into the PC, after having left Edge Beta windows open in my previous session. (In between my sessions, other users probably returned to the lock screen and signed in themselves, and did who-knows-what... this is a family PC used by several people.)
It doesn't happen all the time, just sometimes. I don't have trouble like this with other apps, just Edge, and I think this started occurring a few weeks ago on Beta, if not a month or so ago.
I can close Edge windows that get in this state by clicking in the upper right corner (where the close button should be), or by closing windows from context menu on Edge's taskbar icon. After I do that and open a new Edge window, the new window is unaffected.
Greg Hejl I have seen this as well, I think it's the same symptom that was attributed to an issue with the browser's GPU process by MS recently. When this happens, hit shift-ESC on your keyboard (shows a browser-specific task manager), sort by task name (click on the word 'Task' in the top left) so things don't move around, single-click the item 'GPU process' and click the 'End process' button in the lower right. This will restart the GPU process and should fix the issue without breaking any open tabs.
Edit: found the post, and tbh they don't mention the screen blackout, just the UI becoming unresponsive. If you see it happen again, try the GPU tip and let us know if it helped.
This is what MS wrote in that post: "Sometimes the browser will appear to not respond to any user input (clicking or scrolling in webpages doesn’t do anything, hovering over UI doesn’t make it change), but clicking on certain buttons still works (like the … menu). The cause of this is due to an error in the GPU process, and opening the browser task manager (right-click near the window minimize/maximize/close buttons or hit shift+esc on the keyboard) will open a window that will allow you to end the GPU process, which will fix the issue. "
ChromeRefugee
I've been having this problem a lot after windows update to 1909 in about: flags, because the DX9 GPU definitely solves the problem, but you lose browser performance.
I performed this process of task manager and GPU and solves the problem, but sometimes it happens again, this is happening to me in all variants of the edge.ChromeRefugee Thanks for the tip, i'll try <shift><esc>.
This issue seems to be happening more frequently on my surface pro.
Saw this behavior again today on Edge 79.0.309.58 (latest Beta build as of Jan 6 2020) when logging into existing Windows login session. As previously, I right clicked on the title bar area to get to Browser task manager, and upon opening Browser task manager the Edge window stopped being all black. (I didn't even have to kill GPU Process.) I reported the same through the built-in "Send feedback" command.
I've been having these black screens for a while now.
I'm currently on the Dev branch, version 81.0.381.0, and I still am experiencing these.
Reading this thread helped me realize it's indeed a process using the GPU that hangs Edge.
I've noticed that there's a period in which the UI is not drawing (therefore the black window) but the app is still somewhat responsive. For example, I can switch the tabs by Ctrl + Tab and in my taskbar the title of the app changes accordingly. But after a few seconds Edge freezes and Windows asks me if I want to kill it.
I've been trying to bring Edge's Task Manager up (i.e. Shift + Esc), with varying success. Sometimes I can terminate the GPU process, sometimes it tries to show me the Task Manager window and promptly crashes, sometimes it shows me another black screen.
What has been working reliably for me since reading this is bringing up Task Manager (i.e. Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and killing the process labeled Microsoft Edge that is taking up GPU resources.
thelinkin3000 I have stayed on 79 (on the release channel now) and the issue persists.
In all the occurrences I've seen I've not yet had to kill GPU Process to restore functionality. Merely bringing up Browser Task Manager, seeing GPU Process running there but without doing anything to it, is sufficient to get the main Edge window(s) to un-black, and after that they're OK. I believe GPU process start time is quite old, and continues to be after the window's restored, although I'll confirm this next time (so I think it's not a case of the process having died/respawned.) The other odd thing I've noted before is I've been unable to launch the Browser Task Manager using "Shift-Esc" even when the window appears to be in focus... I have to use the right-click menu near where the minimize/close windows would be.
As such, wonder if my case of "black out" and your case of "black out" are actually the same. (My symptoms I'd associate with something being wrong with how window messages are handled, not with some death of the GPU process.)
If there is any information I can collect, Microsoft reps, please chime in, since it seems this problem has persisted to the first stable release.
The way I found to fix it when it happens, is to open a new instance of edge without closing the previous one, as that seems to restart the GPU process and then the previous instance is visible again.
- Hi, Have you enabled any flags?
HotCakeX FWIW (if Greg and I are in fact talking about the same symptom) no, I do not have any flags enabled. Checked by visiting edge://flags and seeing that none of the dropdowns are highlighted.
I did a "Reset all to defaults" just now in case I'd set a flag long ago, didn't remember, and the dropdowns being highlighted are a false negative for some reason. I'll let you know if it still occurs.
I also filed a bug report on this using the "Send Feedback" button earlier today. Unfortunately was not able to include this screenshot with the bug report since to use Send Feedback AFAIK I'd need to be able to see the button. 🙂
You can take a screenshot via snip & sketch app in Windows 10 and upload it along with any other files you want (could be even more than one picture) with your feedback and send it:
Greg Hejl I had the exact same issue come up with last week's build: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Discussions/Dev-channel-update-to-80-0-328-4-is-live/m-p/1012509/highlight/true#M17175
We'll see what happens with this week's dev build released today, though they mention a similar issue should be patched next week:
- Sometimes the browser will appear to not respond to any user input (clicking or scrolling in webpages doesn’t do anything, hovering over UI doesn’t make it change), but clicking on certain buttons still works (like the … menu). The cause of this is due to an error in the GPU process, and opening the browser task manager (right-click near the window minimize/maximize/close buttons or hit shift+esc on the keyboard) will open a window that will allow you to end the GPU process, which will fix the issue. This issue was inherited from upstream Chromium, and a fix for it just went in upstream, so the next Dev update should have it.
I saw this completely black window again today (build 79.0.309.40, latest beta as of 12/6.) As in every case I've seen it in the past, it happened as I was logging into Windows, when I'd left an Edge window/site open in a prior session. I've never seen it occur under any other circumstance.
Shift-Esc is NOT accessible when the window's in this state. When I press Shift-Esc (after giving the window focus by dragging its title bar area first) the browser task manager window doesn't appear.Right-clicking left of where the minimize button would be, to get the context menu that includes "Browser task manager", DOES work, and surprisingly all I had to do after that was click "Browser task manager"... I didn't have to select/end any process with it manually... to get the Edge window to resume drawing correctly.
(BTW, I did confirm that Shift-Esc launches the task manager when Edge isn't blacked out.)Wade Dorrell Ah, dang. So, for me, the bug has essentially disappeared in the latest Dev release. I'm on 80.0.345.0 (Official build) dev (64-bit) and I've not had it happen in at least a week.
It's unusual the bug is happening on the beta build, when I'd thought this was a Dev-only bug (we're on Branch 80, instead of 79 like Beta). It was fixed in the Dev build, from the latest release notes:
- Fixed an issue where the browser UI sometimes appears to hang or turn all black, but it still responds to input and can be fixed by killing the GPU process.
I'm curious if your bug actually is a separate bug in Beta that just happened to coincide with the Dev bug? Or was there a recent Beta update, too, and unfortunately the bug made it into that Beta build?
Here's a solution to the problem :
