My laptop charger keeps shutting off?

@marsimar: Only meant to point out jloc's error. I understand and agree with your position, folks do have to be careful if they mix 'n match. And yep, it's on them if they want to try it.

@Takaaaa: So, running on the HP power brick w/o the battery and the power brick stays on, hence the machine stays on - right? If this is correct, then the Dell power brick seems to present a problem - probably because of the chip in it (referenced by the thread pointed to by Marsimar). If the machine shuts down when running solely on the HP power brick, then we'll have to pursue other avenues. It might simply be that the light indicates charging, not power. We'll now in short time, I suspect.

Takaaaa said:

.....It runs perfectly, no problems at all. I took my battery out again and right now Im just running off my HP charger. I have been on all day and no problems at all.
Yes, I bought this laptop used. I'll call around and see if I can get my battery tested.

I just assumed that since I had no battery and just running off AC power, that when the charger shut off, it cut off power to the laptop, so it shut off too.

That is very strange behavior. Methinks there might be some nasty playing games with your power.

Try running MalwareBytes and then a full AV scan. Report the results

If you don't have AV software, there are free AV products, MSE, Avast, AVG.

@Takaaaa: I just looked at your System specs and thought "That's odd - the HP Slimline s5220y is not a laptop at all, maybe that's the problem" =:>

Could you provide complete specs for the dv7 laptop? There's a link in my sig that makes this really easy if you're on the machine when you're posting. Thanks.

Just Googled the problem - you're not alone or you're very determined.

There are many that attribute the problem to overheating. A good strat would be to clean the vents with compressed air, although a whole bunch of posts mentioned that did not help.

BAUSBIE said:

on HP Community....... Have you ran the battery test on your battery? The next thing that I want to do is to go into your BIOS ( F10 ) go under Diagnostics and run the short test ( Primary disc test ) and the long test ( memory test). By running these two test we can make sure that everything is okay with you Hard Drive.

Nandez said:

on HP Community.......
but what i find really weird is that..

* Works fine under several LINUX distros (Kubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva and Gentoo)
* Using VBox under linux, i could ran a virtual machine with WinXP and screen works fine! even on games!

i think if the hardware is the main problem.. shouldn't fail under linux also??

Notebook forums said:

This thread is a long and winding road. You feel as though you're going to find tha answer and then.......
Talks about heat, battery, testing...
but no real solution

Also, could you see if there are any related errors reported in the event log?


Thanks again.

Well, that sucks is terrible. Thanks for checking all of those easy things.

The post that intrigues me is the one by Nandez: the problem is not apparent when running Linux.

There are lots of other posts out there mentioning hardware fixes - but they're something I'd try or have serviced later after picking all of the low hanging fruit (the easy "fixes"). Also, it isn't clear that any of those solved the problem.

Does your machine have HP Coolsense on it? Mine did - it seemed to do more than just monitor, so I uninstalled it. The newest version seems to be integrated with HP's Total Care customer relations software (frontend for many utilities-fluff). There is a stand-alone version, but I never got it to re-install. Anyway, my machine runs fine without Coolsense.

HP (I have a few) is notorious for extraneous software. I usually remove software that I don't use or need (OEM bloat). There's a nice tutorial on removing OEM schtuff: Clean Up Factory Bloatware.

Please post your progress - I've given you a number of things to try in one post. Try the cleanup bloat first, then if the issue persists (possible, but your machine will run better w/o the bloat). Report your results and then you can think about a reInstall.

Before doing a reInstall, read the tutorial carefully and make sure you have a backup of any data you want on offline storage. Some of the steps in the second tutorial, "Reinstall", are destructive - wiping disk, making partitions, etc. If you're careful and you follow the instructions there is nothing to worry about.

A very simple solution would be to try a pad to provide additional cooling - of course that's an expense and it might not solve the issue.

These are suggestions that might solve the issue. They will do nothing if it is a HW problem. Your call on how you want to move forward. If the bloat / reinstall tutorials don't help, I'm afraid I'm out of suggestions.

Good luck, I'll think some more on it, and check back.

@Takaaaa: You might want to do a bit more investigation on the issue. I was looking for a temperature utility and came across HW Monitor Pro made by the same folks who make CPU-Z (CPUID). It's probably easiest if you download the setup version instead of the individual exe.

I only recently downloaded it so I'm not familiar with it's capabilities, but the information in my first run seemed fairly comprehensive as far as temps go. You might be able to track temps and that would be the best. Do want causes the issue while tracking temps and see what gets reported.

As a reference, my machine reported around 43 degrees Celsius for most components.

Since it happens during game playing, I suspect that it is graphics related.

I told you I'd check back. Other members might add their expertise, so hang in there. Thanks again.

Side note: How long have you had this machine? Can you return it to the man on Craigslist? I suspect that he might have known about the problem and attempted to "fix" it (the Dell power brick). You can usually get a great deal on a machine from a retail outlet or PC mfr at the end of the model year or before a new OS is released. I got my dv6 for less than $400 in March of this year. There are usually Back-to-School deals on new models, but the savings won't be as great. Anyway, if you can return it and get your money back, you might consider that as an option if we can't easily resolve it.

Hmmm, I normally suggest checking for updates sooner than this.

Main update page: HP Pavilion dv7-2185dx Entertainment Notebook PC
I scanned the page and didn't find many updates that might affect your situtation - lots of HP software updates, the fluff I usually remove.

But one caught my eye and after reading the more..... " - Updates the thermal table to fix an issue caused by noise from the system fan." You might not have noise, but the BIOS touches the thermal table.

If you have HP Support Assistant on your machine, you can check for updates with it.



I've never had very much success with it though, it usually only updates itself. I have to go look around my system and compare versions on the HP download page.

If not.... check the current version of your BIOS (run ==> msinfo32 or launch Speccy). If your BIOS is lower than F.46, you might consider updating it.
HP offers a BIOS Update (Intel Processors) version F.46 for your system

HP HP Pavilion dv7-2185dx Entertainment Notebook PC support sites:

• Software & Driver downloads
• Product Info
• Solve a Problem
• Notebook Support Forums
• Battery Indicator
• Battery Charging Delayed
• Fan Runs Constantly...

Many of the above suggest updating your BIOS. Just take care if you do, shut everything else down and run on AC - you do NOT want to interrupt the process.

You can also selectively limit the hardware actually running in Device Mgr- take Ethernet for example. I always connect wireless, so I disable the Ethernet HW, same thing for my modem and Bluetooth. You know what devices you use on your machine - disable the ones you DON'T use to conserve power and generate a little bit less heat.

Just remember that you turned them off - in case you're at a friend's house and try to connect to their router with a cat5 cable - it will drive you insane "Now my Ethernet doesn't work! Oh yeah, I disabled it."

You might try decreasing the resolution of your monitor - I'm not sure if that will do anything other than spoil your game experience. The theory is that the graphics driver won't have to drive the chip as hard - but again, I don't know.

Lots here for you to think about. Good luck.