HP Spectre X360 (2019) Idle Freeze Problem due to Power Service

[Hephaist]

Hello everyone,

I am an owner of Spectre 2in1 Laptop for 3 days but from the first day I have a freeze issue with it. When I leave my laptop idle, it gets frozen after10-20 minutes. When I leave it with but for example Spotify along with running playlist, it doesn't get frozen. I have tried everything but couldn't solve it. But I managed to find that the problem is Power Service. When I disable it, it works. When I enable it however it gets frozen. Also even if I disable hibernate, sleep or any other power save options my laptop goes to sleep or sth like that. I don't know. Components start running slowly when I leave them idle.

In addition to that, I also have some problems with battery user interface. When I want to create a power plan, I don't see any options except "Balanced" profile. There is no High Performance Option while creating a power profile. Moreover, in additional battery settings I also don't get options for SSDs, USBs, PCE, Wireless exc. Only basic options like sleep, hibernate... I tried to upgrade my Windows to 1903 but it didn't work. I did a clean install, nope unfortunately. HP Support also found that strange and told me that it may be a hardware issue. Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you.

[Huffer]

Try using the built in hardware diagnostic tools to find any problems:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Knowledge-Base/Testing-for-Hardware-Failures/ta-p/7164223

Let us know how the tests come out. 

[Hephaist]

I have already done this. Even a Component Test but not a single error appeared. My "Windows Power Slider" is also too plain. For example I don't see settings for screen brightness there. Something is wrong with power service...

[Huffer]

The hardware tests work independent of Windows. So if the component tests all passed we are not looking at bad hardware but a problem with software. I see you tried a clean install of Windows. How did you reinstall the drivers? From where did you get them and how do you know you installed them all?

[Hephaist]

Hello Huffer,

I actually downloaded all of them directly from HP Support Assisstant and I have no error of drivers I guess. I enabled all services and drivers but only disabling Power Service, my laptop got no error during 2 hours idle. Now I managed to change power plan to High Performance via Powercfg and I disabled sleep mode for harddisk which I from the beggininng think that it may be a problem. Now testing it again.

I did my clean install directly from reserve storage at my SSD. I guess it is HP's base image because it installed also my HP softwares and MCAfee AV.

[Huffer]

So do we still have a problem or no? 

[Hephaist]

 Sadly it didn't solve the problem. I start thinking of a hardware issue such power connectors or sth else. It doesn't make any sense.

[Huffer]

I would do a true clean install of Build 1903 from media created from the Microsoft Media Creation Tool site and then manually install the drivers from the HP site that are designed for Build 1903. 

We would need the full model number of the computer...lots of x360 versions

[Hephaist]

Thanks for advice. I will do that at this evening before the refund. My laptop is HP Spectre x360 13-ap0110ng from Deutschland. At the moment I installed Cafeinated software to prevent the laptop from going to Sleep Mode and it works fine lol.

[Huffer]

Here is the driver page:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-spectre-13-ap0000-x360-convertible-pc/23238155

You will notice multiple versions of the same driver. Pick the latest one for v. 1903 and add to the clean install of v. 1903 from Media Creation Tool. Make sure to install one driver from each of the categories in the chipset menu. E.g. Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework Client Driver (Windows 10 v1903).

If this does not work you have a lemon laptop with some unknown frustrating problem and you absolutely should get a refund or replacement.