HP Pavilion All-in-One 24-r0xx randomly shuts off and is slow to restart

[BMilligan505]

Hello everyone, one of my users has reported that her desktop (HP Pavilion all-in-one 24) has been shutting down at random and is slow to restart. This often happens during intensive activities, like Zoom meetings, which can't be avoided as we're a healthcare clinic providing telehealth appointments. I'm afraid it's a hardware issue. Is there any way to run diagnostics through a remote connection? She works remotely from a different city, so it will be difficult to get hands on the device. I want to rule out any possible software issues before making the trip to collect the device and take it to our repair shop. Thanks everyone!

[itsmyname]

The computer could be overheating, which causes a shutdown, to prevent serious/permanent damage.

Make sure that the air intake and exhaust vents outside of the computer's case are not blocked, by books, papers, and that the case is sitting on a hard surface, not a soft cloth, which could be blocking the intake.  However, most All-In-One computers are not physically "surrounded" -- they are on their own pedestal.

Any pets that may have been shedding hair that has been sucked-in to the computer?

If it were my business, I would have a "spare" computer to give to her, and take her computer back to your location, to be refurbished to become the next "spare" computer.

Do you allow her to have "administrative privileges", to install software, such as "Speccy Free", to download, install, and run that software, to give detailed information on the computer's hardware, or is the operating system "locked-down" to prevent unauthorized changes?

[BMilligan505]

Hi, thank you for replying! It sounds like there's no way to troubleshoot w/o getting hands on the computer. Yes, she does have several dogs so that might be interfering with the cooling system. She doesn't have admin privileges. Can I download and run Speccy via remote access? 

[itsmyname]

There is a "portable" version of SPECCY -- it installs to a USB memory-stick, but it still requires administrative privileges each time that you run the program.  So, you could load SPECCY onto your memory-stick, and take that memory-stick with you to her location, and supply the administrative passphrase.

I suppose that if you can use Windows Remote Desktop to take control of her computer, you could do anything that requires administrative privileges.

[BMilligan505]

Thanks again!