Keyboard stopped working mid gaming on laptop

[CinnamonCakes]

That's very unhealthy..... I wouldn't mess around, I'd just give PCS a call tomorrow and arrange for an RMA, those are pretty bad symptoms!

i had exactly the same symptoms with my laptop (optimus x w/ i7 9750h and rtx 2060). totally unresponsive, screen was unmoving from an in-game image. It happened three times, and on top of all this were the heat issues you advised a repaste for. The cure (that i am proud to say i figured out by myself ) was removing all the power from the laptop i.e. unplugging the battery and the socket. This would of course cause me to lose all my unsaved data and runs all the risks of hard, unprepared shutdowns but that was what PCS told him to do, so...

I also get a bunch of glitches and freezes and shutdowns and stuff from my laptop so i sent for another RMA, within a week of getting it back from one

is PCS quality control usually this shoddy?

 

[Segwayrider]

Okay so it happen again @SpyderTracks. Stopped mid gaming. keyboard unable to respond and power off button didn't work. I was able to connect an external keyboard which did work, but when I tried restarting the pc i went black screen and didnt wanna turn off. I had to take off the battery again. The keyboard wokrs again after starting up the pc once more. What should I do?
Also I have some problems with my gpu where its usage drop Down. whenever I restart the pc (maybe also shut down im not sure), it dosnt drop down for some time the longer time in between shutdown (as in the pc actually shuts down) the more often the problem appear. I dont know if the 2 problems may be somewhat related?


Edit: talked to the PCS guy from Denmark. He said among other things, that such thing can happen on laptop, and isnt just mine. Since the problem is inconsistent, it would be hard to test. because when they test it over a few days and the problem dosnt show, all they can conclude is the problem is fixed, even if it isn't. Say the faut just didnt happen while they were testing it. What I was told is if it happen agian i should take a film/ pictures, of the problem and what ive done.
So if it happens again I'll take a film/pictures, before sending it to RMA, since right now there is no garanti they would be able to find what caused it.
tbh though I now have about 6 (total) problems. 1)this, 2)the gpu one, 3)whenever ryzen master is open it causes audio desync or crackling/ poping in audio (right now its the latter), 4) sometimes the fingerprint doesn't work (either it dosnt registrer the fingerprint device itself, or is unable to detect my finger). A restart of the pc has so far solved this one, 5) the Wi-fi is unstable and sometimes unable to connect (this is most likely to be on my end however), and 6) there is a single light that is slightly off color form the rest (this is minor and by itself no big deal)

 

[FerrariVie]

@Segwayrider regarding the unresponsive keyboard issue, I was able to reproduce it twice this weekend, after that not happening for a couple of months now. For me at least, it happens when I'm on longer sessions of intensive games, Cyberpunk this time while previous times in the past were with RDR2. I thought that undervolting the GPU would solve the issue, but it did not. (see my previous post here https://www.pcspecialist.ie/forums/...locked-up-and-wont-shutdown.76603/post-546983 )

So it's unusual for me to have that much free time to play for 3 hours uninterruptedly, but since it happened on Saturday and Sunday after about the same number of hours, I think that it indeed has something to do with that. I think 3 hours is the limit to not get the issue. I know it's not a solution, but I believe that rebooting the PC after 3 hours of playtime will prevent the issue from happening.

One thing I noticed though (that I haven't before) is that all the sensors stop working at the same time as the keyboard does. So if I try to open HwInfo, it just crashes. If I look at my third-party fan control tool (Obsidian), it also cannot read the fans, temperatures, CPU/GPU utilisation or anything regarding sensors.

Next step for me is going to be closing all the sensor monitoring software, like MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner. Since the sensors stop working when the keyboard freezes, then maybe it has something to do with those softwares? But that will only be tested on the next time that I have 3+ hours of uninterrupted play sessions, which is a bit rare.

Another thing that I've noticed is that on the last time it happened, the keyboard LED did not turn off (first time it did not). I went into the keyboard LED software to change brightness or colours, but it didn't work. Then I went and tried to shut the PC down, but this time instead of crashing on a black screen, it actually turned off. However, the keyboard was still unresponsive when I tried to turn it on and just removing the battery and putting it back again made the power button work.

tbh though I now have about 6 (total) problems. 1)this, 2)the gpu one, 3)whenever ryzen master is open it causes audio desync or crackling/ poping in audio (right now its the latter), 4) sometimes the fingerprint doesn't work (either it dosnt registrer the fingerprint device itself, or is unable to detect my finger). A restart of the pc has so far solved this one, 5) the Wi-fi is unstable and sometimes unable to connect (this is most likely to be on my end however), and 6) there is a single light that is slightly off color form the rest (this is minor and by itself no big deal)

Regarding your other issues, I also have/had number 3, 4, 5 and 6 (apart from 1 that I've mentioned above).

Number 3 is easy to solve, as it is a windows issue. Hard to find a solution, but after 4 months I managed to find it. You need to go into your current power plan and change the below settings:
USB settings > USB selective suspend settings > Plugged in: Disabled.
PCI Express > Link State Power Management > Plugged in: Off.

Number 4 was ok for me, as I already had a fingerprint dongle from kensington (used on my old laptop), so I'm using that instead. It's a lot more reliable and it did cost me £30, so I'm using it on the USB 2.0 port (found a good use for that ).

Number 5 I assume it's happening because you're using an external monitor? I've seen people complain about this same thing on this chassis. The wi-fi antenna cables were designed to go just too close to the HDMI/DP connectors and it causes interference. It's not a problem for me though, as I'm very close to my router and I don't use an external monitor. But I agree that it can be annoying to a lot of people.

Number 6 I also think it's like this to all/most people, if you're talking about the LEDs under the space bar. It doesn't bother me much, but it is indeed weird.

 

[Segwayrider]

Okay so it sounds more like a problem with the model rather than just a defekt. That or some conflict between software. that´s unfortunate. I will say that when it happen yesterday I only played RDR2 for about 1 hour. I have defiantly been playing more than 6 hrs in a row, though that was civ 6 so not that demanding. Also with lockdown and whatnot I do use this pc for an avg of probably 12 hrs a day (that includes general use, such as webbrowsing, streaming movies, and attending online lectures/ meetings, but also gaming).

 

[FerrariVie]

Okay so it sounds more like a problem with the model rather than just a defekt. That or some conflict between software. that´s unfortunate. I will say that when it happen yesterday I only played RDR2 for about 1 hour. I have defiantly been playing more than 6 hrs in a row, though that was civ 6 so not that demanding. Also with lockdown and whatnot I do use this pc for an avg of probably 12 hrs a day (that includes general use, such as webbrowsing, streaming movies, and attending online lectures/ meetings, but also gaming).

Do you use MSI afterburner+Rivatuner or have any other FPS/temperature/resources monitoring software (hwinfo, hwmonitor, etc) opened while gaming? Even on the background?

 

[Segwayrider]

Do you use MSI afterburner+Rivatuner or have any other FPS/temperature/resources monitoring software opened when gaming? Even on the background?

Only the fan speed setting (the one you get from control center) ATM ryzen master causes some audio problems so if I open that its mostly to check the PPT, since for whatever reason, whenever I boot up (dosnt matter if its from sleep or off) it doesn't seem to be given me the correct limit of W (usually 28w (power saving) or 85w (performance). I normally have to go into the power modes and switch between back and forth to entertainment so it would limit it to 65w

 

[Segwayrider]

Number 3 is easy to solve, as it is a windows issue. Hard to find a solution, but after 4 months I managed to find it. You need to go into your current power plan and change the below settings:
USB settings > USB selective suspend settings > Plugged in: Disabled.
PCI Express > Link State Power Management > Plugged in: Off.

Alright thanks, I changed it. (tested it and didn't seem to work)

Number 5 I assume it's happening because you're using an external monitor? I've seen people complain about this same thing on this chassis. The wi-fi antenna cables were designed to go just too close to the HDMI/DP connectors and it causes interference. It's not a problem for me though, as I'm very close to my router and I don't use an external monitor. But I agree that it can be annoying to a lot of people.

Nope, but as I said its probably on my end, since it happens on other devices (my study pc, and xbox also experience this, just never as the same time. For some reason its normally only one it happens to. None of the other people in my household (3) notice the issues (granted they mostly just use their phone and not a pc). If it happens to more than one, the internet is down (real fun when you have to have only online classes and exams ). It does explain why I always loose connection when I plug in my lenovo mixed reality headset ( it uses hdmi and a 3.0 usb).

Number 4 was ok for me, as I already had a fingerprint dongle from kensington (used on my old laptop), so I'm using that instead. It's a lot more reliable and it did cost me £30, so I'm using it on the USB 2.0 port (found a good use for that ).

personally I use all the usb ports (one for usb mouse, one for the usb to the laptop cooler, and one whenever i use the mixed reality), but good to know im not the only one

So basically the only issue that i have that's unique to me is the gpu spikes.