Ok, I'm going to try this one more time since my post from last night seems to have been lost in the ether, and I too, have been having this same issue for about 2 weeks now.
HMD:
Manufactured 1/2017
Connected via DP-MiniDP cable
Purchased 7/11/2107
Problem started about 2 weeks ago
Hardware:
MSI Z270 SLI w/ v1.70 BIOS
MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X
Intel i7-7700 NOT overclocked
32GB G.Skill TridentZ DDR4 PC-3200 SDRAM
Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVMe - M.2 SSD
Patriot Hellfire 480GB M.2 SSD
EVGA 650 GQ, 80+ Power Supply
FocusRite Scarlet Solo Audio
Logitech WebCam HD615
Thrustmaster HOTAS 4
Software:
Using Steam Public version (not Beta)
Updated ASMedia USB eXtensible Host Controller Driver to v1.16.36.1, dated 7/11/2016
Additional Notes:
My Vive worked beautifully for the first few weeks without any issues. I played several hours at a time my first few days, but for the time, only played around with demo's and the free game I received with purchase. My main reason for setting up VR is because I wanted to do a space combat simulator in VR. I spent a few weeks choosing my game (Elite: Dangerous), and another few days getting my controller (Thrustmaster HOTAS 4) to work. So it was not until I got everything installed and configured before I started noticing the issue. Unfortunately, I am not sure if I ran into this issue my first night playing, but honestly, after getting everything working, I just tried a training mission or two before passing out. So it may have been there from the very beginning.
As others have noted, it works fine for maybe 20-40 minutes, maybe slightly longer. Since I can spend a lot of time in E: D in the station menu's, I may not even move my head for a while... so the issue either happens when I'm in the middle of a dogfight, or when I first move my head after being in station menu's for too long.
At that point, it usually is only a momentary flash of solid gray, but the duration and frequency both increase over the next few minutes until the Vive screens stay gray. As it begins to fail, I can still perform actions in my game, and HEAR that I am doing something, but when the screen stays solid gray, no other actions seem to occur, and the screen mirror has frozen (though it continues to work as the gray flashes increase).
After reviewing other threads, and this one, I tried updating the BIOS of my motherboard, updating the USB drivers direct from the MoBo manfacturer, re-aligning my base stations, moving my Vive USB connection from a shared 3.0 hub to a dedicated 2.0 MoBo port, and reduced the frame rate of the camera in the Vive settings. None of these actions seems to have had any effect.
So, having this for only 6 weeks, I am VERY discouraged to have found this thread only yesterday, and see that people have been having this issue since at least June, maybe even March, with NO resolution yet from HTC.
I'm beginning to wonder if I should pressure Amazon to accept a return, since it took this long to find out it can't do what I bought it for :(