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I also noticed that this phenomenon is more likely to happen when I watch streaming video while Carrara is actively running (doing some computations, or I go back and forth while the streaming is on). But this could just be a coincidence, or it could be the particularity of the problem on my hardware.

Hmm interesting, in fact I've had video up every time this has happened trying to look at tutorials, youtube or something. I wonder what would cause such a thing. I'll test that out with videos and submit a bug report if that is the case.