Re: Computer hard crashing every time I attempt to play a ga... - HP Support Community

CafeMan23 · ‎08-14-2022

Specs and things:
HP Pavillion Gaming Laptop
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8300H CPU @ 2.30GHz 2.30 GHz
8 GB RAM
Graphics Card: Nvida GEFORCE GTX 1050Ti
Laptop Age: About 3 years

Issue:
For the past couple of months my laptop has been hard crashing whenever I try to play any of the games I've been playing for years without issue (Skyrim, Sea of Thieves, WWE 19, Minecraft Bedrock/Java, those are some of them for reference). The game will launch perfectly, load up perfectly, run perfectly, and then after a 5 minutes or so hard crashes, as in the I mean computer instantaneously shuts down. It has done this because of overhearing before but I know for certain that it's not the issue this time because the computer doesn't feel hot at all when it happens. Also its not EVERY single game. Wizard101, a very lightweight 10 year old MMORPG, runs just fine without the computer hard crashing at all. And it doesn't hard crash at any other point or while doing or running anything else. In every other respect my laptop is perfectly fine aside from being a slightly older laptop.

I've done a variety of things to try and diagnose this issue but so far nothing has solved it and I'm at a complete loss as to whats wrong.

My drivers are updated. I checked and made sure, so thats not the issue.

I've run a sweep with Malware Bytes to see if I had some kind of virus. All checks game back clean.

After reading that it may be a hardware issue of some kind I went into the F2 menu on startup and ran a hardware diagnostic check. Both the quick and extensive tests came back clean except for the battery. I forget what the result said, but after googling the results I learned it meant the battery was weak and dying. This made sense especially since A) an alert on the computer told me the Battery Care Function setting in my BIOS was set to 100% (no idea how that happened or what exactly what that setting is, but apparently its not good because at 100% the computer wears down the battery faster) and B) after I opened the back of the laptop I noticed the battery was swollen and damaged (no doubt due to the overhearing issues I've previously had and the Battery Care setting being set to 100% somewhow, also everything else on the motherboard looked fine and undamaged). I thought I had found the issue with this because it seemed like an answer that fit the problem.

When I ran a game it made the computer demand more power, but since the battery was weak and dying it couldn't produce enough power to meet the demand, which meant that whenever it tried--(*raspberry noise*)--hard crash.

So I went into the BIOS setting and switched the battery care setting to 80% as the alert recommended and even changed out the old and busted battery for a new one last week. Bought it off Amazon, matches the serial number on the battery that came with the laptop. Came with good reviews. Computer accepted it, it works, its powering the computer and the Battery Care setting is right where it ought to be. But while it was certainly AN issue, the battery doesn't seem to be THE issue because when I tried to play Sea of Thieves some days after installing the new battery it hard crashed in the exact same manner as before.

So now I'm at a complete and total loss. I don't know what's wrong. If anyone can help I would super appreciate it. Thanks.