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I have occasionally experienced some Win10 freezes on my laptop when watching youtube videos (for instance like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wijrestbx2U&t=2049s - a witcher 1 gameplay video). The laptop completely froze and had to power it down.
My laptop is an Asus TUF A15 with Ryzen 4800H and GeForce 1660Ti.

Any idea what could cause this?

Did you reproduce it reliably enough to know it's about YouTube?

Things I'd try: other video sites, other browsers.

To the extent that was feasible, yes.

To be more specific: I have this laptop for 2 months. The freezes happened only on 2 YouTube videos (each time that specific video was played), regardless of the browser (Edge or Chrome): that Wicher 1 video and this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nG9jQktPfs. What confuses me is that it's not about YouTube per se, but about these 2 clips from youtube. The huge majority of YouTube videos I've watched (and there were in range of several hundreds probably) played just fine.

The freezes were not random, because they occurred every time one of those clips were played.

Any ideas what is going on?

More things to try:

- Firefox (both Modern Edge and Chrome are Chromium)
- Force YouTube to use h264 (I assume it's otherwise VP9 - check in rclick\"stats for nerds")
- Different YouTube resolution/quality settings
- Disable Chrome's video decode hardware acceleration

What I would like though is finding out what causes the issue in order to figure out whether there is an issue with the software or the hardware of my laptop; troubleshooting these 2 particular videos is irrelevant.

It might be an issue video driver issues since newer videos used hardware acceleration. I had the same problems with my Vega 64 when it was brand new and AMD RTG later fixed it with a driver release.

Noldor wrote:

in order to figure out whether there is an issue with the software or the hardware of my laptop; troubleshooting these 2 particular videos is irrelevant.

Eliminating causes will help narrowing it down.

If Firefox works okay, and both FF and Chrome use hardware acceleration and same codec, you know it's unlikely to be hardware; if even without hardware acceleration it gets stuck, it's unlikely to be hardware; etc.

meerkt wrote:

Noldor wrote:

in order to figure out whether there is an issue with the software or the hardware of my laptop; troubleshooting these 2 particular videos is irrelevant.

Eliminating causes will help narrowing it down.

If Firefox works okay, and both FF and Chrome use hardware acceleration and same codec, you know it's unlikely to be hardware; if even without hardware acceleration it gets stuck, it's unlikely to be hardware; etc.

I disabled hardware acceleration in Edge and it seems the freezes no longer occur. What does that mean? Could it be a driver issue with those particular clips?

BTW, forgot to say that a relative mine has the exact same laptop and it does not experience those freezes on the 2 clips.

Browser hardware acceleration has always been janky.

And no, I have no clue why. It just is.

Noldor wrote:

meerkt wrote:

Noldor wrote:

in order to figure out whether there is an issue with the software or the hardware of my laptop; troubleshooting these 2 particular videos is irrelevant.

Eliminating causes will help narrowing it down.

If Firefox works okay, and both FF and Chrome use hardware acceleration and same codec, you know it's unlikely to be hardware; if even without hardware acceleration it gets stuck, it's unlikely to be hardware; etc.

I disabled hardware acceleration in Edge and it seems the freezes no longer occur. What does that mean? Could it be a driver issue with those particular clips?

BTW, forgot to say that a relative mine has the exact same laptop and it does not experience those freezes on the 2 clips.

It could a drive issue but it doesn't rule it out to be a hardware issue (Clockspeed/voltage curve for video playout is in the zone of instability).

Krogoth wrote:

Noldor wrote:

meerkt wrote:

Eliminating causes will help narrowing it down.

If Firefox works okay, and both FF and Chrome use hardware acceleration and same codec, you know it's unlikely to be hardware; if even without hardware acceleration it gets stuck, it's unlikely to be hardware; etc.

I disabled hardware acceleration in Edge and it seems the freezes no longer occur. What does that mean? Could it be a driver issue with those particular clips?

BTW, forgot to say that a relative mine has the exact same laptop and it does not experience those freezes on the 2 clips.

It could a drive issue but it doesn't rule it out to be a hardware issue (Clockspeed/voltage curve for video playout is in the zone of instability).

Browser hardware acceleration has always been janky.

Browser standards have always been janky ever since the beginning. It is unlikely it will change anytime soon.

Noldor wrote:

I disabled hardware acceleration in Edge and it seems the freezes no longer occur. What does that mean? Could it be a driver issue with those particular clips?

Now I'd do the other tests listed above...

If Firefox + HW acceleration + same codec + same resolution/quality = good...

meerkt wrote:

Noldor wrote:

I disabled hardware acceleration in Edge and it seems the freezes no longer occur. What does that mean? Could it be a driver issue with those particular clips?

Now I'd do the other tests listed above...

If Firefox + HW acceleration + same codec + same resolution/quality = good...

It does not seem to occur in Firefox...

Noldor wrote:

It does not seem to occur in Firefox...

With HW acceleration? Now, that's odd.

Freezing Windows is rare. Maybe a combination of a driver bug + Chrome doing something strange? But with such a common software-hardware combination you'd expect other people have encountered and reported it.

A few more things I'd try (while assuring it's hardware-decoded in all cases):
- See if it freezes in Vivaldi, which is also Chromium
- See if it freezes with both h264 and VP9
- Downloading the YT video and playing it with something like MPC-HC

If two hardware-decode playback methods work without freezing I'd lean toward "no faulty hardware", though Chrome's mystery would still bug me.

meerkt wrote:

Noldor wrote:

It does not seem to occur in Firefox...

With HW acceleration? Now, that's odd.

Freezing Windows is rare. Maybe a combination of a driver bug + Chrome doing something strange? But with such a common software-hardware combination you'd expect other people have encountered and reported it.

A few more things I'd try (while assuring it's hardware-decoded in all cases):
- See if it freezes in Vivaldi, which is also Chromium
- See if it freezes with both h264 and VP9
- Downloading the YT video and playing it with something like MPC-HC

If two hardware-decode playback methods work without freezing I'd lean toward "no faulty hardware", though Chrome's mystery would still bug me.

It does not freeze in Vivaldi ((with hardware acceleration on).

It's not such a common software/hardware combination, though, because, until now, it occurred on just 2 specific youtube videos. So it would have to be someone with the exact same configuration playing those 2 videos AND bothering to report it.

Very strange.

Noldor wrote:

I have occasionally experienced some Win10 freezes on my laptop when watching youtube videos (for instance like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wijrestbx2U&t=2049s - a witcher 1 gameplay video). The laptop completely froze and had to power it down.
My laptop is an Asus TUF A15 with Ryzen 4800H and GeForce 1660Ti.

Any idea what could cause this?

I rarely experience issues, but when it happens i would save YouTube videos using downloader apps on Windows.