Brand new Envy laptop with constant stop error crashes

[Lhunweth]

Since day one of owning my laptop, right in step two of the setup process, I have been experiencing consistent stop code error (blue screen of death) crashes. I have tried running diagnostic tools, updating my drivers, updating my system and nothing helps or finds any errors. The code I typically get is critical_process_died. Second most frequent is unexpected_store_exception. I have also received on an infrequent basis: kernal_data_inpage_error, data_bus_error, and apc_index_mismatch.

The crashes aren't tied to me doing anything specific. Oftentimes I am literally doing nothing, have no programs running, freshly booted up, only to freeze and crash. Sometimes it's multiple crashes in a row, as in I crash, restart to the login screen and immediately crash again. Sometimes I can go hours with a graphics-intensive online gaming session and be perfectly fine. Sometimes I'm typing in Word and it crashes every 5 minutes and erases all my work despite having saved multiple times.

This is clearly an out of the box issue that should be covered by my warranty. Problem being, I can't find how to contact HP to get this taken care of. None of their 800 numbers connect to them anymore, and I can't even find how to chat to a live agent. The "contact us" portion of the HP site loops me back to chatting with the useless virtual agent. So here I am looking for assistance!

[praveenbv]

Hi@Lhunweth, Welcome to the HP Support Community!

As I understand you need a fix for the kernel power error on the event log,

Don't worry as I'll be glad to help, however, to provide an accurate resolution, I need a few more details: 

Do you get any blue screen errors before the device shuts down?

While you respond to that, here's what you need to know:

This scenario usually indicates a problem with the hardware. To help isolate the problem, check the following items:

1. Overclocking: Disable overclocking to see whether the issue occurs when the system is run at the correct speed.
2. Check the memory: Verify the memory by using a memory checker. Verify th
3. at each memory chip is the same speed and that it is configured correctly in the system.
4. Power supply: Make sure that the power supply has enough wattage to appropriately handle the installed devices. If you added memory, installed a newer processor, installed additional drives, or added external devices, such devices can require more energy than the current power supply can provide consistently.
5. Overheating: Check whether the system is overheating by examining the internal temperature of the hardware.
6. Defaults: Reset the system back to the system defaults to see whether the issues occur when the system is running in its default configuration. 

If you see that the computer generates a Stop error that contains a BugcheckCode value that is not reported in an event ID 41, change the restart behavior for the computer. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click Advanced system settings.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. In the Startup and Recovery section, click Settings.
5. Click to clear the Automatically restart check box.

If you've been using the Recovery Partition (F11) to reinstall the OS, I recommend using the Recovery media instead to wipe out the HDD and create a new partition and fresh OS installation: Click here to obtain one, if you don't have on in your possession.

Hope this helps! Keep me posted. 

operating system to factory settings.

The only option to reimage the operating system to factory settings.

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click Advanced system settings.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. In the Startup and Recovery section, click Settings.
5. Click to clear the Automatically restart check box.

If you've been using the Recovery Partition (F11) to reinstall the OS, I recommend using the Recovery media instead to wipe out the HDD and create a new partition and fresh OS installation: Click here to obtain one, if you don't have on in your possession.

Hope this helps! Keep me posted. 

Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.

Click the “Kudos, Thumbs Up" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping!

Have a great day! 

[Lhunweth]

Thanks for the detailed reply! I'll start in on your suggestions and let you know what happens. In the mean time, here's a few answers to your questions:

Do you get any blue screen errors before the device shuts down? I received a critical_process_died error just once while shutting down. It's not happened before or since, and it seemed purely coincidental that I told the laptop to shut down and it chose that moment to crash. Typically, it shuts down without incident and only crashes at startup, though not consistently.

Overheating: I haven't tested the temperature yet, though I doubt it's heat related. I always have it on a cooling pad and it only gets warm when I'm running a resource or graphics-intensive program like Photoshop or an online game. Also, since the first crash happened with the computer 5 minutes out of the box, it hadn't gotten time to warm up yet. I wish I'd taken that for the red flag it was and requested an exchange on the machine then and there...

System defaults: Back before I started personalizing settings, the crashes were still happening frequently. Because of this, I just stopped messing with things to eliminate variables, so I should be able to go back to the defaults fairly easily.

Reinstalling the OS: I've not tried anything so drastic yet. Hopefully your other solutions will do the trick!