Boot issues and webcam issues

[ErinF]

I received my Omen 17 at the beginning of January 2018 and have had many problems with it. I am quite frustrated as there's no point spending so much on a laptop just to have it blue screen, not boot correctly after sleep mode, and not be able to use its webcam when I have never had any of these issues on any laptop I've owned before, and they've all cost in the range of $500-$700. As some background, I was also having issues randomly running into the Blue Screen of Death during normal operation (web browing, word processors) until I updated the GeForce driver. Why doesn't this come updated, or it made more prominant that this is a critical driver that the user must update, if it is going to cause such critical errors like random blue screens??

My main issues are:

-can't open the chassis, as two screws are catching on the body and are unable to be removed. See the end of the boot log for more details.

-the webcam won't function properly. The video will flicker on and off, have odd lines and distortions, and just crash immediately. I've tried many times to reinstall the driver, do a completely clean driver install, to no avail. I've talked to service agents on the phone for hours trying to fix this and nothing has solved this. I want to be able to use the internal webcam in this very expensive laptop, and not have to attached an external webcam. I've attached a screenshot of the error code I get when the webcam crashes.

-boot issues: my computer fails to boot from sleep mode about twice per day, and this is very frustrating. Whether it goes idle from not being used, causing it to enter sleep mode, or from me closing the lip and entering it into sleep mode the story is the same. The display is pure black, and will not respond to anything (Esc x2, ctrl+alt+del, hitting the power button quickly, tapping on the keys, tapping the touchpad, or using the mouse). The RBG will come on for the lid, and when I had my keyboard RBG set to 'rain' it turned that on too (without the display), but since I've changed my keyboard RBG to static, that doesn't light up either. The Mute LED or other keyboard LEDs (like caps lock, num lock) will still light up. When I close the lid to try and force it back to sleep mode to try and reawaken it, the lid RBG will stay on and nothing will change. So when I'm stuck like this, I am forced to do a hard shut off by holding the power button for several second until the computer shuts off. This is extremely disruptive to my work, and many time I nearly lost very important work I had been doing simply because I hadn't saved before needing to be away from my laptop, and it went idle, entered sleep mode and then wouldn't boot.  So after my hard reset, the computer boots as normal, and the fans run very hard for a few minutes. Usually I can recover work from Office's Autorecover, but I would like to not have to rely on that or frequent saving to prevent my laptop from sabotaging my workflow.

For the last month I've been keeping track of particularily disruptive events. Please note that the not booting from sleep happens about x2 per day, even if not explicetly noted here. Also note the dates are recorded as yymmdd.

• 180301 during routine work, screen went black. keyboard still lighting up, fans running hard. had two displays and they both went dark. Wouldnt sleep when closed the lid, forced to hard shut down. Work lost as no recovery file created by excel.When restarted, fans running hard for a minute, lid lighting back to default red before switching back to user choice

• 180322 5-10 mins after waking from sleep during routine work (web browsing) computer became very slow, then completely non responsive. display still on, though cursor wouldnt move with either mouse or touchpad. ctrl alt delete didnt work, esc x2 didnt work. had to hard shut off.

• 180323 from sleep wouldnt turn display on. fans on, keyboard rbg on, lid rbg not custom colour but back to default red. had to hard turn off. when on, still red until a minute or so after startup. very common thingfor this to happen out of sleep mode. more likely this to happen than regular just waking up

• --> updated bios, intel drivers, did system check and optimization

• 180327 when turned on computer no boot, just cursor on black screen. cursor responsive and rbg lighting on, but nothing worked, not esc x2, ctrl alt del, putting in my password, hitting enter. When pressed power button went to sleep immidiately, gave it 10+ seconds, restarted to exactly the same thing. Held power button longer for complete hard shut off, turned on, rbg default red before computer started up normally and then turned to custom colour.

• --> updated geforce nvidia drivers

• 180329 computer went to sleep from being idle. wouldnt turn on display. only lid rbg on, keyboard rbg not on (mute light on though). had to hard restart.

• 180331 computer went to sleep from being idle. wouldnt turn on display. only lid rbg on, keyboard rbg not on (mute light on though). had to hard restart. might have lost extremely valuable work, but at least autorecovery saved it. Tried HP vitrtual agent for boot issues and asked to test for power...while Im running the program on my laptop which is indeed on... then asked to remove the memory and get back to the virtual agent, again, while it is running it expects me to turn off the computer and do tasks. Can't run hp support assistant on other devices to have it in parallel to working on my laptop.... Anyways I tried to open the chassis but could not as the two screws at the top (closest to the monitor swivel, but still on the bottom) wouldn't unscrew. they are being caught on the chassis somehow.

Please help me address these issues with my laptop. I depend on it for my work and it is impossible for me to send it away for a long period so that I would not have access to a workstation. Additionally, I think it is unacceptable that so many fatal flaws come on this machine, as it is a premium laptop, and on my utilitarian models somehow Acer and other companies manage to not have any of these issues.

Thank you for your time,

Erin