Why has my Vive support request been marked as "spam"?

[feathers632]

I posted my problem along with links to youtube videos showing the problem with my Vive.  I return today to find my post has been marked as "spam"

 

Post contents pasted here:

 

Vive image corruptions all of a sudden while taking a pause between a ...

No issues previously.  Had taken a pause while playing onward.  I believe I came out of the game and when I went back to the steamvr room the image began corrupting.   There seem to be spikes appearing on the graph during the corruption and steamVR panel said at one point there was "a sync error".

The image eventually disappears completely after a while.  The unit always turns on and the display always appears when the headset is activated.  I have two installs of windows 10 on my PC, the image corrupts in the same way on both windows and two different installs of steam.

When the image goess off, the unit can still show as ON and with green status icon in steamVR panel.  With steamVR mirror image = ON the headset still tracks when I move it around...  If I turn steamVR off and on again the image ALWAYS comes back but the glitching and image distortion begins immediately. 

Things I tried to fix the issue:

1: nunning steamvr in non-beta versus beta.

2: reverting Nvidia driver to previous version.

3: ensuring all cables were connected properly.

4: removing overclock from my GPU.

5: switching the computer off.

6: trying a different HDMI cable from GPU to link box.

7: booting to my other windows 10 & steam installation.

8: Running the steamVR room setup.  While the setup was in progress the Vive display showed the text message telling me to take off the headset and follow room setup instructions. The image never once glitched or corrupted during the setup phase.  After setup was complete I went back to the steamVR room and within a minute the image began corrupting.  Another 30 seconds later and the screen went off completely (Vive power light changed from green to red).  I had the steamVR mirror = ON and I could see the Vive was still tracking perfectly.  The mirrored image looked perfect and no tracking issues.  Also I noteed the latency graph shown on the mirrored image showed no spikes.

The headset has NOT been dropped.

If i stop steamVR and turn it on again the Vive display ALWAYS starts up. But the image corruption comes within seconds. The headset hasn't been dropped at all.

When the Vive image goes black the power light changes to red but the Vive is still tracking and steamVR status panel still shows the Headset as green and connected. SteamVR mirror to desktop shows the headset fully tracking in this state but the GPU graph is filled with purple spikes and the GPU at this point increases from 72% to 99% load and with a temperature rise.

 

[HackPerception]

, Sorry about the spam filter - the forum's automated filter is overagressive when it comes to longer posts. 

 

I can see this being caused by a few things.

• SteamVR - I don't think this is a SteamVR thing personally. You can isolate SteamVR as the root cause by switching to the backup branch (details here) - this branch predates all of the new motion smoothing updates.
• PC hardware
  • I can certainly see this being a symptom of a GPU issuse or foreshadowing failure of the unit. Are you GPU temperatures within a tolerable range (typically under 70c)? Do you notice similar issues driving any high-power 2D apps that would stress your GPU? 
    • What you're seeing shares some consistences with a GPU that's failing or has been damaged by overclocking. 
    • Sometimes GPU issues are caused by the GPU and CPU not communicating well with each other. 
  • Power supply - This could also be a symptom that your PSU is not providing enough power to the GPU. 
• HMD - This can also just be a dead HMD. It's impossible to say on our end without a service provider inspecting it but the fact that it works for a breif period of time then stops conflicts with how HMDs fail - it's usually pretty binary and they either work or don't.
  • The best way to isolate the issue as being specific to your PC is to try the HMD on another PC if you have one available. This can be helpful in preventing an unnecessary RMA that may not fix the root issue if it's PC side. 
  • The 3-in-1 cable is the most vulnerable part of the system. You could try reseating that cable on the HMD side by removing the component cover and pulling then reseating the cables. This doesn't seem to line up with your behaviors though.

I personally suspect that it's a GPU issue based on the videos - they match the general behavior of GPU artifacts. That said, if you have the ability to try the Vive on another system I'd try that before doing an RMA as I'm not convinced this is HMD based (although it certainly may be!).