Videos and audio cease to function.
Videos and audio cease to function.
I own an HP laptop (Victus 16, purchased roughly a year ago). When idle for too long, video and audio files stop functioning properly. On YouTube or when streaming from the internet, it freezes with no sound and a spinning loading wheel that never stops. Playing PC files or games works fine, but audio is missing. Restarting the computer resolves the problem completely, and as long as something is active—whether YouTube, another site, or a game—it runs smoothly. However, if the laptop remains idle for an extended period without any activity, the issue reappears. I’m uncertain how long it takes before this happens, but it seems to vary. Initially, I thought it might be a driver problem, but my GPU drivers are up to date. Updating HP drivers caused further complications; the installation tool didn’t launch properly, and it reported an error when trying to reinstall. This wasn’t normal behavior. Interestingly, this issue also occurred on a previous laptop I owned, which started shortly after use. My workaround was keeping a long YouTube video running in the background, which helped temporarily but wasn’t perfect. Eventually, after several years, the problem seemed to resolve itself, possibly linked to a recent update. I haven’t found many similar reports online, which is odd given that it happened on both laptops I’ve owned. It might just be a coincidence or something specific to my setup. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.