Windows 7: Laptop does "hard" shutdown when lid closes.

I have been experiencing an issue with my laptop for approximately 6 months now. When I shut the lid the computer acts very strangely. It shuts down quickly, almost like I pulled the plug without the battery in or held the power button down. I noticed the last time though that the indicator light for the sd card and hard drive were blinking to a tune of 300 beats per minute for the ~1.5 seconds in between closing the lid and shutting down. I have tried to change power options via windows (pretty obvious stuff) and shut the lid while in each power option and it continues to have the same issue. Is this BIOS related? Or hardware?

bios setting is a possibliity but I think it more likely you have a outdated driver operating a component and it's causing a hard memory fault/ reset when the system sends fancy power related commands to it.

The best way to troubleshoot this over the internet is to cause you to have some blue screens so we can have a look at a memory dump file.

If you are willing to go that route (can be a bit time consuming)
Start by turning on driver verifier.
Driver Verifier - Enable and Disable
(Please read all instructions for driver verifier before using as it's possible it will make the machine behave badly and you need to know how to undo it.)

Are you sure it shuts down?

-not standby?
-not restarting?
-not hibenating?

It definitely didn't shutdown normally, that's impossible in 1.5 seconds.
Are you very sure the power is off when opening the lid after 2 seconds?

Try not to boot Windows 7 but another environment. For example

• Windows 7 installation dvd
• a Windows 7 repair disk
• win 7 recovery environment with F8
• Some linux live cd

Then close the lid. Does it power off as well?

isn't this just in the power management settings?

Kaktussoft, your second post has some possible promise, it will at least help me find out if i need to go the route that. I am not going to tell you one thing and have you second guess what I am saying. I have been experiencing this problem for a LONG time and have given you EVERY observation that I could possibly make. Lister, read the post before you post nonsense please. I find your post to be kind of disrespectful of the fact that i explained about how I CHANGED EVERY POWER MANAGEMENT SETTING for what happens when the lid closes and tried to close the lid and still got the same result. Kaktussoft... this is why I have compared it to unplugging without the battery in, or holding the power button down... it is a HARD shutdown, not a software shutdown.

Look for clues in the logs using these troubleshooting steps.

I'd use the Driver Verifier suggested, too. It will isolate a problem driver.