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Solved Random Black Screen Hang/Freeze/Crash

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psyhost22

PCHF Member
Oct 27, 2021
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Hello all... coming to this forum after I tried a previous one and got 0 responses. (Is it because I was a new user?! That's no reason to discriminate!) Anyways, here's the problem:

I have had this laptop for a while--needed a new upgrade for college and it does everything I need without a hitch. Every once in a while, there would be an on-screen graphical glitch--misplaced pixels, green/pink/black/etc. but it was nothing drastic and never affected my work so I chose to ignore it. However, recently, my laptop has been having these "black" screen crashes--black as in the screen is not completely off, but displaying all black pixels. The rest of the components seem to still be working; I can hear fans running, the lights under my keyboard still pulse, I believe sound still works as well. The display is just simply not displaying the things I hope it would display. It requires me to hard reset.

There are no errors present in Event Viewer after these problems except for that the system did not shut down correctly (because I forcefully powered it down).

Solutions I've tried so far:
  • Re-install graphics drivers (both Ryzen and NVIDIA)
  • Update BIOS
  • Check RAM for any issues (none detected in 3 rounds of checks)
  • Changed power plans
  • Update CPU
  • Plugged in external monitor
  • Used monitor refresh command
So, essentially, everything short of taking it in to a computer shop slash ripping it to shreds in my own home. It's really more of an annoyance than anything, but still, an annoyance is an annoyance; it can especially be detrimental if I'm working on something and haven't saved in a while (thankfully haven't lost any program data yet).

This only started happening in about the past two months or so, so maybe it's a certain update or something is clashing with another thing?

Regardless, any help/advice/what-to-do-next would be heavily appreciated.

Here are some specs:
  • HP Omen Laptop 15-en0023dx, product number 2V927UA#ABA
  • Windows 10 Home Edition x64
  • Computer is 1 year old, OS installed on-arrival, never re-installed
  • AMD Ryzen 7 4800H w/Radeon Graphics, 2900 Mhz, 8 Cores, 16 Logical Processors
  • AMD Radeon Graphics, 512.00 MB and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, 6.0 GB
And a Speccy link, for those more technically inclined:


Again, any help is appreciated here. Thank you. Please let me know if you need any extra laptop information and I will be happy to provide.
 
Hello psyhost22,

Couple of observations in Speccy'

Power Profile
Active power scheme: Main Gaming

When gaming the Windows Power Plan needs to be set as High Performance and the AC adaptor powering the notebook, is this what you do.

Physical Memory
Memory Usage: 67 %
Total Physical: 15 GB
Available Physical: 4.97 GB

Something is shown to be using an awful lot of memory, did you have anything else running when you generated the Speccy url.

Is Kaspersky a free or a paid for product.
 
Hello psyhost22,

Couple of observations in Speccy'

Power Profile
Active power scheme: Main Gaming

When gaming the Windows Power Plan needs to be set as High Performance and the AC adaptor powering the notebook, is this what you do.

Physical Memory
Memory Usage: 67 %
Total Physical: 15 GB
Available Physical: 4.97 GB

Something is shown to be using an awful lot of memory, did you have anything else running when you generated the Speccy url.

Is Kaspersky a free or a paid for product.
Phillpower2, thanks for the reply.

I very well may have been--I could do a Speccy from safe boot, if that would help.

Kaspersky is paid product. (It could be the RAM hog... wouldn't shock me, but it's saved my PCs from some awful bugs a few times so that's why I keep it.)

Power Plan is set to "max performance" in that power scheme. I generally always use it while plugged in.
 
Run Speccy again but this time make sure that nothing else is running, leave the computer sitting for a couple of minutes then check what memory usage Speccy is showing.

What power scheme is that.

You are welcome btw :)
Thanks for being patient with me. (Had it happen again just as I got back to work--annoying!)

It's a "custom" power plan but it's pretty similar to a "high performance" power plan. Just minor adjustments and such, can post about that if needed as well.

Tried Speccy in Safe Mode (both w/ and w/o Networking) but it wouldn't work, so I dashed that and opted for a fresh boot instead (disabled all startup programs and non-Windows services). Here's the result of that:


Checked the RAM usage in Safe Mode, it was 1.5 GB, which I'm assuming is just normal OS usage. So nothing suspicious there, I presume?
 
It's a "custom" power plan but it's pretty similar to a "high performance" power plan.

But where does it come from.

Because your computer is an OEM/brand name you must use a power plan that is provided by them (HP) or alternatively Windows, reason for this is because the drivers and the GPU itself are custom to your computer and not like a GTX 1660 Ti that you can purchase yourself and then OC etc, the main reason for the custom drivers is to reduce the required power which in turn reduces heat inside of the notebook and AC adaptor + it extends battery life.

RAM looks ok in the new Speccy report.
 
But where does it come from.

Because your computer is an OEM/brand name you must use a power plan that is provided by them (HP) or alternatively Windows, reason for this is because the drivers and the GPU itself are custom to your computer and not like a GTX 1660 Ti that you can purchase yourself and then OC etc, the main reason for the custom drivers is to reduce the required power which in turn reduces heat inside of the notebook and AC adaptor + it extends battery life.

RAM looks ok in the new Speccy report.
It's one I made myself. I switched over to the "balanced" plan instead... though I'm not entirely sure the power plan is the issue :~)

This laptop is pre-built (never built one myself, though I'd love to one day!) so anything I can do with it has to be in realm of the laptop itself. Can't exactly add/remove components.

Thank you so much for all of this help, really. I appreciate it greatly.
 
This laptop is pre-built (never built one myself, though I'd love to one day!)

Crossed wires perhaps, the GTX 1660 Ti in your notebook slots into the motherboard the same as the CPU and likewise it will have a heatsink and either its own or a CPU cooling fan that is shared between the two heatsinks, a GTX 1660 Ti PCI-E card that goes into a desktop however is fixed to a PCB and has a couple of cooling fans, these cards draw their power from the +12V rail on the PSU and so much power is needed because of the two cooling fans, if you put the same amount of power through your GTX 1660 Ti you would fry it, this is the reason why HP etc have to modify the drivers for the discrete GPUs that they use and why you must use either the High Performance Windows Power Plan or a program that has been specifically provided for the GPU by HP.

NB: The drivers for the GPU must also come from HP and not Nvidea unless HP direct you otherwise.

You are welcome :)
 
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