After seven, or so, years running Win7 I figured I needed a new system and was willing to jump to Win10. I have a Costco card and they had HP’s 750-287c available after rebate for $600 so I grabbed one. I put it together after a couple of months of foot-dragging and started loading some software. The impetus for getting a new system was more oomph in processor power and graphics for some light 3D CAD and rendering. Since I was testing it out on the coffee table in front of the TV before committing to rearranging my desk-space I figured I’d try streaming some Game of Thrones onto my TV.
The weird thing was the nature of the crash. In midstream (ha!) the screen froze up and absolutely no KB or mouse input was available. I powered down, unplugged and re-plugged the system and after a normal looking boot, everything was dandy. Then this was repeated maybe four or five days later while doing the same thing.
I’ve just never had a system do this in recent memory. Maybe somewhere back in Win97 days I may have seen this, but never in the last fifteen years. I’m thinking there’s a fault on one of the chips in the chip-set or processor, but my computer education is so old and dusty that I’m actually guessing. I was under the impression that Ctl-Alt-Del was an interrupt that should direct the PC register to a routine irrespective of whatever else was going on. (If laughter here is appropriate feel free to indulge yourselves.)
Anyway, I’ve got a week’s worth of 90 day return policy left and I think I might use it to return a box in which I have no confidence. Am I way off base?
(Of course a forum change is fine if IMHO is more fitting.)
Usually CTRL-ALT-DEL is a high priority interrupt and will be serviced pretty fast, as long as the machine does have some cycles available to do it. But mouse interrupts are probably way up there too and if it was not responding to the mouse it was probably locked up.
I have seen this behavior when there is a static charges that hits the PC. You said you were doing the same thing both times, but I’m not clear on what that was. Did you have the PC cabled to the TV using an HDMI cable? How much have you used it not connected to the TV?
I am not a computer tech. If you have any doubts you can return/exchange it, but what you are experiencing does not necessarily mean there is a hardware problem with this computer.
Well, both times I was streaming content from HBO wirelessly to my TV through an HDMI cable. I haven’t loaded much software nor used the system for much else on its own monitor. I guess that’s because I figured I had time to goof around in setting it up and learning any differences in WIN10.
I think the upshot is that, since the interval between lockups is about the same time left for me to get a refund from Costco, I’ll be returning it. I will lose out on the discount I got when it had a rebate in effect, but I’d feel the right goon for getting stuck with a bad board or chip.
It might be overheating, which would again be a hardware problem (malfunctioning fan, heat sink not flush with CPU, etc.). I agree you should return it rather than risk being stuck with a lemon.
Oh, come on. This box is 10x more powerful (graphics included) than needed for streaming video.
It could be the HDMI interface, video driver or faulty processor in the video decoding path, or a million other things. I would try a quick video driver update first, but it somehow smells hardware problem to me.
Thanks for the input, folks. Overheating hadn’t occurred to me since I’ve never encountered it before. I’m going to pack it up and get the return since doing physical troubleshooting is pretty unappealing. The idea of an independent GPU was probably in the works, as **Quartz **suggests, so with a different system I’m more or less still on track.
That’s true but the OP said the PC was also to be used for “some light 3D CAD and rendering” and frankly embedded graphics just doesn’t cut it for that. Sure the new PC will be able to do it but it will be very slow at it. A dedicated graphics card would help a lot and the GTX 1050ti is relatively inexpensive at the lower end of modern graphics cards.
Overheating could be a thing. Download Speccy (the free version) and monitor your PC’s temperature while you stream a movie.
Note, if it is overheating streaming a movie it will almost certainly overheat doing 3D rendering.
Also, check the Device Manager in Windows 10 and see that there are no warnings listed (they will be graphically represented with a yellow caution sign if there is a problem…will be obvious).
I installed this after reading your post. After scanning my computer it helpfully suggested that it should delete a whole lot of apps that I deliberately installed and consider indispensable, such as Dropbox. The value was not worth having to vet a long list of apps and DLLs and try to figure out which ones are safe to delete. Sorry but Decrap My Computer is the next thing I’m going to uninstall.