I bought an HP Victus 15 about two months ago, and it has started behaving strangely, especially after closing the lid without shutting down or after using it for a long time. Restarting usually fixes the problem, but sometimes I have to force-restart it several times.
The main issues are:
- Chrome tabs randomly navigate backward, almost as if the Back button is being held down.
- The cursor still moves, but clicks stop working. Interestingly, the mouse works in Device Manager but not reliably in Task Manager.
So far I've cleared Chrome data, removed extensions, tried another mouse, disabled the touchpad, tested another keyboard, restarted Windows Explorer, reinstalled mouse drivers, and scanned for malware. Nothing has solved it permanently. Could this be a Windows 11, driver, power-management, or hardware problem?
4 Answers
Try removing the mouse device in Device Manager, shut the laptop down completely, then start it again so Windows redetects the hardware. This is different from merely restarting and may clear a corrupted device state.
A built-in keyboard or its circuitry could be sending phantom commands. That would explain Chrome repeatedly going backward and could also interfere with clicks, even when an external keyboard is connected. Since the behavior continues with different peripherals, the internal keyboard is worth having tested under warranty.
Boot from a Linux Live USB and use the laptop for a while. If the keyboard and mouse work normally there, the hardware is probably fine and the problem is likely Windows, drivers, or HP software. If the same symptoms appear in Linux, that points much more strongly to a hardware fault, so I would use the warranty rather than repeatedly hard-resetting it.
This may be related to the Victus power-management or sleep behavior rather than Chrome itself. Try disabling sleep or suspend temporarily, and test different power modes such as High Performance. Also install every BIOS, chipset, graphics, touchpad, and input-device update available from HP's support page. If HP's background utilities are installed, temporarily disable the nonessential ones as well.
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