8510p interesting problems? + HP repair that didn't fix the issue

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the lengthy message, but I'm trying to give you guys as many details about the issue as possible.

With the advice of this site two years ago, I purchased an 8510p before I went to grad school. For 2 years, it gave solid performance with a clean install of Vista Ultimate until last week. For that period of time, I was very pleased with my decision as it handled everything I needed to do plus a little gaming.

Last week, however, it decided it was time to act up. It first started when I was doing a light activity (word processing). What happened was both CPUs shot up to 100 percent and everything became horribly slow. Left/right Clicking on an item or the Start orb might take 30 seconds or longer before it would work. Task Manager showed 100 percent CPU usage under performances, but sorting by CPU processes, only 10-15 percent was being used.

I restarted, and to my surprise, instead of the nice under 1 minute load time to the desktop, to took at least 15 minutes where both CPUs were constantly at 100 percent. Safe mode was also very sluggish, where I stopped non-essential processes with msconfig. So I yanked my HDD and did a backup just so I wouldn't lose anything. After a few hours of the 8510p sitting, I put back the HDD and the machine worked perfectly for about an hour, then both CPUs shot up again to 100 percent. Once the issue happens, it occurs everytime I reboot regardless of how I boot into Windows. After being powered off for 4 or more hours (or overnight), It might work for an hour or so and then become horribly sluggish, or it might start out being sluggish, too. (BTW, no viruses)

So I got on the instant chat with HP support and told them about my issue. My tech had me switch out my 2 gigs of RAM with another laptop, but that didn't fix the loading issue. He said it needed to be sent in, so I received my box last Tuesday. On Wednesday, I got a call from HP saying my machine was fine and the only problem was my battery was dead and that would cost me 212 dollars (I don't know where they pulled that number, because a new battery on their website is 109). Great, the time it would actually work for an hour, it works perfectly there. I told them that I didn't need a new battery (I pretty much use it as a desktop at home), but that there was some other issue. She said she would email the "advanced" repair guys to look at my machine.

It turns out, that the advanced tech decided to reformat my HDD and install a new heatsink. I got my machine back Friday (without buying a new battery), and spent Friday night doing a clean install of Vista Ultimate and loading all my documents and programs back on the machine. I had it doing updates overnight and worked fine until one set of Windows updates on Saturday, where the same issues started occurring again (CPUs to 100% and horribly sluggish). I went into Safe Mode, did a system restore to the last time it was fine, but to no avail it still is slow.

So I called HP support yesterday, and the guy told me to do a HDD check in the BIOS (wouldn't they of done that when my machine was in their repair shop?) and install their Vista Business DVD I got two years ago and call again if I was still having problems.

The HDD check came back negative, but trying to install Vista Business, instead of the quick loadtime to the initial install screen (under 1 minute when the machine works fine), it took at least 15 minutes. Once in the Vista Install page, everything was sluggish again (screen refreshes from top to bottom instead of instantaneously). I had enough of it last night, so I went out with friends.

This morning, I installed Vista Business with success (fast load, etc), but when I started loading their drivers and programs I wanted (not the bloatware) from the other recovery DVD, which usually takes under 10 minutes, it decided to start acting up again. It hasn't finished up loading the drivers in 30 minutes or so and the screen is refreshing from top to bottom again.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, or how to deal with tech support (I bought a business notebook for the business support and its supposed durability), let me know. MoBo seems fine, so I'm thinking CPU or issues with the heatsink. As a grad student, I do computational simulations, so I'm tearing apart servers on a daily basis, but this problem has me baffled. I'm writing this from my fiance's 5 year old Inspiron (that hasn't had any problems, knock on wood). Again, thanks for sharing my pain!

 

It's most likely not the hard drive nor the CPU. A broken or improperly installed heatsink will cause the thermal protection to kick in and the machine to shut down, not 100% CPU load.

Just a random thought. Yank out the wifi card and see if it does the same.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I pulled out the wifi card, but it still did the same thing. I put it back in and updated it to the newest driver.

Yesterday afternoon, after I called HP to send me another box, I installed the drivers without a problem. Since then, it hasn't had any troubles, with continuous use for the past 20 hours or so. I even transferred 30 gigs or so over wifi without any troubles. I've put it to sleep/hibernate/restarted several times without difficulty now. I guess I'll wait to send it back until it happens again.

 

Spyware or adware? Check to see what process is using up the most cpu power.

 

It can't be software. He said that even installing Windows went slow. I'm thinking borked hard drive/controller reverting to PIO mode, which is painfully slow and takes up most of the CPU time.

 

Yeah, its not software because I've wiped the hard drive and installed windows multiple times. When I was having the problem, my cpu usage was at 100% but under specific processes it was only using a total of 5-15 percent. My box should come today from HP.

 

Just an update for those who are curious,

I sent my machine in earlier this week and received it back on Friday. HP thinks it was the power adapter, so I have a new power block. Appearentely this has happened before.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=HardwareDPC&message.id=51

Thanks for all your advice, we will see if this fixes it. So far no problems!

Eli

 

It can't be bad power brick, but i'm just hoping that it'll somehow magically fix your issue.