Zoom: Troubleshoot Black Screen of Death

If this doesn't solve the problem, here are a few more suggestions that might help a little bit, as they are settings that require more processing power.

Go to your Zoom settings (click the gear icon below your pic in the top right corner of the client application)

• General Tab - Nothing Required

• Video Tab

  • Turn off HD if it is on. This is one of the biggest power sucks. It works really well to improve video quality but does impact your CPU in a big way.

  • Uncheck "Touch up appearance". This smooths your face removing wrinkles but does have an impact on CPU performance.

  • Uncheck the "Adjust for low light"

  • Change the max participants setting to 25 if it is already set to 49

  • Click the "Advanced" button

    • Uncheck the "Optimise video quality with de-noise"

    • Uncheck all hardware acceleration settings

• Audio Tab

  • Under the "Suppress background noise" setting, use "Auto" or try setting it to "Low". This isn't a huge gain in power but the more suppression you apply the more power required.

• Share Screen Tab

  • Click "Advanced"

    • Uncheck all hardware acceleration options

• Background & Filters Tab

  • Select "None". Using virtual backgrounds uses a great deal of CPU/GPU power. Next to not sending HD video and hardware acceleration, this would probably be the next in line for impacting CPU/GPU performance.

• Turn off all other applications running on your computer and see if that makes a difference

Most of these setting can be changed while in a meeting so you can see the impact on your system. In the Zoom settings window, there is a "Statistics" tab. Open this tab and you can see your CPU utilization, showing all and just Zoom. It also shows you how much memory Zoom is taking up on your computer.

You can also open the task manager and watch it change as you adjust your Zoom settings. Try changing settings one at a time to see if there is a noticeable change for a particular setting. If something makes a difference, try running with that setting change and see what happens. The other option is to turn them all off and then turn them on one by one observing any changes to CPU load and memory utilization.