Windows 10 Hurting My Eyes?

[Shadow Fox]

Hello, again!

Another issue; This time around, not hardware related, shockingly! (Still waiting for my RMA Gpu's to arrive, though.)

The issues / question this time around is related to Windows 10 (Possibly?)

Since I've upgraded to Windows 10, I can't help but notice that I tend to get rather severe headaches to the point where they will develop into migraines rather frequently.

Playing games doesn't seems to be an issue with my eyes, but being on the Desktop frequently, does.
This would include having some issues when playing games in Windowed Mode.

The preferred way I tend to play my games is in Windowed Mode, as I tend to toggle between windows fairly often.

I would prefer not to revert back to Windows 8.1, but if my eyes are going to continue like this, I fear that I may have to.

Note: I have made an attempt to adjust the Brightness, Contrast, Input method, and Colour Mode options on my Monitor... Non have been a solution, even at extremely low levels.

Even 0% Brightness and 30% Contrast, with the room darkened has not been helpful.


Edit: I have heard and found some third-party layout/theme overhauls in junction with 4-5 tools that can change how Windows 10 appears. However, they seem to have some rather... Shady results. Anti-virus programs going insane, some Game Developers listing them as hacking tools, some corrupting video drivers, and the more common out of all the others: Colours and icon alignments are offset and displaying incorrectly.

[Remilia]

What monitor are you using? There are points where lower brightness is worse for some monitors due to PWM. This may be a terrible solution (well it is), but jack up that monitor brightness to 100% and use the color controls on the software side (nv/amd/intel video settings), and lower the brightness down. A lot of older monitors don't have PWM on at 100% but anything below that does. Do note this will absolutely crush contrast, but it's the only actual work around if it is caused by PWM. This is also the assumption that the monitor doesn't use PWM at 100%.

[Marrilaife]

I used to get headaches from monitor because of framerate / refresh rate being too low, that was on an very old pc but worth checking if you don't have refresh rate set too low.

[Lathais]

Since you are waiting on RMA'd GPUs to arrive, are you currently using onboard video or something old you had laying around? Either way, I would wait for your GPUs to come in and see if that fixes your issue. As last poster said, it could be related to FPS being too low.

[Shadow Fox]

What monitor are you using? There are points where lower brightness is worse for some monitors due to PWM. This may be a terrible solution (well it is), but jack up that monitor brightness to 100% and use the color controls on the software side (nv/amd/intel video settings), and lower the brightness down. A lot of older monitors don't have PWM on at 100% but anything below that does. Do note this will absolutely crush contrast, but it's the only actual work around if it is caused by PWM. This is also the assumption that the monitor doesn't use PWM at 100%.

Since you are waiting on RMA'd GPUs to arrive, are you currently using onboard video or something old you had laying around? Either way, I would wait for your GPUs to come in and see if that fixes your issue. As last poster said, it could be related to FPS being too low.

The monitor I have is a (Link)Dell S2409W, 24" LCD Display. 60Hz. I'm not really have any issues with the monitor?

Also have no idea what PWM, is.

The GPU I have RMA'd and am awating to arrive. I have an ATI card from MSI that was red-screening. The nVidia card from EVGA, is getting RMA due to OpenGL Kernal crashes without crashing the Display driver. Those OpenGL crashes are directly preventing several games and applications from running correctly, or prevent the process from loading. Otherwise, It seems to run fine, and EVGA seems to think so as well.

The nVidia GPU is my the GPU currently in the system. EVGA sends the RMA to you first, then you send the previous GPU back to them within a time period.

The Refresh Rate has never been an issue in the past? I use Vertical Sync in all my applications to lock it at 60Hz, or as closely as possible. (Screen tearing annoys the everliving hell out of me.)

Either of those, I'm not sure why that would only affect my eyes when on the Desktop for Windows 10, and not any other OS, or in full-screen applications.

As for Color Calibration, this has been something I've done. Started with Windows Calibration tool (What ever it's called?), and I've fine-tuned it in nVidia Control Panel.

[Shadow Fox]

Maybe your resolution is not set to 1920X1080, or DPI scaling is enabled in windows (settings app/system/display/1st slider)?

Resolution is 1920x1080.

The monitor size for the 1080p resolution doesn't need to be upscaled as it connects to all parts of the screen without any room, and without passing the edges.

[Remilia]

The monitor I have is a (Link)Dell S2409W, 24" LCD Display. 60Hz. I'm not really have any issues with the monitor?

Also have no idea what PWM, is.

PWM is pulse width modulation, for monitors it means flickering in the easiest way to put it. And yeah, your monitor has PWM and is extremely extremely old.
Also can well, go through the check list I guess.
http://www.eizoglobal.com/library/ba...gue/index.html

[Arbiter]

In addition to what everyone else has said, it should probably be noted that Windows 10 itself shouldn't have any effect on your eyes hurting compared to any other OS so downgrading back to other OS is likely not going to fix anything. It's an OS so the only way your eyes could have been impacted by the change is if you lost some sort of color settings that were manually set within the OS which is unlikely as you would probably be aware of those settings and them being disabled as you would've been the one to have set them.

[Shadow Fox]

PWM is pulse width modulation, for monitors it means flickering in the easiest way to put it. And yeah, your monitor has PWM and is extremely extremely old.
Also can well, go through the check list I guess.
http://www.eizoglobal.com/library/ba...gue/index.html

So your suggestion was to raise the brightness on the monitor, then tone the brightness down OS-side?

Is the right?

[Remilia]

So your suggestion was to raise the brightness on the monitor, then tone the brightness down OS-side?

Is the right?

Yes.