HP Pavilion AiO Multiple Problems

[gyma]

My computer is out of warranty (just barely) and I'm having the following problems:

1. The micro SD port won't recognize a card when inserted. I had never used it but recently bought a card to use for watching some videos on my TV.

2. The keyboard occasionally is completely non responsive or the delay is excruciating long. Sometimes unplugging/plugging back in the unifying receiver helps, but not always.

3. For no apparent reason, the screen goes black and nothing I do revives it. Eventually it resolves itself but sometimes it takes 5 or more minutes to do it. I don't think it's the video card because when this happens, I am still able to view a game loaded on the computer. It seems to only be the internet.

4. The best I can describe this last problem is there are times when it refuses to wake up or takes very long to do so. Some times I'm forced to do a hard re-boot because nothing works. Banging on the keyboard does nothing.

My computer guy wiped it clean and reinstalled everything I needed. He thought the problem was McAffee's security software. It really didn't help.

Did I just get a defective product?

[itsmyname]

@gyma -- if you have a wireless keyboard, try changing its batteries.

I doubt that the anti-virus software is the cause.

Experiment: uninstall it, and the built-in Windows Defender anti-virus software will re-activate itself.

Then, see if the problem has vanished.

Within the "power settings", after how many minutes of "inactivity" does the computer automatically set the monitor to "power-saving-mode", e.g., the screen goes dark, and a green-coloured lamp on it will change to orange-coloured.

[gyma]

Already changed the batteries and that wasn't the problem. Wish it had worked! Adding now that I've finished typing that everything appears normal with the keyboard. But it will return!

As for the wake up problem, my suspicion is it has something to do with whatever the system is that forces you to view a scenic photo and hit the login button. So the problem is more apparent if I've been away from the computer for a longish time or overnight. Sadly, I don't always power down which might solve the problem, but it takes too long to start up and I'm not always a patient person.

In the morning, I can pound all I want on the keyboard and the screen remains black. When it eventually wakes up, it takes forever for that photo program to load. And even then I might see the photo but the login button along with the date/time doesn't appear for another 5 minutes.

I'm beginning to really hate this computer but I've always had a good experience with HP. Is it at all possible that Win10 is the problem? Especially with the sudden black screen? I've since upgraded to Win11 and so far the black screen hasn't appeared but I could never figure out why/when it would do it.

Thanks for responding! Appreciate it.

[itsmyname]

@gyma -- In the morning, I can pound all I want on the keyboard and the screen remains black.

Does CTRL-ALT-Delete "wake" it up?

When it eventually wakes up, it takes forever for that photo program to load. And even then I might see the photo but the login button along with the date/time doesn't appear for another 5 minutes.

Does your computer have a lamp that lights-up whenever the disk-drive is "active" (reading or writing) ?

If so, does that lamp blink a lot during those 5 minutes, to indicate that Windows is "working" on some tasks? (Maybe, "calling home" to Microsoft, to Adobe, to Apple, to your anti-virus company) to get Windows Updates, Adobe updates, iTunes updates, and updated virus-definitions?)

How old is the disk-drive?  Maybe, it is having problems, causing each input/output operation to take 10 or 100 times as much time?  The free version of SPECCY can be used to check the "S.M.A.R.T." status of the disk-drive.

Is it a HDD or a much-faster SSD?  If it has "hibernated" (writing many MBytes to the disk-drive), it will take a "long" time to read from a HDD, as compared to a shorter time to readi from a SSD.

[gyma]

I haven't tried the CTRL-ALT-DEL lately, but I did try a few times after I googled the problem when it first started and it was offered as a solution.

I haven't found a light/lamp that shows when the hard drive is working, so no way to know what Windows is working on. This computer is less than 2 years old and I'm assuming it was new when I purchased it. I think I bought it at Costco.

The drive is an HDD.

I'll try the SPECCY and see what happens. Thanks for the tip.

[itsmyname]

@gyma -- I haven't found a light/lamp that shows when the hard drive is working

Some All-In-One computers locate that lamp on the back, in order to not have a possibly-irritating lamp blinking "randomly" on the front panel.