Question Constant freezing & crashing on HP Omen 17 ?

[Gooey7]

Laptop: HP Omen 17t-ck000
Specs:

• Intel i7 -11800H
• RTX 3070 GPU
• 16GB 3200MHz RAM
• 512GB SSD NVMe
• Windows 10 v 10.0.19044 build 19044
• BIOS AMI F.11 (7/8/2021)

Problem: Constant crashing/freezing/black screen when playing video games. This never happens during anything else (like streaming or using photoshop). Games I've played since I got this laptop: BDO and Tiny Tina's: Wonderlands.

During BDO, generally the screen (a 2k ultrawide connected via mini display) will go black and the game will become unresponsive. Effect noises from characters will stop, but ambiance sounds, and music will continue. E.g. the sound of a PC chopping wood will stop, but the sounds of NPC chatter will continue. Initially, when this happens, the laptop monitor will freeze as well (well, the whole system really), but the sounds will continue (if I'm watching a show or something on the side). After 5-10 seconds, the laptop monitor will become responsive, the external monitor will remain blacked out and unresponsive. After 15-30 seconds, the external monitor will resume with BDO, the game becomes responsive, and it is as if I had just stopped playing, but stayed connected (I'll be dead if near monsters, or my character will continue whatever lifeskill they were doing).

If I click on the BDO window (after the system unfreezes) while this happens, it will dim and I'll get the windows unresponsive error, at which point, it will not become responsive again and I'll have to quit out and reopen it. The frequency of this is about once an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less. It happens mostly when the map is open, but will happen during other activities as well. It happens during full screen, windowed borderless, and windowed. It happens while lowering the graphics as well. No in game settings reduce the frequency of this happening. It also happens regardless of what programs I have or don't have running in the background.

Tiny Tina's, happens less frequently, but also just straight crashes, it never recovers. Less to say here since there's no unique state when it happens.

In the reliability monitor, it's a bunch of Windows Hardware errors, livekernalevent, error code 141.

Steps Taken So Far:

• Complete reinstall of nVidia driver using DDU, driver version 472.12 (HP recommended driver), as well as tried the 2 most recent drivers as well.
• Ran windows memory diagnostic tool with no errors (will run memtest tomorrow).
• Stress test with furmark as well as heaven bench with no crashes during those.
• Also have all the most recent windows 10 updates.
• Have also run a chkdsk on my C: drive (the only drive) with no errors there.
• Change from DP-to-MiniDP cable to HDMI cable
• Disabled all services except Intel Bluetooth Service, as well as all startup programs and clean reboot (potentially successful)

I'm hoping it's not a GPU or CPU problem since the problem will happen during low usage of either component.

Does anyone have any ideas on what else could be the problem, or any suggested fixes ?

 

[Lutfij]

You speak of being on Windows 10, what version of the OS are you on? What BIOS version are you on for your laptop's motherboard? Try DDU one more time but this time use drivers listed on HP's support page and installing said driver in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

You could also try and backup all critical content from the OS drive, recreate your bootable USB installer for your OS using Windows Media Creation Tools and reinstalling the OS. Mind you, disconnect from the www so the OS doesn't download/install drivers on it's own. Manually install all relevant drivers in the aforementioned elevated command. Yes, you're going to have to source all relevant drivers from HP's support page and keep it handy on a pen drive.

 

[Gooey7]

You speak of being on Windows 10, what version of the OS are you on? What BIOS version are you on for your laptop's motherboard? Try DDU one more time but this time use drivers listed on HP's support page and installing said driver in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

You could also try and backup all critical content from the OS drive, recreate your bootable USB installer for your OS using Windows Media Creation Tools and reinstalling the OS. Mind you, disconnect from the www so the OS doesn't download/install drivers on it's own. Manually install all relevant drivers in the aforementioned elevated command. Yes, you're going to have to source all relevant drivers from HP's support page and keep it handy on a pen drive.

Thanks for the response! I'll try DDU one more time. I realize now that I put Dell, but I meant HP, specifically the drivers for my model and bios. I'll add my OS and BIOS version to my original post.

Interestingly, this morning, I tried switching from the DP-to-MiniDP cable I was using to HDMI in hopes that maybe the cable (I've heard that some cheaply made DP cables can be problems). I started up BDO, and almost immediately went into an unrecoverable freeze state, which required me to end the process. It was quite early, and I didn't have too much time to try anything extensive like memtest, so I disabled all non microsoft services except the Intel Bluetooth service, all start up programs, and did a clean reboot. Played BDO for a little over an hour without any problems. Will switch back over to the MiniDP cable and try a longer session tonight to see if maybe there was some software conflict.