envy 14 powers down when unplugged

Hello,

As it says in the title. My envy 14 powers down when it is unplugged from the power adapter. The battery is in the unit and has a charge. I don't understand why it powers down completely (not sleep mode) when i disconnect the power cord. Any help is appreciated.

 

Does it actually power down, or does it stop running like it has no power at all? If it's the latter, then there's probably an issue with your battery or the connection from your battery to your mobo. If it's the former, I don't know what it might be - the Windows power settings don't seem to have any options that deal with the adapter like that...

 

Well, it asks me if I want to boot into safemode or ignore the the problem when I boot up again.

Here's a little more backstory. When I first received my envy, I thought it was doa. It had a blank black screen when i turned it on but i could tell it was running because you could see the backlighting for the screen. It was giving me an error code, which was 4 blinks on the caplock key. Meaning a graphic controller failure. I later figured out after no decent help from hp's technical support that the laptop would startup fine plugged in without the battery installed. After messing around trying to update graphics drivers and whatnot for a few hours, I updated the bios to F.12 (the latest one). After that my computer has booted fine off the battery or adapter or both combined.

Edit: A figured it might have to do with the switchable graphics. So I tried with the auto switching on and off...no difference. It also does the same behavior when on the integrated or discrete.

Edit 2: it is fine when i put it in sleep mode first, then unplug it.

 

If the graphics controller was failing when you first got it, I'd recommend sending it in for service. That error when you got it, along with your current shutdown problem could be signs of something wrong - the sort of thing you'd regret not fixing when you had the chance if it really hits the fan at an inconvenient time, like right after your warranty expires...

 

Exactly. Send it back or get it repaired.

 

I had the exact same thing happen to me. The caps lock light blinked 4 times and the screen remained blank. The error code for a caps lock light blinking 4 times corresponds to "Graphics controller not functional". This happened when I was trying to reboot the machine after the first time I had powered it down.

See this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6644388-post3637.html

It appears that the problem was HP Quickweb had not been set up by the time I had tried to boot my machine after that first power-down. After trying a hard reset it booted up successfully then went on to set up QuickWeb and has been working fine ever since, including the graphics controller.

My point is that just because you get the caps lock light blinking 4 times does not necessarily mean that there is a problem with the graphics controller.

 

Yeah, thanks belltown. Sounds like that problem i was having, except i fixed it by doing a hard reset, which let me boot up the OS once (I would have to hard reset again if i wanted to reboot). Then I updated bios.

Maybe it wasn't the bios update that fixed it, maybe it was when i disabled the HP Quickweb in the updated bios that did it.

Regardless I no longer have the bilking caplock key error. My problem is that the computer powers down when i unplug it from the adapter (battery has charge).

The problem seems to be intermittent. Right now, unplugging it doesnt affect it. Have you experienced this at all?

 

I've noticed thar it does it right after I open the laptop from sleep mode and pull the cord after it's been idle for awhile.

 

That happened to me once when i first got my envy and unboxed it. Then i tried to figure out what was wrong, and I noticed that the laptop wasn't recognizing the battery. So what I did was removed the battery, put it back in and it recognized the battery. It was a weird problem but doing that stopped the envy from turning itself off when i removed the ac adapter. I don't know if this will solve your problem, but if it doesn't I think you should return it for a replacement or something.

 

Im still having problems. I would really like to avoid servicing it if possible. any suggestions?

 

@OP

So, here is what I don't get. Everyone here is pretty much recommending that you have a serious problem with your laptop and that you should send it in while you can. Yet, you still resist when you obviously don't know why your laptop is turning off when unplugged.

You have tried everything suggested, but you still have the issue. Why try and deny that there is a serious problem with the computer?

Save yourself some headache and send it in. Get it fixed and then enjoy the little devil. Trust me. Fix things when you can actually fix them and use them again. Don't try to fix things once it's too late.

I'm not yelling at you. I'm trying to convince you to send it in.

 

Well a few months have past. I send it in in December, they sent it back saying they couldn't find the problem. Called tech support again, this time the tech put more detail in for the repair man to follow. So I sent it back and they replaced the ac power cord, battery and reinstalled the os. Got the laptop back jan 24th and it still has the same problem.

But before i realized it still had a problem i did a minimized recovery. The minimized recovery failed, so i tried it again. This time it finished but when the os finally booted up it asked me to restart. After restarting it could not find the bootrom ( I believe) so i couldnt boot windows anymore. I then did a system restore from the recovery partition to get the system how it was before I tried the minimized recovery. That finished and I can boot into the os but inter errors like ati graphics failure and the wifi doesn't work after a couple of minutes. I think my hard drive is going. I benchmarked the harddrive with Hd tune pro. It gets an average transfer rate of 12 mb/s and an access time of 32.4ms. Hd tune does not report any errors though. My best guess is it got damaged during the shipping process.

It has been 2 months that I haven't had my laptop and I'm getting frustrated. What should I say when I call up hp tech support? Should I demand a new laptop since they obviously don't know how to fix the problem?

Ps: I have an aftermarket harddrive that is supposed to be one of the fasted

 

2 MONTHS?! You paid premium price for their highest end device... DEMAND your $$ back. Call your Case Manager (assuming you have one) and deal with them.

There is NO Excuse for a computer manufacturer holding onto a product you purchased for 2 months.... Ask them why they sold you a product that's a defective P.O.S. -- why their Premium warranty service is so slow and why you have to suffer.

If you don't already have a case manager, get your problem escalated to one (they'll usually call you) and let them know what's going on, get a comparable laptop or $$ back... don't take no for an answer and be prepared to not to give up till you get results

 

Yeah that is totally unacceptable. I would keep pushing until you got completely new unit or a full refund and accept nothing less. I mean, there is clearly something wrong with your envy and they kept it for 2 MONTHS and it still isnt working. It's not your fault it's not working and they should stop wasting your time and just give you your money back or let you try another unit.

 

NEW laptop or money back ASAP!!! Good luck.

KJ

 

So I got a case manager. I live in Canada btw.

They either dont want to or say they can't give me a replacement envy because it is a US model.

The case manager says they will send it to the engineer department to try and find the issue but gave no garranty that they could fix it. He kept saying that is a us model and they dont have the same parts. He said that if the engineering team couldn't find the problem or if they didn't have the parts to fix it they would send it to the us for repair.

What do I do? I really don't want to be without my laptop for the whole damn year.