I recently purchased an ROG Strix G16 as an upgrade from my previous laptop - model G614JIR with 32GB of RAM, Intel i9 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070.
The first laptop had to be returned due to a performance issue, and I was issued a replacement under warranty. The same problem is now occurring with the replacement laptop.
When viewing a video file in Windows Media Player, scrubbing through the timeline will eventually cause Media Player to freeze. A full computer freeze occurs a few seconds later - the mouse usually remains usable, but I am not able to interact with anything and no keys / keyboard shortcuts prompt any response. I have to hold down the power button to fully reboot as the freeze will not change or resolve in any way. In the most recent case, I literally just clicked to return to the start of the video when the freeze occurred.
As the problem occurred on the first laptop after I'd investigated some settings and installed a few apps, this time I held off on installing anything (the only exception being Firefox and the MyAsus app update prompt when you first log in) to see if it still occurred in case it was caused by anything I'd installed or changed in the previous laptop, though I thought it was unlikely as everything I installed has previously run on two different laptops without major issue. Given it's still happening on a second fresh install, I'm inclined to believe it's not anything I've done that's causing it.
In the previous laptop, I tried troubleshooting by updating the NVIDIA graphics drivers + switching to the Studio driver as well with no changes. I also installed all available updates I could find, e.g. Windows, Intel drivers, Asus firmware, etc. Before I returned it I also ran a diagnostic check with MyAsus that came up with no problems. I reached out to Asus support and was initially advised it was "strongly tied to Windows", however Windows customer support immediately advised that it was a hardware problem when I reached out to them. Both recommended I return it under warranty. I called Asus support again later to confirm, and the person I spoke with said he believed it was a hardware fault, specifically graphics, and that I should return it. That said, I'd find it very surprising to have gotten two units with the exact same hardware defect in a row, but this time I know I didn't change anything to reasonably cause a freeze like this.
I also had issues with video playback causing crashes in Vegas Pro 13 that did not align with any of the crashes I often experienced on three previous devices the same version was used on. I haven't installed it on the new laptop yet to see if the same problem occurs, but thus far the indication is that it would.
With the current laptop: I haven't changed any settings that should reasonably impact performance and I haven't installed any further updates beyond the ones that automatically installed during the setup today. The only notable changes have been basic personalization changes (e.g. setting a background image, changing the theme to dark), installing Firefox and moving video files from an external harddrive for the purpose of testing to see if the same thing happened.
Event Viewer provides this reasoning for the application hang:
The program Microsoft.Media.Player.exe version 11.2402.6.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.
Any advice on what might be causing this to happen and how to resolve it would be greatly appreciated!
Edit: Have now reinstalled Vegas, same playback crashing issues (sudden Windows "This program is not responding" popup during otherwise normal playback of unedited footage that should not cause any issues). Event Viewer now shows a "RADAR_PRE_LEAK_64" event which did not occur on the previous laptop as far as I could find. Replicating a second crash has not produced an event log that I can find and Reliability Monitor hasn't generated any reports yet lol.
