Pavilion 13 x360 keeps rebooting

[Gwydion]

Laptop keeps crashing and rebooting. Sometimes it last a few minutes, but never more than 10. I have disabled automatic restart, but still get no BSOD - just a sudden shutdown and reboot. The behaviour happens even if I open up no apps after start up.

So far I have
- Cleaned all the cooling paths. The laptop doesn't seem to be overheating, also seems to be ok in safe mode.
- Rolled back most recent upgrades to Windows 10
- Run antivirus checks - with no result. I have attempted to run the Windows Defender offline check, but the option won't work

Any ideas? My next step would be to reset Windows, but I don't know if this is worth doing if there's an underlying problem with, for example, cooling.

[MKazi]

@Gwydion

Welcome to HP Support Forums. 🙂 

Thanks for reaching out to us on HP Support Forums. 🙂 

I understand that you have an HP Pavilion 13 x360 series laptop. I read that the laptop crashes while in Windows and then restarts. You have disabled the automatic restart option and the issue persists. You've done a remarkable job performing the steps. I truly appreciate it. 

To provide an accurate resolution, I need a few more details: 

• Please let me know the exact laptop model no. This link will help you to find the model no: http://hp.care/2bygf7l
• Does the laptop overheat?
• Any error messages received before restarting?

Meanwhile, I recommend you to perform the following steps to isolate the issue and arrive at a fix: 

• Power off the laptop.
• Remove the battery out. If the battery is integrated and does not have a latch to release it then leave the battery inside the laptop.
• Disconnected AC adapter from the laptop.
• Press and hold the power button for 15 seconds.
• Reconnect the battery and plug the AC adapter.
• Power ON the laptop.

If the laptop continues the same behavior then  please check if the laptop restarts in the BIOS:

• Shutdown the laptop.
• Power on the laptop and immediately hit the f10 key (7-8 times) on the keyboard. This will make the laptop enter the BIOS.
• If the laptop restarts in BIOS then it confirms hardware failure and I suggest you to contact our HP phone support to explore the hardware service options. 
• If the laptop does not restart in BIOS then try performing a Windows refresh (repair). Please refer to the steps mentioned under "Refreshing your computer when Windows will not open to the Start screen". 

I genuinely hope the issue gets resolved without hassles and the unit works great. Please feel free to keep me posted. All the best! 🙂

[JimWalter1]

Check if your laptop is overheating. It's common problems with laptops and I had exactly the same problem before. Even if laptop seems "cool" it might be overheating. The problem is usually related to GPU where the termal pads that are now in use fall apart and then the GPU can't transmit it's heat to the sink. The result is computer that even without any load shuts down unexpectedly.

To detect this issue you'll need tools that can monitor your GPU/CPU temperatures. I suggest you install HWMonitor or SpeedFan and you monitor your temperatures. If your GPU or CPU is overheating just take your laptop to the service and they'll be able to fix this for you.

Hope this will help you out!

[Gwydion]

Thanks for the suggestions - unfortunately the issue is still happening. When I boot into the troubleshooting menu I don't get an option to refresh, so I can't follow this up. I downloaded HWMonitor as suggested by JimWalter1, and it showed my CPU temperature at about 60c and the GPU at about 53c. The last time it crashed these were both decreasing. I believe that these temperatures are within the normal range?

The product number is J0B50EA#ABU

[Gwydion]

Well I have now got my laptop apparently up and running, although I had to do a repair install of Windows using an external stick. I thought I'd record what happened, and what the problem turned out to be for anyone else who is searching for a similar problem in the future.

After being very unstable for a while, my laptop finally completely crashed and came up with a message that it couldn't auto repair. The reason given was a missing driver for Trusteer Rapport software. At this point I remembered that I had had a similar problem with this software quite a few years ago, but that was on a home built PC running XP. 

Rapport is software which online banks encourage you to download to enhance security. I'd run it on my laptop for at least a year without problem, so it never occurred to me that it might be the problem, but presumably an update of some kind upset it.

So if you find your laptop inexplicably rebooting, check if you have installed this software, and if you have remove it!