Errr... Windows Issue?

Hello forum,

This issue has been occurring to me for a long time and I just cannot pinpoint the cause of it. Basically, once I have installed the AMD Video drivers for my r9280x, the screen will flicker black once or twice by the hour either with activity on the desktop or not.

Now, one would thing this is a GPU or driver issue, right? Well, here is when it gets weird. It only happens in Windows while in the desktop. Gaming is not an issue whatsoever and none of my games which provide a greater deal of stress on the GPU have this problem. There is no flickering in game, nor lost of Frames per second, or overheating, crashes, nothing.

I am running MSI Afterburner, and I know sometimes when the clock changes, the screen flickers when you save the changes, but I have not touched MSI Afterburner for anything besides setting a custom Fan Profile.

In the past when this happened (This is a new Windows 7 Install) Windows would Install an update which I cannot remember the KB for, and the issue would just not occur again. I thought to myself "Well, it should go away eventually like it always does" but it is just not happening this time. I have tried different drivers as well in case something was busted during install, but the issue remains.

Now, this does not happen as often as to cause any serious discomfort, but I do not like the feeling of a possible hardware failure.

Any ideas by any chance? Thanks!

Since the desktop is basically dynamic rather that static and is continually refreshing/redrawing itself, could there be a program or something running in the background causing it? I'd use msconfig in the Search or Run box [if you have it showing] and in the Startup tab just Disable all, reboot and run it several minutes to see if it still happens. If so carefully add back the items one or a few at a time to narrow it down. Just don't check the prompt on the box that comes up until finished and the settings should revert back.