HP DV 4 Overheating/Shutting itself off

Hi! I'm new here and just wanted to vent/see if anyone had any advice.

I currently own a HP DV4 1275mx laptop. I have had it since April 2009. This is a product replacement for my DV2000 that had the bad nvidia chip and left this world. It only lasted 9 months.

Here are my issues (i do say they are eerily familiar)

Its freaking hot as a volcano. So hot that I can hardly use my touchpad mouse without it hurting my fingers. I thought I was just being paranoid when I first got it since my last one got hot and then out of nowhere just died. So, I downloaded speed fan a few months ago once it started to really worry me.
The temps range from at the lowest 65C and will get up to 105C. I called HP support right away (3 months ago) they ran BIOS updates and all of that and sent me on my merry way.

Well now it likes to just shut itself off (i'm assuming a fail safe so it doesn't blow up on me). It takes a good few minutes and at least 3 or 4 tries to get it to boot up all the way again. Called HP again, ran the same updates and some diagnostics that my computer couldn't even get through without overheating. They are having me send it in for repair.

I guess I am just wondering what the heck I can do to not have to replace a motherboard every few months? Its highly frustrating. I love my HP when it isn't burning my fingers but I am in graduate school and use my computer constantly and can't just be waiting around for service repairs all the time.

And yes, I always use on hard surface and most of the time use a cooler.

thanks so much for any advice or moral support you can offer me!

oh and ps...my cd/dvd drive has been wacky since day 1. only works about 1/2 the time.

 

Send it in, there's not much else to do about it. Next time buy a larger laptop, the ones with 17" screen seem to manage heat well.

 

Hmm most likely your cooling vents and heatsink filled with dust get a can of compressed air and blow that dust out and see what happens

if that dont work send it to HP

 

Just keep sending it in until they fix it. Eventually they'll have to replace it after 3 tries of HARDWARE replacement.

Then maybe you could nicely ask you're case manager to switch to a different size or model since you've had issues with it.

That's probably the best way to go at this point. It does take time and efffort on the phone, but worth the new laptop you get...if they can't fix it, which most likely they won't cause their repair facility/employees don't do a great job. Plus they will scratch up you're laptop.

 

I have the same computer, with the same problems... bought mine march 2009 from bb. hp wants me to send it in for repair.... just wondering if they figured out what the problem was with yours? thanks

 

AMD processor right? I have the same processor, ZM-80, in my HP TX2500 tablet.

Solution: undervolt. Dropped temps dramtically. Haven't had a single issue since I've undervolted more than a year and a few months ago.

See this thread on NBR sister site, TabletPCReview: http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=21877

I have mine setup as a service so it always runs. Not only will your notebook run cooler, but battery life will increase.

 

thanks for the info 2.0... taking your advise and trying to undervolt.. never done this before so using a guide i found on this site "the undervolting guide",
problem is the program rmclock doesn't recognise my cpu and there is no advanced cpu tab? when i checked the heat of the cpu with ORTHOS CPU Loader for ten min. it got up to 227f, hotter than boiling water! any help would be great thanks..

 

RMclock is not the best way to go with AMD Turion Ultras.

Here's a good solution specifically for the Turion Ultra Processor:

http://aspiregemstone.blogspot.com/2009/06/k10stat-amd-griffin-processor.html

Everything you need can be found here with a tutorial to guide you.

I used a different approach which predates the above one. But this is simpler I think.

I've been able to achieve, stable:

0.750v
0.762v
1.012v

Another testing program is Wprime. It's actually good enough. Just run the quick test (32m) which lasts for about ~45 secs. just to get a good baseline. Then run the longer test (1024m) which last for perhaps 30 mins or so to fine tune voltage to absolute lowest limits. You know when you went too far on either test as you will either lock up or blue screen.

http://www.wprime.net/Download/

 

For quick testing NOTHING beats IntelBurnTest. Yes, before you ask, it works with AMD processors too.

 

I had the exact same problem with my hp dv4-1242tx with 4gb ram 9200gs gpu intel c2duo t6400 2ghz WD 320gb hdd.
Was experiencing serious overheating issues which would result in sudden blank screen boot freezes( "Gpu Controller not functioning bios blink error") + Blue Screen Of Death Errors("Error Code: 0x000007a"), hp authorized service guys did little to help me out, they suggested me to go for a replacement motherboard which would cost me a bomb ! :S Moreover my laptop's 1 year warranty has just finished and there is no extended warranty in India as of now :S
Anyways coming to the topic all i did to fix this problem was to clean up all the dust inside and reapply the thermal paste onto the cpu and gpu and voila all problems seem to disappear away ! (Atleast for now!).
I formatted my Win7 Home Premium back to Factory State using HP Restore Disk and it works like a charm now

CPU Idling temp: 37°C
CPU after heavy gaming/Rendering: 59°C
CPU temp with 7 Firefox tabs open: 42°C
GPU Idling temp: 45-50°C
GPU after heavy gaming/Rendering: 62°C
HDD Idling temp: 39°C-40°C
HDD temp after gaming/rendering - 51°C
HDD temp with 7 Firefox tabs open : 45°C

Not too sure if it would work with others but its surely worth giving it a try !

 

Dust bunnies! Yeah i had a similar experience with my DV9000 - it's a large machine and its fan would rarely spin at audibly disturbing speeds, even when gaming.

A few months ago i noticed that the fan ran a whole lot more often than it used to. When i was vacuuming the room i decided to suck the dust off the laptop too. Well what do you know, LOTS of it came out, and since then the fan has been once again really really quiet.