Issue with laptop BSOD and Corrupting Office 365

[JamesK75]

Hi All,

I'm trying to help my parents resolve an issue with their laptop. However, as I live over 100 miles away it's not easy, and I do not think HP support are being helpful. Given my parents are not very tech-savvy when it comes to troubleshooting it feels they are not making progress with HP.

They purchased the laptop about 7 months ago. It's loaded with Windows 11, Office 365 and the Chrome browser. That's all the software they use. They are good at ensuring Windows updates are applied, and I get them to regularly check HP Support Assist to see if there are any HP specific firmware or drivers to be installed. For the first 6 months there was zero issues and all was well.

A few weeks ago my Mum called to say the laptop wasn't working and it had a "Blue screen with troubleshooting options". The photos she sent showed it had a blue screen of death and was failing to start. They had tried the various troubleshooting options but nothing was resolving the issue. As they were visiting me the next day I told them to bring it with them for me to take a look.

By the time I got to see the laptop was stuck in a BSOD boot loop and not offering any troubleshooting options. The BSOD error was "Critical Process Died" before it rebooted.

I downloaded the HP Cloud Recovery Tool to my laptop, created a bootable USB memory stick. This re-imaged the entire laptop. I reloaded Office and Chrome and all seemed fine.

Then a week later my Mum called to say Outlook wasn't working. I asked her if it had crashed at all, and she said there had been one BSOD but it had restarted ok. From the pictures she sent me it looked like Office 365 had erased. The Start Menu icons just did nothing. It was like the underlying files had been deleted from the SSD. I asked them to **bleep** and my guess was there's an issue with the SSD.

HP support were very dismissive of my Dad. Without even carrying out any investigation or checks they said it was a "software issue" and nothing to do with the hardware.

I showed my Dad how to reinstall Office. It lasted about a week, before Outlook has again gone missing. They've called HP again and been told it's a software issue. HP are saying the issue is with Microsoft Office as Outlook keeps breaking. However, the previous issue with BSOD was not related to Office, but to Windows itself, which they are conveniently ignoring.

I'm really disappointed in this attitude. From what I can tell they've not attempted to carry out any investigation. It's difficult for my parents to argue with the support agent. The laptop had been fine for months, and now it's completely unreliable. I'm convinced there's an underlying hardware fault, and I think it's likely to be the SSD.

I would appreciate some help/guidance here on how to take this forward/escalate with HP. Many thanks in advance...

[Huffer]

I 100% agree that it is likely the SSD or perhaps RAM. Your parents need to be told how to do a UEFI full diagnostic pre-boot and check all the hardware. If an error Code is generated, write it down. HP will then recognize it as a hardware issue and the warranty will be applied. I say this without any authority from HP: I am not an employee but that is how it is supposed to work. 

https://support.hp.com/us-en/help/hp-pc-hardware-diagnostics

[JamesK75]

Many thanks for your reply. This is exactly what I think should be happening.

Dad called HP again earlier, and the agent 'took control' of the laptop and found a 'corrupted file'... which they think may have happened during a Windows Update. They have re-installed Office again... but did not carry out any of the UEFI diagnostics.

I said to my Dad that files should not be corrupting, and they are on this laptop regularly, and it should not be happening.

Are you able to advise how I can launch the diagnostics as I'm seeing them over the Xmas period. I'm hopeful I can take some time to look at it while I'm there.

[Huffer]

The link I put in my last message goes to an HP site that gives step by step on a few different ways to do diagnostics. I recommend the UEFI method. 

[JamesK75]

Thanks for the link. While I was at my parents I followed the link and ran all of the UEFI diagnostics, including extensive tests on memory and the SSD. Somewhat strangely all tests passed ok. So I think now it's just a waiting game to see if it happens again.... Very odd.