HP ProBook 450 G10 & 440 G10 Issues with Power

[TEH1234]

Our users are reporting issue with a few if our newer HP laptops - mainly the newer 450 & 440 G10 models. We have about 4 of them in our office.

Every once in a while, we will get reports that users are not able to power on their laptops and would require us to disconnect from the dock and then to press and hold on the power button for 15-20 seconds, before the yellow lights would flicker for a while before the system can even start. The issues are reported to HP support. The bios and drivers are updated. But looks like it happens quite frequently. Maybe like once every 2 weeks or so. And it seems rather intermittent.

Not sure whether this is an issue with the current batch. 

We are thinking of getting HP to replace all the laptops but that would be rather troublesome.

Does anyone have any solution for this?

[SuperTech420]

My solution may be similar to yours, but just disconnect the battery and plug in the charger, once that is done power on the system with the charger in as a jumpstart and carefully plug in back the battery whiles the system is running. It's safer to switch it off and plug the battery back in but just so the problem doesn't repeat would usually leave it running.

[cmertens]

Sounds similar to a problem I've been running into that very specifically affects ProBook and EliteBook G10s connected to the HP USB-C G5 docks. People using G9s on this dock are fine, as are people with G10s on USB-C G5 Essential docks.

I've narrowed it down to the "smart" power management settings they won't let us turn off. Once a laptop has been consistently plugged into power for something like 4 days this feature kicks in and drops the battery from 100 to 80 in an effort to extend its life. unfortunately, to get to 80, it appears to constantly switch from ac power to battery over and over again for hours until it gets down to 80 (can run powercfg /batteryreport to confirm). The laptop and dock don't seem to like this constant switching so one of several things tend to happen depending on your dock and bios version. With older versions, I've seen the laptop crash and require what you describe, holding the power down for 20-30 seconds to get it back on. With the newest bios (the one released in March), I haven't seen the laptop crashes but the docks still crash, requiring a reseat to make it work again. Also, the laptop waits until you're idle before doing all this so you're most likely to see the problem after someone returns from a break or at the start of their day if it was left on overnight.

Note that once you hard reset, it seems to clear whatever metrics the smart charging collected and takes another 4 days of consistently being plugged in before it starts the cycle over again which is why it seems to go away for a little bit before returning. I'd suggest trying another dock if you have access to one. 

The part that annoys me most is you used to be able to disable this in the bios but at some point they decided to remove our ability to just so they have a few less batteries to replace each year.

[TEH1234]

Yes, I think you got something there.

But I have updated the laptops bios to the latest version - the laptop crash seems to happen once in a while.

The 440s seem to have less issues. However for the 450s, they do keep on happening.

Let me see whether I can dig up some other docks and test them with the users.

Thank you for pointing us in the right direction.