HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Mini PC

J

Jeffman

Gawd
Joined
Jul 23, 2008
Messages
917
Hey,

I have a mini HP computer that I use as a small Plex server. It's just me and the wife, so I don't need anything fancy to run what we watch, and this does it great.

Anyway, it's not hooked up to a monitor, as I use it strictly as an RDP box to mange Plex. It is plugged into an HDMI port on the TV, but I rarely use it that way.

The problem I'm facing is that it seems to constantly go offline, and when I try to view what's going on using the TV, it won't detect a signal from the PC. Rebooting it usually fixes it, but there's nothing indicating there was ever a problem. I've checked Windows logs, and tried to view mini-dumps, but there aren't any. I have absolutely no idea why it goes offline. And it happens frequently enough, a few times a week, that I'm getting pretty annoyed with it.

Does anyone know of any software I could use to monitor the computer and let me know what's happening?
 
Yeah...I thought about going that route. I'd really prefer to troubleshoot what it's doing though. Computer is still 2 years under warranty with HP. I've had them send a new power supply and new fans thinking it might be heat or power, but nothing there helped. I'm guessing that this point it's software somehow, but without seeing what it's doing I can't even begin to troubleshoot.
 
Well, it is probably software related- and part of that may be whatever HP loaded onto it.

The thing is, you're using a desktop software load as an unattended server- trying to clean the install is probably more trouble than it's worth, so you could try reloading it, but I figured it'd be quicker to just use Ubuntu and see how that goes for a few days.
 
It's a clean install of Windows, so there's no HP software on it. I could boot to Ubuntu via USB and try that for a week, however I'd have to look into how to get my Plex library on it. I'd guess it's not that difficult.
 
Jeffman said:
It's a clean install of Windows, so there's no HP software on it. I could boot to Ubuntu via USB and try that for a week, however I'd have to look into how to get my Plex library on it. I'd guess it's not that difficult.
Click to expand...

You'd need to look it up either way to be sure, but it's not that big of a deal unless the drive is encrypted, for example with Bitlocker.
 
Thanks! If I don't get any monitoring software suggestions I'll probably give it a try.
 
Jeffman said:
Thanks! If I don't get any monitoring software suggestions I'll probably give it a try.
Click to expand...

I recently did a reinstall of Win 10 on my Plex server and backing up and reinstalling is not difficult, I just followed this guide.
 
^^ Thanks, I might have to check that out.

I did just power it up and look, and for the last 2 times it did leave a trace in the Windows logs. It wasn't doing that before. No mini-dump to analyze because it's failing to write it. But it does appear to be blue screening, I just can't see it. There are also some I/O errors logged on one of the external hard drives for Plex, so I'm wondering if the drive is failing and causing the BSOD.
 
I wouldn't be sure it's a software issue; if you didn't change anything software-wise I'd consider hardware errors too. Running memtest86 might be worth running for instance to rule out a problem with RAM. Hard drive IO errors can on occasion cause a system to freeze too, though I haven't had it with external ones. Are the drives in a RAID array? Try replacing the bad one if you can afford, or run the array degraded temporarily (assuming you have tested backups for anything important).
 
^ No RAID. Specifically avoided RAID because they're not any kind of RAID drive, so they're just running independent.

I'll run some hardware tests when I get some time.
 
Is the machine going to sleep, causing it to go offline? Also open Device Manager and ensure your nic and USB ports are not being suspended due to inactivity. I'm suspecting sleep/hibernate issues, so you could also disable hibernation and edit your power settings to keep things from powering off (hard drive comes to mind too).
 
Woot910 said:
Is the machine going to sleep, causing it to go offline? Also open Device Manager and ensure your nic and USB ports are not being suspended due to inactivity. I'm suspecting sleep/hibernate issues, so you could also disable hibernation and edit your power settings to keep things from powering off (hard drive comes to mind too).
Click to expand...

It's neither of those, checked it already.

I honestly think it's going BSOD due to an external disk that's plugged in for Plex.
 
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