[Intel HD] Fixing Screen Flickers on Windows 10/11 Fullscreen Games

Intel HD is the onboard graphic processor of Intel processors, the most popular processor family powering millions of PCs. While Intel HD is mostly enough for everyday use, many times I had encounter bugs of it on Windows 10 / 11: The screen flicker when running some games in fullscreen.

Licosha — Are you perhaps one the population who are playing games on your Intel processor-powered Windows PC without a GPU? No, not me, but I was a few years ago 😁.

It was the first ever Windows tablet and device I ever got, because I was younger back there, I tortured the Windows 8.1 tablet playing PC games on it everyday 🤣. And because it is a Windows tablet powered by Intel processor, yes it’s using Intel HD to power the graphic processor.

But the problem arose when I upgraded it to Windows 10, the screen flicker started appears when I running games on fullscreen mode.

The first game I found had screen flicker when running it on fullscreen mode is The SIMS if I remember it correctly. Later then, I also experienced the screen flicker on The SIMS 3, The SIMS 4, and Need for Speed Most Wanted 2005.

Sims 3 start menu fullscreen normal Windows 11

Sims 3 start menu fullscreen flicker Windows 11

Not only on Windows 10, but the fullscreen game flicker also happened on my also Intel HD graphic-powered Toshiba Dynabook R734/K laptop when running Windows 11.

Initially, I could make the screen flicker problem gone if I turned off V-Sync on some games graphic settings. But turning off V-Sync is indeed solving the screen flicker problem, but bringing a new problem to our eyes (screen tearing) 😅.

So, after I try to dig what possible settings could make the changes to get rid screen flicker when running some games in fullscreen on Windows 10 / 11, I finally found the answer: Disable fullscreen optimizations of the game’s executable (exe).

How to solve screen flickering on Windows 10 / 11 PC running Intel HD when playing fullscreen games

Find our game launcher or executables (exe) and right click on it.
Click “Properties”.
Now the Windows game exe’s Properties windows will appear, click on “Compatibility” tab located on top of the window.
On the “Settings” section, check the box of “Disable fullscreen optimizations”.
Click “OK” button located on bottom of the window to save the configurations.
Run our game in fullscreen, enjoy the flicker-free experience on our Intel HD powered Windows PC 😃.