HP Gaming laptop crashes when playing games...

[Neil_77]

Hi all,

I am in need of some advice or help here. I have a Pavilion gaming laptop (8th Gen i5 with GTX1050 2Gb) and, until recently, wasn't having any issues with it. About 2 weeks ago however Skyrim SE, which until that point had been running quite happily, started to crash constantly and no matter what I do I cannot get it to run properly again. The game will simply freeze, ALT-TAB doesn't really work and task manager is intermittent. After a period of a few minutes it will normally CTD without displaying an error pop-up alert. I have:-

1. Followed the Bethesda support advice/help pages including forcing the NVidia GFX on and turned settings down to bare minimum, forcing GFX card, global settings vs. per-application settings etc.
2. Tried various NVidia drivers including the latest from NVidia and the stock ones on the HP site for the laptop
3. Turned off the touchscreen service
4. Completely reset the laptop back to a fresh configuration of Windows using system reset.

Some things to note:-

1. When Skyrim setup tries to autodetect hardware, it cannot autodetect the GFX card (I'm sure it did the first time I installed it)
2. When I look at the Physx setup in the NVidia control panel, it shows the display and Physx linked to the Intel integrated GFX, not the NVidia chipset
3. The chipset isn't overheating or maxing out it's VRAM usage - according to task manager

This is really annoying as one of the reasons I went to the expense of getting this laptop was to play a few games, Skyrim included. The only thing I've not done is re-image the HDD back to the factory default as I don't have the recovery partition (formatted the HDD a while ago thanks to my lack of understanding of TPMs!)

What is most frustrating is that I didn't do anything specific to the system around the time the game started failing (install anything or change any settings etc.) as the laptop was working fine. Any help most welcome, or if an HP person can link me an HDD image so I can try and re-image the HDD as per factory default that would be the last thing I can try.

Thanks

[Neil_77]

Well, as an extra to the last, I've fully restored the HDD using the Cloud Recovery app - reinstalled Skyrim - and no change.

[Neil_77]

So, I've found that I have similar issues with Starbound. If you look it up it's a very different kind of game with much less requirements in the way of graphics power. One thing that has come up from Windows logs is that this game is crashing due to TDR issues with the NVidia drivers/chipset. Is there the possibility that a BIOS update or Windows update that may have started causing this to happen?

[The_Fossette]

@Neil_77,

Welcome to the HP Support Community!

I assure you I will try my best to get this sorted.

Awesome job on diagnosing the issue correctly and performing smart troubleshooting before posting your question on HP forums. Kudos to you on that score. 

I recommend you contact HP phone support to further diagnose the issue. They can take a remote of your computer and check.

Here is how you can get in touch with the phone support.

1)Click on this link – www.hp.com/contacthp/

2)Select the product type.

3)Enter the serial number of your device or select let HP detect your product option.

4)Select the country from the drop-down.

5)You should see the HP phone support number or Chat option listed.

Let me know how it goes and you have a great day!

If you wish to show appreciation for my efforts, mark my post as Accept as Solution. Your feedback counts!

Cheers!