Friends' computers crashed/died after using Roll20 - not isolated issue

So after hearing from two different people that I've met online, states apart from each other, and then reading up that it's happened to other people. I have to ask, why is this happening?  I'm using windows 10, I've honestly not had a single problem (aside from figuring out how to use roll20), but a few online friends have had really bad experiences. One friend lost her laptop, it just froze up while using roll20, never came back on. And then a recent friend who is training to be a cop, he said it crashed his computer, but he was able to start it up again.  I'll admit, roll20 is incredibly convenient for quite a number of reasons, but these site issues are becoming troubling. Is it browser related, OS related, certain softwares installed or not installed, the hardware of the computer, etc?  I can't ask them to pull up logs, since one lost her computer and the other is skeptical his computer will even run again (mostly due to age, said he's had it since 2011 an it was mostly for office work). Could it be the site is experiencing optimization issues with older OS's maybe? Just trying to figure this out.  

I'm a bit skeptical that Roll20 as a web page would have caused their computers to crash/die permanently, but not surprised if they had issues with a 9-year old computer. If your friends would have shared any more details on what they where running might be easier to figure something out than just do wild speculations.

Andreas J. said: I'm a bit skeptical that Roll20 as a web page would have caused their computers to crash/die permanently, but not surprised if they had issues with a 9-year old computer. If your friends would have shared any more details on what they where running might be easier to figure something out than just do wild speculations. Reason you're skeptical is because you're assuming that merely visiting the site is what causes it. That is not what I'm talking about at all. What is the primary reason that people come to Roll 20? To Play D&D or other system that Roll 20 supports. THAT is what I'm talking about.  And you CAN get your computer killed from just visiting a site, although in those cases, the site has to be loaded with viruses and other crap meant specifically to cause people problems. I am not suggesting that either, otherwise if it were true, much less people would be using Roll 20 and plenty more people would be complaining and generally avoiding Roll 20. 

Gyrannon said: Andreas J. said: I'm a bit skeptical that Roll20 as a web page would have caused their computers to crash/die permanently, but not surprised if they had issues with a 9-year old computer. If your friends would have shared any more details on what they where running might be easier to figure something out than just do wild speculations. Reason you're skeptical is because you're assuming that merely visiting the site is what causes it. That is not what I'm talking about at all. What is the primary reason that people come to Roll 20? To Play D&D or other system that Roll 20 supports. THAT is what I'm talking about.  And you CAN get your computer killed from just visiting a site, although in those cases, the site has to be loaded with viruses and other crap meant specifically to cause people problems. I am not suggesting that either, otherwise if it were true, much less people would be using Roll 20 and plenty more people would be complaining and generally avoiding Roll 20.  While I agree that is an unfortunate experience to have, the key factor and point is that we simply do not have enough information to give more feedback on why or how this could have happened. 

You've found a correlation (not causation) affecting two people on a system with 5 million users: it might be a little premature to call Roll20 out as being the cause of melting someone's laptop. I'm not saying it didn't melt your friend's laptop, it just seems exceedingly unlikely unless there are thousands more people with the same experience.

Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence.

Roll20 can be pretty sophisticated for something running in your web browser, depending on what settings are used. Yes it could use up the computer power in different ways, such as filling your computer's cache memory (it empties / resets when you restart the computer though). So yes there's times that using Roll20 could lead to the web browser crashing (sometimes even a whole computer will crash when a browser locks up). With that said I have never heard of a permanent effect of damage to any user's computer, from this. The worst case is turn off the power & restart the device.

You say you've "[read] up that it's happened to other people". Can you post links to any of those reports? It could be a misunderstanding. Roll20 makes the browser do a lot of stuff, but by itself, there's nothing that could cause a hardware failure like you describe. If there were, malicious folks would have weaponized the technique by now. The overwhelming likelihood is that the computer suffered a natural death, and one of the things it happened to be doing at that point in time was visiting Roll20. This sound like your car throwing a piston rod as you are passing a fire hydrant, and blaming the fire hydrant.

I always knew those fire hydrants were up to something.

Normal 0 21 false false false DA X-NONE X-NONE I got a 12 year old PC with Window 7, and when I’m lagging, it’s because the GM has uploaded way too many large images to the game, or are using some sort of resource intensive gimmick. Only crash I ever had was in one game were the GM was using a gimmick to create a snow effect over the map. It coursed me to lag badly and ended up crashing my PC. After that I asked her if she could stop using it, and there was no issue afterwards. So if crashes are happen, you are probably better off looking at which games they are happening in, and see what can be done to improve performance.

Gyrannon, did you read each of your linked posts to the end? You'll find that most of them are resolved. Some were never roll20 problems. Some were specific to one version of Chrome or Firefox. I don't see any of the links referring to a PC dying; and only one from 3 years ago referred to the PC crashing. Since roll20 is a web app, it seems very unlikely that it could ever permanently cripple a PC. I could only envisage this happening if the graphics card was already on the way out and a particular graphics effect caused the final death knell to the graphics card. (Back in the '70s, a Commodore Pet could be killed with a single POKE command - but computers nowadays are more resilient.)

Edit - ninja delete

Just to clarify, are you/your friends claiming that it isn't Roll20 that killed their computers but in fact the very act of engaging in online RPGs? This kind of reminds me of the great D&D panic of the 80's! I've had players using hardware with the computing power of a brick wrapped in copper wire with nothing more serious than lag. I'd expect hardware failure to be a result of time, out of date drivers, misuse or external malicious factors rather than a browser based VTT. But I also can't discount it as an option so will be keeping an eye on this thread for more evidence... (emphasis mine)  Gyrannon said: Reason you're skeptical is because you're assuming that merely visiting the site is what causes it. That is not what I'm talking about at all. What is the primary reason that people come to Roll 20? To Play D&D or other system that Roll 20 supports . THAT is what I'm talking about .