"Random" Shutdown

[Chezowan]

Hi I am currently operating on an HP laptop with Windows 7 Enterprise 32 bit. A few weeks ago, my computer began “randomly” shutting down; instantly powering off and not even auto-rebooting. This would happen roughly once every couple of days. Today, it happened again and when I rebooted it, I was on my desktop for about 1 minute before it did it again, then I rebooted and it and happened within 20 seconds. I then booted from safe mode with networking and was able to use the computer successfully for about 30 minutes, before it shutdown yet again. I don’t think it has anything to do with over heating, but I’m not 100% sure, it doesn’t feel hot though.
Another bad aspect regarding this issue is that I am not studying abroad and I am not the administrator of the pc, because stupidly my college doesn’t allow this until I graduate. Any ideas? Thanks in advance

 

[profdlp]

The first thing I would check would be the power supply. Do you have a spare of suitable capability to try?

 

[Chezowan]

Yes, the same issue occurred when the laptop was plugged into a charger. Two chargers were tried

 

[profdlp]

A couple of things I've seen with laptops and power trouble is either a dead or dying battery, or a broken power connection inside the computer. Oddly enough, a bad battery can cause trouble even when you've got it plugged in. If you have a multimeter I would see if the battery seems to be fully charged. A bad connection inside the laptop is hard to troubleshoot without taking stuff apart. If you don't have any experience doing that I will warn you that it is not as easy as it might look.

Having said all that, I know you mentioned that you didn't think it was a heat problem, but as you have already suspected, it could be. In order to save energy, laptops don't run their fans full blast all the time. It might be that an exhaust fan is off at boot, but when the machine heats up enough to be needed it can't kick it up a notch and your computer shuts down. If the laptop is anything other than nearly brand new I would try and see if you can feel good airflow out the side and/or back vent.

Finally, since it runs in Safe Mode, you ought to be able to boot from a cdrom or dvd and run Memtest86.com - Memory Diagnostic

Let us know how it goes.