How to resolve no video, but sound issue that arises after install Visual Studio Community 2013?

Question

I think this forum is more appropriate for this question rather than Stackoverflow, even though my problem appears to relate to Visual Studio Community 2013 with Update 4.

Earlier this week I begun to notice a problem that I am having watching video on my Windows 8.1 system. Although, i can hear audio playing normally, there is no image/video displayed, with the screen either black or green depending on the viewing application.

Initially I became aware of the problem whilst watching streaming video in a number of web browsers including the most recent Chrome, the most recent Firefox and Internet Explorer.

After attempting to watch H.264/MPEG-4 videos in Windows Media Player (version 12.0.9600.17415) I noticed the problem extended beyond watching video in just my browsers. I thought that perhaps the problem was a codec problem and so I installed several other media players, including DivX and VLC (the most recent versions of both applications). Both VLC and DivX showed a green screen, rather than the black screen I had been seeing in my browsers and Windows Media Player. After doing some research I developed a suspicion that the issue is related to a hardware acceleration issue with my video card, which is an ATI HD 4890 card (specifically an ASUS EAH4890 TOP/HTDI/1GD5). I had been using the 13.1 Catalyst Software Suite drivers. My suspicion that the problem relates to hardware acceleration seemed to be somewhat confirmed when I was able to disable hardware decoding in DivX and was able to watch the video normally, i.e. both image and sound. However, when the option to disable hardware decoding was deactivated, presumably re-enabling hardware acceleration, the problem would re-emerge with DivX showing a green screen with audio.

I decided at this point that I would reformat the system, thinking that perhaps the drivers had become corrupted. I thought the system could do with a fresh install anyway. After reinstalling Windows 8.1, and the most recent drivers available for my video card (Catalyst 13.4 Beta) the problem I was dealing with appeared to be resolved. I continued to reinstall all of my other software, only to discover some hours later that the problem had re-emerged. The only conclusion that I could reach at this point was that the problem was caused either as a result of a Windows update I had performed or an application I had installed.

After spending hours frustrated I decided I would reformat the system and start again. I reinstalled Windows 8.1. I installed all of my hardware drivers. I confirmed that I could watch the videos that I couldn't see the image of. For some reason, I suspected that the issue was related to installing Visual Studio Community 2013 with Update 4. So, I created a system restore point. I installed Visual Studio 2013 with Update 4 and I rebooted. After rebooting the system the problem of no video, but sound whilst watching H.264/MPEG-4 video came back. I rolled the system back to the restore point I created. When the system restarted I could watch video again. I repeated the VS2013 install only for the problem to start again.

Therefore, it appears that I may have narrowed the problem down to a hardware acceleration issue, that is only created after the installation of VS2013 Community with Update 4. The interesting thing is that I thought that this version of VS had been installed on this machine well before this issue surfaced.

I would like to continue using the version of Visual Studio I am using. However, at this point I'm not sure what steps I should take next to resolve this issue, and was hoping someone might have a suggestion or two?

Answer 1

For completeness, and in case anyone else comes across this problem/question in the future, I thought I would answer the question, or otherwise document a "solution".

This problem seems to arise when Hyper-V is enabled in Windows 8/8.1. It seems when Hyper-V is enabled there can be an issue with DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA). Applications using DirectX Video Acceleration can display a black or green screen instead of the video.

Hyper-V became enabled in this instance when Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition with Update 4 was installed because the Windows Phone 8 Emulators were selected for installation. This component of Visual Studio requires Hyper-V to be enabled in Windows 8/8.1.

A solution to avoid the problem is to disable Hyper-V when it isn't required.