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The title says it all...
I do computer work out of my home and this is not the first HP laptop with these problems. I've had about 13 DV7s come though my business all with the same GPU problem and overheating but this one is a little different. First of all its my wife's computer (I know I shouldnt have gotten an HP since I knew about the problems they were having with the DV series, BUT she though it was so cute and when baby wants something baby gets it... (and I'm left to fix this nightmare) anyway enough back story.
So the DV7s had the overheating problem yet I thought I was safe since that problem was primarily the perfect storm of Nvida's overheating GPU and HP's weak heat pipe system. This laptop is ALL AMD and even though they get super hot they take the heat very well. I'm not totally sure its the heat that's messing things up but it seems to be a constant so I had to mention it.
The problem is system crashes, freezes, and just plan weird behavior at times. Seems like it has to be getting moved some way or another. When the crash happens it looks like an old 8-bit Nintendo crash with the pixels all over the screen scrambled (classic sign of some peace of hardware failing) Now the first thing I did was reformat and clean out all the vents on the Laptop with compressed air and a PC vacuum. The problem actually happened while I was re-installing off the recovery partition when I picked it up to move it, so I had to start the whole process over once. I did an HP test and it found nothing wrong with the memory or HardDrive but I'm skeptical since it also states the battery is fine but it only gets about a half an hour now on a full charge (Thanks HP) so you may ask your self why I'm posting here? Well its simple maybe there is an issue a lot of you have had that can rap this up in a few minutes instead of me pulling hardware out peace by peace and trying to troubleshoot. Granted I will prolly do this anyway but maybe I can get an idea where to start off of here. I was very lazy and didnt even search that much for a post that already had an answer so who knows. When I try and look up this problem I always get the DV7 and the other tx problems with the Nvida GPU this is pure AMD so hopefully I just got a bad drive or something.
Speaking of bad drives that's where Im going to start first... even if this post gets NO replies I can still maybe help someone down the road when I do find the problem. SO tonight I will start things off by booting from my Linux recovery DVD and run all the tests I can with software (takes about 4 to 6 hours for full Diagnostic) So maybe I'll get lucky and something will present itself though a software based scan... but I am never lucky when it comes to my own hardware 
- 802.11a/b/g/n WLAN
- Altec Lansing with SRS Premium Sound
- 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards
- 3 Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0
- 1 Headphone out w/SPDI
- Digital Audio
- 1 microphone-in
- 1 VGA (15-pin)
- 1 RJ-11 (modem)
- 1 RJ -45 (LAN)
- 1 notebook expansion port 3
- 1 Consumer IR
- HP Webcam with integrated microphone
- Integrated Fingerprint Reader
- Kensington MicroSaver lock slot
- Power-on password
- Accepts 3rd party security lock devices
- 65W AC Adapter
- 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery
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