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New laptop freezes irretrievably, with loud static noise, a few seconds after starting video. Not replicated with Edge/Chrome/Opera.

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  • Last reply by James-B

James-B
James-B
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Just testing out a new Windows 10 laptop (this is the model: http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/laptops/product-detail.html?oid=9249474#!tab=specs) yesterday, and found that playing videos on BBC iPlayer (using Flash) or Youtube (using HTML5) caused the computer to freeze. With iPlayer there was no sound, and I left the computer for minutes with no recovery, with Youtube HTML5 player the freezing was accompanied by a loud static noise, and I wasn't happy leaving the laptop, so I did a hard shutdown quickly.

This is replicated consistently, each time the video plays for a few seconds, sometimes there are colourful artifacts, and then the freeze occurs. As described above, I tried replicating the problem with Edge, Chrome and Opera, with no success (all worked as you would expect).

I'd really like to nail down whether this is a problem with the hardware or with Firefox.

Just testing out a new Windows 10 laptop (this is the model: http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/laptops/product-detail.html?oid=9249474#!tab=specs) yesterday, and found that playing videos on BBC iPlayer (using Flash) or Youtube (using HTML5) caused the computer to freeze. With iPlayer there was no sound, and I left the computer for minutes with no recovery, with Youtube HTML5 player the freezing was accompanied by a loud static noise, and I wasn't happy leaving the laptop, so I did a hard shutdown quickly. This is replicated consistently, each time the video plays for a few seconds, sometimes there are colourful artifacts, and then the freeze occurs. As described above, I tried replicating the problem with Edge, Chrome and Opera, with no success (all worked as you would expect). I'd really like to nail down whether this is a problem with the hardware or with Firefox.

Modified by James-B

All Replies (2)

guigs
guigs
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Please update to the latest version of Firefox that came out today. Then in order to test the hardware you can toggle hardware acceleration: Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration. Since this feature was added to Firefox, it has gradually improved, but there still are a few glitches.

You will need to restart Firefox for this to take effect so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).

Then perform these steps:

  1. Click the menu button New Fx Menu and select Options on Windows or Preferences on Mac or Linux.
  2. Select the Advanced panel and then the General tab.
  3. Uncheck Use hardware acceleration when available.
  4. Restart Firefox and see if the problems persist.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

If the problem is resolved, you should check for updates for your graphics driver by following the steps mentioned in these Knowledge base articles:

Thank you.

James-B
James-B Question owner
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Hi, thanks for the response.

Updating to the latest version (43.04) didn't help, but switching off hardware acceleration did resolve it. Odd that the problem only occurs with Firefox. Are you interested in any further information about the computer?

Cheers.