Laptop crashes when plugged in (ok on battery)

[ayarrell]

Hello all,

I have an odd problem with my HP Pavilion dv7-3165dx laptop that is driving me crazy. Beginning a few weeks ago, my laptop started crashing without any error messages under specific circumstances:

1) If the laptop is plugged in and I am watching a video, the computer crashes after a few minutes.

2) If the laptop is plugged in and I am watching TV using Media Center, the computer crashes after a few minutes.

By "crash" I mean the computer just stops and the lcd display turns either all blue, all black, or all blue with thin white color bars across the screen. No error message is displayed.

In addition, after a hard reset, Windows Event Log reports a Kernal-Power EventID 41.

None of this happens while working on the battery. The machine works flawlessly on the battery.

I've tried the following:

1) Tried various power outlets in my home. Same results.

2) Took laptop to the library and plugged it in there. Same results.

3) Tried using another HP power adaptor. Same results.

4) Performed a factory reset and tried steps 1 - 3 again. Same result.

Any thoughts? My machine is out of warranty and less than two years old. I suspect a motherboard replacement might be necessary.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

-Anthony

=======================

HP Pavilion dv7-3165dx

AMD Turioun x2, 4GB RAM, 500GB hdd

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

[alapon77]

Same thing happens to me.  I get the pinstripe screen of death.  I tried the same things you tried plus a whole lot more.  I think it has something to do with the video card also.  Updates don't help worth a flip.  I removed a lot of programs and updates.  Reinstalled Windows.  Stood on my head.  But works fine when not plugged in.

Alan

Pavilion dv5

Windows 7 64-bit

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200

8gb RAM

[Little_Scheer]

Hey, I seem to be getting the same problem, but I'm not sure.  There are a lot of the same symptoms, but the crash itself doesn't sound quite the same.  It started about a month ago I believe, I first passed it off as some problem between windows media player and java (as funny as that may sound) because it only ever happened when I was running a java app and wmp.  However, it has since gotten way out of hand, and I get the crash while listening to music, watching videos online.  It also happens occasionally when I am simply browsing the internet, but that is a very rare occurence. 

I get a sudden crash, the screen goes all black or the pinstrips like you have mentioned, except I have a maybe half inch blue line running across the bottom of the screen.  Maybe it started loading the blue screen and then the display failed?  I guess I'm just worried that my problem may be different than yours because of this. 

Also, when I reboot, windows tells me that I recovered from a serious error, blah blah, a blue screen with error code 124, which after some research, I believe is a driver error.  So I updated first my graphics drivers, because at first this seems to be a graphics problem.  I then updated my sound drivers, as another peculiar thing which you guys didn't mention is that the sound starts looping when the crash occurs.  I guess that could simply be a mechanical issue, the sound card still plays whatever is loaded into it.  So after ruling that out, I went and updated bios.  That didn't work. 

So now I believe it is a hardware problem even though windows is telling me that it is a hardware problem. 

My computer is probably about 5 years old now, an hp pavillion dv5.  So I went and blew a good 5 years worth of dust out of the fan.  Didn't change anything.  At about this time, I remembered that a while back, my computer did tell me that my battery needed to be replaced.  I don't really see how that could be a problem because it crashes when it is plugged in, battery or not.  However, I still ordered a battery, but am 100% thats not the problem. 

So now I've found this post, and it would seem to me that there is a power adapter problem.  Odd thing is, I had a power adapter problem only about 11 months ago.  My power adapter had totally stopped working out of the blue.  So the one I'm using now isn't very old, so I'm skeptical about it being the problem.  However, it did fall on the ground a while back, and loosened the two halves of the case.  I glued it back together and everything seemed alright, but now I guess that might have been the source of the problem?  Maybe there is a shorted cord or something, I duno, can't say I'm too highly knowledgeable about electronics and wiring.  But soon I will be getting the new battery that I ordered, so I will be able to see if I get the crash on battery (right now I am, but I think thats because this battery is 4 years old and simply will not hold charge). 

Another thing I saw on one other forum (sorry can't remember where for a link), was that it might be the power reciever and not the adapter itself.  I sure as hell hope that this is not the case, as I really do not want to send it in and pay a hundred dollars for them to fix it. 

Anywho, sorry about the extremely long post, I'm just trying to narrow this down a bit. 

If either of you has come any closer to solving the problem, I would love to hear about it.  Thanks!