Windows 10 starts behaving erratically after about 28 days uptime

Hello everyone,

my Windows 10 PC has a very strange behavior: after about 28 days uptime it starts behaving erratically. First, videos start freezing and stuttering randomly, both online videos like Youtube and video files saved locally on the PC. Then it works again for a few hours, after which things really start going south: the audio breaks down (whenever a program tries to play audio a message pops up referring to the audio card saying that "The specified device is already in use"), and videos won't even start anymore. I've already witnessed the whole process several times, and I suspect it's so systematic you could set your watch to it.

I also noticed another problem, don't know if it's related, but I have the video set to turn off after 15 minutes of inactivity, no screen saver, it just turns off. After a prolonged uptime (probably 20 days, but I'll have to check the exact timing), whenever the video is off, every minute or so it blinks back on for a split second. This, in turn, seems to stress the video card (Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti), because every now and then the fan turns on very loudly.

I couldn't find anything on the Internet. Am I really the only user on Earth having this problem?

Where does one even start to debug this issue?

Thanks,
Bitman.

Bitman, please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs, It will help us to help you.
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums

What Win 10 version are you running? Open a CMD window as administrator and type:
winver

Paste the results on your first post.

You installed windows 10 and you haven't started it for 28 days?
If it is the case, please restart the computer.
When windows install a update it normally requires it to restart the computer.

My computer in the office runs 24 hours a day 365 days a year. i reboot it once a week just to clear out the "cobwebs". that should solve the problems you have

A good practice is to completely shutdown,not just to stand-by, at least fortnightly and weekly is better,for about 5 minutes.
If the problem persists,then check Reliability History for any entries,which might be relevant and also run---sfc /scannow---and---dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth---to fix any file corruption.

Thanks everyone for the replies! I will try your advice.

Yes, I run a server and I'm just plain lazy and end up going without rebooting for long times. I know that rebooting is an immediate way to clear problems and also installs pending updates, but curious minds want to know why the PC behaves like it does.

I haven't found a way to edit the first message; sorry if it's plain to see, but I couldn't find it, so I'm appending the Winver results here.

Winver opens a window that says Windows 10 Version 20H2 (OS Buid 19042.867), properly licensed.

Best regards,
Bitman.

You can make a Task Scheduler task using shutdown /r /t 005 to shut down and restart every Sunday at 3:00AM

What are the arguments for shutdown.exe in Windows Task Scheduler? - Super User