HP Support Forums
Join in the conversation.
Tnx niniss.
As for the bios, no, the only way to get to it, is by restarting. I would just wait until you were forced to. I know. With the worry that it might not start again or that it will take so long to start again hovering over trying, its a tough call. If you have to do a restart for some reason, then try it then.
To me, it does sound like the issue I had on my desktop. That a piece of hardware is causing the OS to try and find it, or run it or something.
It could be the hard drive itself is crapping out. Not a good thing then, Make sure you have everything you need off that drive, just to be safe. If it is that, and it dies, you will never see it again. I had that happen to two drives, within a month of each other. Same Samsung make and model. The first one died with all of my business stuff on it. That one hurt. Lost it all. The second one I was prepared. The SMART monitoring for the drive told me it had something wrong, so when it died, there was only programs installed on it. No biggie, but still sucked. Another manufacturer I will never buy from. So many companies to boycott, and so little time.
Hello all, my name is Kim and I am a victim to a piece of crap HP Pavilion Entertainment DV7-1245dx laptop!
I was happy to see I wasn't the only one with the melted battery box...What the H is that??? I was so pissed because it also left a burn mark on my brand new sofa
My problem seems to mirror yours; JWiRX. I, like a fool am still trying to test things to get it to boot back up, with no luck. Right now it has been powered on for about 35 mins and it is really hot and started getting hot after the first 5 mins even though the laptop isn't booted, the fan isn't running, but the cap lock/num key lights have been blinking every 3 seconds together since power up.
The laptop is 2.5 years old and started having the problems about 6 months ago. It had been randomly shutting down to a black screen. Also just within the last month been getting the kind of blue/black warped, or lined video screen on crash but would boot back up right away or after as much as 30 minutes. On its finally blow, I was downloading pics from my sd camera card. It did its usual loud noise, black screen crash but the lights stayed on as usual only this time it will NOT boot up at all. I have the drive out and I have an external drive but don't know how to test it. Any help would be great.
I think this is it for me with HP, however what are the options? Dells are horrible, Gateway is the absolute worst, Toshiba a close follow to the Gateway...
Anyway, thanks for the good info.
Yeah, I actually like the Dell, but you get what you pay for also. If you buy the cheapest they have, you will sacrifice engineering, power, support, and possbily even quality. If you are going to go with a laptop in my opinion, get one that is tested and reviewed greatly, and has the power to do what you want, for a long time.
I personally, am going back to desktops. I am using my desktop right now as my laptop is officially dead and given up on. My desktop is an AMD64 4000+ CPU with two nVidia 7800GTX (highend cards 4 years ago) with 2Gb ram on Windows XP Pro, and this thing rocks super fast. I just had to replace the power supply in it, as it had died a couple months ago, but it is now, from what I gather from all my tweaks and upgraded cooling, much faster than when I bought it! Maybe its just that I had to deal with my Hewlett Craptop for so long, and then I was relegated to using my old Powerbook for internet for a month. (That one cant even play Netflix on it, its the old PPC chip!)
But I digress; laptops are great, but in my eyes, if it is the only computer you can afford, go desktop. Its just not worth all the expense and trouble of paying $1000 to $3000 for a laptop if you cant fix them, or the cost to fix them is almost half the cost of the computer itself. Desktops are much easier to work on, can be fixed in the majority of cases, and it wouldnt cost half as much as a laptop to fix when it does need to be. Again, if you go desktop, do you homework. Dont get the bargain basement desktop. It will only be relevant for a year or two at the most. Get something that will last. My desktop is 6 years old now, and it performs quite well for the video editing and graphics editing that I do on it. I have had a Dell desktop, and I was pleased with it for the time I had it. It just got too old to upgrade or do anything with, but I kept that running for almost 8 years. Gateway; I have always hated them. Yuck, had bad experiences with them through friends and family. Toshiba has good reviews for the higher end laptops, but not sure about the overall quality. I havent checked them lately.
As for that drive you pullled out of your laptop, you will need a 2.5 inch enclosure for the drive, and then hook it up to another computer to pull the info off of it. An enclosure for that will run anywhere from $20-$60 or higher depending on where you get it. Check NewEgg.com or Amazon. Always have good experiences with those online shopping places. Bestbuy actually sells a Sata II connection cable for 2.5" laptop drives to USB that you can use if your laptop drive is Sata. This connection sells for $30. I almost got one last weekend, but decided to wait until I actually feel like parting the laptop out or selling it.
Hope this helps with what you asked.
The problem with your laptop sounds pretty bad too. Close to mine. One thing, did you try compressed air into the bottom laptop fan? If you spray the air, upright, through the bottom of the vent where the fan is, pushing the dirt through the back vents, this should free up your fan. Mine was stuck too. I also ran mine on a laptop cooler the ENTIRE time I had it running. They just cannot keep themselves cool, and the vent design on these bricks are horrible at best. Inadequate and poorly placed. For the other stuff, it does sound like you have a bad thing going on. Its probably overheated too often, the video chip on the motherboard has gone bad, and or a combination of global warming or continental plate shifts have caused an obvious warp in the flux capacitor. (That last part is sarcasm.) 
Good luck. Welcome to the group.
I have personally had problems with my dell desktop and a Dell laptop which cost $1400. Even after being put in the repair shop they never worked right again. I gave the desktop to my son and his apartment got robbed and it was stolen. I still have the laptop which is being used by my 10 and 11 year old and they hate it, because it doesn't work correctly.
I have been doing some research and the Lenovo is turning up some really good reviews, so I am gonna do more to see which model(s) are the best.
Also suprisingly my research has HP in the top 3 best laptops 
The Mac comes up alot as being one of the best brands and most reliable. The Lenovo, HP are mentioned to have some really good ones as well. I only remember a mention of one model for the Dell being a good one for entertainment. I guess the trick is finding them.
The pic is from a site that rates them every year. I know some of the big electronic stores Video Only, Best Buy... use these "report card" reviews.
