Coloured line freeze [ Edited ]

[kristinduncan]

Hello,

My computer (HP Pavilion 1164CA G4 series) has been freezing up (the screen) with random solid colours or coloured vertical lines or a black screen since I bought it a month ago. I have restored it to factory with the disks several times and it continues to happen. To get the computer working again, I am forced to do a hard reset every time. This is the second laptop I have had that has done this (when it first started happening on my new laptop, I brought it in and exchanged it for a different one of the same model and I was told that it would not happen on the new computer - needless to say, it did). Sometimes it happens once a day, sometimes 10 times a day. It happens a lot with Skype open or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, but sometimes even when the only thing open is my Internet browser (Chrome). I have tried to get support regarding this issue and have been told I need to send in my computer to get serviced, however I am now and will be living in the UK for the next year and would like a better solution than spending hundreds of dollars for shipping back to Canada and not having a computer for a month or more. Please let me know what your solution would be for this problem. Is there anyway I could get it serviced in the UK? You can contact me by e-mail at [Personal Information Removed]

Thanks,

Kristin

[slrjbela]

I have the same exact problem. Screen freezing up randomly on a 1164ca laptop. Have you found a solution? I will try to contact HP

Jean-Francois

[Bookworm]

Hi to both of you, you both say you have g4-1164ca units.

Could you please tell me if you've downloaded and installed the most recent BIOS Softpaq from HP.com

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=4063&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=5148...

The latest BIOS version on line is F.33, so check and see if yours is a lower version and if it is download and install the softpaq from on line.

Also the latest Graphics driver is 2011-08-12 , Version:8.861.1.2000, 160.49M,  AMD High-Definition (HD) Graphics Driver and Catalyst Control Center

You can check you can check your BIOS ver in windows by holding down the "fn" key and pressing the "esc" key it should pop up a window with info.

You can check your display driver version by going into device mgr and clicking on the display adapter and checking the driver version.

There are of course 3 ways of doing everything on a computer so if you have a preferred alternate method please go ahead.

Thank you for your time.

[slrjbela]

Hi

Thanks for your reply. I have install the latest video card driver 8.900.7.1000 and bios version F.43, 7.04M. The computer crash randomly. Might not crash for a while but will crash 3 or 4 time the same day. There is 2 failure mode, one is horizontal/vertical coloured line all over the screen and the other failure mode is the computer that will just reboot without warning.

I have attach a picture of the coloured screen failure mode. (It actually crash while I was trying to write to this forum)

Is this a sw issue or hw issue?

Thanks

[kduncan]

I finally figured it out - I tried everything HP support said to do, but they never told me to completely uninstall the display driver! When I did this, the crashes stopped and I haven't had a single one in the last 3 months. The only catch is that then you have the generic display driver and can't put your computer to sleep or watch videos at certain sizes. It would be great if there was a way to fix both of these problems, but I am happy that at least my computer doesn't crash anymore. Shame on HP for selling a computer that doesn't work even the day you bring it home and then not even knowing how to fix it! Ridiculous!