Laptop apparently hangs while in screen saver, but it's actually alive but the screen is dark

Gary Fritz 21 Reputation points
2021-03-16T19:27:05.54+00:00

I have an HP Spectre x360 15-ch0xx. Windows 10 Pro, version 20H2, OS build 19042.867. Since it was new, it's had a very annoying problem:  it hangs while in the screen saver.  I'll walk away from my desk for a while (an hour, overnight, whatever), and I come back to an unresponsive system, screens dark.  The fan is still running but that's it. This happens once or twice a week.  VERY VERY annoying.

I suspected the system might be unresponsive but not actually hung, so I installed a couple of Remote Desktop apps (Microsoft and Chrome) on my phone.  Sure enough, I found that the system has NOT totally crashed; it responds to the RD request and displays the desktop on the RD client.  I can move the mouse around and sometimes I can click on things, but most clicks don't work.  I can usually right-click on the "Windows start" button and try to initiate a restart so things get cleanly shut down, but that only partially and only sometimes works.  I've had it display the "these apps are preventing shutdown" page, but I've never had it successfully shutdown or reboot. I finally just have to power-cycle it.

The whole time I'm playing with Remote Desktop, the laptop & external monitors are still off.  I can only see the desktop through my RD connection. 

I just had something new today. I don't remember if I did anything unusual to trigger this, but: I got a blue dialog saying "Another session for your user is blocked notifying Local Session Manager for 2466 minutes, so we are unable to log you in. Do you want to force logoff that session to continue?" 2466 minutes (1.7 days) was apparently the last time it hung. :-\ I tried to force logoff, but it just displayed my name with a "Please wait" and a spinny circle. After 20 minutes I gave up and killed the power.

I don't see any occurrences of that error on the web. I have no idea what might be causing this or what to do about it. Any suggestions?

Windows 10
Windows 10
A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.
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  1. S.Sengupta 15,511 Reputation points MVP
    2021-03-17T00:54:02.633+00:00