Forum Discussion
Why does my computer freeze when I’m watching it, but work when I walk away?
My computer keeps freezing whenever I'm actively watching the screen, but it works perfectly fine as soon as I walk away and come back later. I'm not sure if this is a hardware issue, a background process, or something related to power settings, so I'd like help figuring out why this happens.
2 Replies
One specific power-saving feature on laptop displays is notorious for exactly this symptom: Panel Self-Refresh (PSR). PSR allows the display panel itself to store the last image and stop refreshing while the image is static, saving battery. When you start interacting again, the GPU and the panel need to sync back up. If that handshake fails, the screen freezes while the rest of the system keeps running.
CPDF
