BSOD referencing iaStor.sys. Running Win 7, 64-bit.

I'm not a real great Laptop person, but they are still computers. But, some differences in them. Does your laptop have some type of HP optimized power plan? I have a Samsung laptop which does. I really don't use it, but it has one and I thought that may help.

HP, like most PC mfgrs do not ship discs, they give the user the method of creating one set of install media. Either the discs or the Recovery partition can be used to recover from a severe system failure.

Creating Recovery Discs or Saving a Recovery Image to a USB Flash Drive (Windows 7) | HP® Support

Having both the HP install media and the plain vanilla install media (created from the downloaded ISO) is a good strategy.

I've just been looking and it seems this is a common occurrence, just the responses are different. Some are graphics related but all are while on power brick. I find a lot of complaints but no solutions, yet.

Hi dysphoria,

I have an HP dv6-c610us laptop. It's always 'fun' trying to find stuff on HP.

I did discover what CTO means though - Configure to Order. This brings up questions re: RAID.

Did you order the machine configured with RAID.
Is this a refurbished machine?
Did you make any changes regarding ACHI, RAID, or legacy.

When I tried to locate information for your machine, it took a while - and that's not even looking for drivers, just the machine.
Reference docs

• HP Pavilion dv6t-7000 CTO Entertainment Notebook
  
  
• User Guide
  
  
• Maintenance and Service Guide
  
  
• Hard Drives & Solid State Drives
  Identifying, Preventing, Diagnosing and Recovering from Drive Failures
  Care and Maintenance Measures

There is also a QUAD edition, but the product number in both URLs are the same. In a post on Tom's hardware, a user identified the product as A3F49AV, so I don't think this is the machine you have (post# 23, product A3E83AV)

There are some interesting notes on this thread

• No IDE in Dev Mgr
  I'd like you to try this
  
  Right click Computer
  Select properties
  Pick Advanced System setting in the left hand panel
  Press the Environment Variables button (lower right)
  The upper section is User variables
  Press the User variables New button
  Enter the following in the field boxes

  Variable name: devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices
  Variable value: 1

  Press ok
  
  Then open Device Manager
  Click the View menu
  Pick Show hidden devices
  
  Post a screen shot of the top most level of Device Manager
  If there is a ghost (light grey icon) IDEATA/ATAPI category, expand that and post a screen shot
  
  
• fewer less frequent BSODs when on DC only
  See this to inspect and verify the adapter is correct for your machine (was it replaced at any time)
  Using and Testing the AC Power Adapter

Thanks,

Bill
.

Forgot a few questions

Is the laptop in a docking station?

How long does the battery last after full charge?

How does the PC behave/perform if you remove the battery and run on AC only?

Thanks,

Bill
.

Thank you K - the feedback you provided is great.

When you get the chance, could you expand the Other Devices in DevMgr? (view menu - show hidden. You don't have to set the variable again though, it's already defined)

I can't see where the RAID comes from, even considering

750GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
32GB mSSD Hard Drive Acceleration Cache

that's going to take more research.

I think what happened is the IDE ATA configuration got buried somehow and it's going to show up under Other devices (to be honest I expected it to show up as a ghost entry). Once (if) you find the IDE controller device, I think it's just a matter of reconfiguring, possibly reloading the driver. But don't change anything yet - more investigation is required to do it correctly without causing more issues.

I'll take a look at what HP offers as drivers - that always gives me a clue on where to start.

Please post the results of the AC / battery removed test - it might take a few days (ha - no BSODS would be great)

Bill
.