Scary and quite annoying problem

Hi guys,

How long have you been using Windows 7?

I'm recently having this weird, scary, and quite annoying problem with my laptop. First I was running Windows 7 RC1 and everything was fine. Also, I am dual booting with my original Windows Vista.

Just around 1 month ago my laptop started failing (at least ONLY on Windows 7). The battery started to say "Consider replacing your battery." and had that X mark on the icon. EVEREST told me that my battery was on about 60% wear level so I recalibrated my batteries. After that, it said around 30~% wear level or so. However, the icon still had that X mark and still said the same thing.

Then more problems came up. Explorer began to be quirky and things started to not load when I open My Computer. The "loading bar" in the address bar of Explorer just keeps getting stuck on 99%. Then when I end explorer.exe, Explorer closes but the process remains there. So I start up explorer.exe again and Explorer launches. Now I have two processes. When I click on any item in Start Menu, nothing happens, literally (even trying to click 100 times, the Start Menu is still open, and no window pops up). When I click on the library icon in the taskbar, nothing happens, literally as well.

Another thing is that when I close my laptop lid, I had set it to sleep. However, it doesn't sleep at all. When I open up the lid again, everything is just black. The keyboard icons are still lighted up, hard disk still shows activity, and such. I experimented with this by manually shutting down the laptop and booting up Windows 7 again. I pressed sleep, logoff, and shutdown manually (booting up Windows 7 thrice) and they all do the same thing:

Sleep: everything turns black, leyboard icons don't close, laptop basically doesn't sleep.
Logoff: Screen gets stuck at "Logging off..."
Shutdown: Screen gets stuck at "Shutting down..."

Now I tried booting up Windows Vista, and none of these problems exist. This is probably the first time Windows Vista worked better than Windows 7.

Again, I tried booting into Windows 7 and SOMETIMES, none of these problems exist. Then I started getting this problem more recently. When RTM was released, I got an MSDNAA copy immediately and installed it. For quite some time, I didn't have a problem.

Then just a week ago, the same thing happened again. Although this time, it didn't say "Consider replacing your battery." but rather, it now shows the battery as empty, but I am plugged in. Clicking on the icon doesn't bring up the Power Options. Going to Control Panel to do so keeps the Control Panel stuck at loading. The My Computer bug still happens. Things got worse because now, booting up, the Wireless Icon doesn't appear, so does the Sound Icon (but I can still hear sound from the speakers). Going to Notification Area to enable these things show that they are "missing" or "disabled" I'm not quite sure which, but I cannot check or uncheck it.

It has gotten worse everyday. BUT, on Windows Vista, everything still works fine.

I'm not sure if the cause of the problem was me undervolting the Turion X2 processor, I just tried stopping puma state control service I created and I've yet to reboot. However I'm not sure about this because: 1) I've had the puma state control running for a long time now, even before the problems began to appear. 2) I have puma state control running as a service on my Vista and I don't get these problems

Can anyone guess whats wrong with my OS/laptop?

Laptop specs on my sig.

 

First, have you installed any laptop drivers (including chipset drivers)? If not, you should try installing the Vista x64 drivers in your Windows 7 install (I'm guessing you installed the x64 flavor, since you are already running Vista x64).

 

Its just quite weird because I've had Windows 7 RC running for around 2~3 months before it started failing.

I've installed drivers HP though I'm not quite sure if I've installed all. I installed the sound drivers, ATI drivers from ATI, etc. But I haven't checked if I installed everything.

I'm going to see which ones from my SWSetup files are still needed to be installed.

 

Weird thing is I was just about to post something similar. I have the same exact hanging at "shutting down” screen and the laptop appears to be doing nothing, it just pulses the HDD. The first few days after a clean install Win 7 was perfect, but it has steadily been degrading in responsiveness and stability.

For example;

• For some reason when I delete files it doesn’t update the explorer window. It is only until I refresh the window that the deleted files icon(s) despair.
  
• I couldn’t get to Windows Computer Management, it refuses to open.
  
• I couldn’t access Power Options from the taskbar icon; it refused to bring up any type of context menu so had to get there through control panel.
  
• System restore appears to have stopped working, when I create a new restore point it hangs at “Creating new restore point”, but it doesn’t do anything. All my previous restore points appear to be non-existant as well

The battery issue I haven't really seen though. I have installed Win 7 on the DV5 three times, two of the times this degradation has showed up.

Can anyone confirm problems like these? I have a desktop Win 7 install created from the same media just different keys and it has been working flawlessly.

Note: Only drivers that I installed manually were the ATi Win 7 64-Bit package, everything else is what Win 7 installed by default.

 

This is a strange problem. Does these porblem occurs in your Vista as we speak?
Any problem that occurs under Vista is hardware related and should be looked at it that way.

It sounds like the work of malware, probably for Vista and malfunctioned under Win7. I recommend a system format and re-install, and see if it occurs again.

 

Exactly! It seems to be more useless as each day passes! I also cannot install anything anymore -- can't install chipset drivers. I have the explorer issue as well. I have to refresh the screen in order for the icons to be updated.

What are your laptop's specs?

 

I am on my Vista setup as we speak, and I have no problems at all.

This happened to me:
1) Windows 7 RC1 after around 2~3 months of usage
2) Windows 7 RTM after 2-3 days of usage
3) Windows 7 RTM immediately after format

Note that it has happened after both before installing and after installing drivers.

I'm not sure if this is malware as scan results show nothing and I know the feeling of my computer when it has malware/virus problems. Besides, task manager / other process manager tools show no additional processes besides the ones I use frequently.

 

I use Win7 RC since the day it came out to the public... I use it as my main OS on my laptop (see signature), and I have no problem.
Can i have the FULL list of all the software you have installed, including drivers and codec packs?

 

In short;
AMD Athlon X2 QL-60
ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics RS780M
250 GB WD HDD
4GB RAM
Atheros WirelessLAN 802.11a/b/g/n
Realtek 10/100 Ethernet LAN

I am running Win 7 Pro RTM 64-Bit as sole OS on my DV5 right now. I previously had Vista Business SP1 64-Bit running on the DV5 for months with zero problems really, it worked great. I too feel that it probably is not a malware type of issue; everything was locked down tight as far as antivirus and malware protection even before I let it connect to the internet. Also, it has happened on two separate installations and my installation iso is coming from MSDN.

My desktop mirrors my laptop as far as software; Office'07, KMPlayer, VLC, NOD32, VMPlayer, Firefox, Visual Studio '08 Express, PerfectDisk 10....Which is the same setup I had on my Vista install which was fine.

I will try installing the HP supplied drivers over top of the Windows default ones to see if it makes any difference.

I too had Win 7 RC on my desktop and now have Win 7 Pro RTM 64-Bit on it and it has been working perfect.

 

a) batteries don't last forever

b) there is no 'standard' for how to calibrate a battery or it's charging circuit

c) there is no standard for how to calibrate the software that reads a battery or it's charging circuit

d) among other things, a change in usage patterns or a hard shock (ever dropped your battery?) can kill or damage a battery or accelerate it's death.

 

I don't think that's the main problem. The problem is these problems exist on Windows 7 and not in Windows Vista. It's not just the batteries -- basically almost all hardware.

 

Think it has something to do with the dv5?

Anyway, as for me, I have pretty much what developers need:
IDEs (Eclispe, NetBeans, VS2008 Express), MSSQL/MySQL, VMWare and VirtualBox. I have Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator. I have only K-Lite Codec Pack installed for my codecs.

Same setup in my Windows Vista.

Oh, I also have Prototype installed and its the only game I'm currently playing.

 

off topic:

You should use Shark007 codec pack 320bit + 64-bit. Significantly better in all aspect.

 

I dunno man, frankly it doesn't matter to me since K-Lite plays what I need it to play. Quality-wise (if there's a difference) in playback, I don't really need to see. I rarely play video anyway, since I mostly develop on this machine.

I'd try on my desktop but as of the moment my usage doesn't call for it. Maybe on my next format.

 

I booted to my Windows 7 (after 1~2 days of not using it) and again as I said earlier (that sometimes it works perfectly fine) it worked normally. Then I restarted just to test if my eyes were working properly, but alas, again the problem manifested. Battery icon shows empty, removing from AC doesn't kill the laptop, WiFi adapter was detected but network list won't popup. Notification area setup shows WiFi and Sound adapters aren't installed. My Computer takes millions of years to load, and all the problems I listed in my first post.

Going through my device manager, I found an unknown device.
ACPI\HPQ004 and I believe the corresponding driver/software is HP Mobile Protection Data Sensor/HP ProtectSmart whatever you call it.

I just installed it. So far, after booting, everything works. No more unknown device, WiFi and Sound are detected, so is battery, and its not saying "Consider replacing your battery." anymore.

I've yet to restart the machine to check. Will soon do, just have to finish homework. Then I'll post results.

 

wow, you could have told us you didn't (correctly) install the low-level device drivers.

Chipset
disk controller
video
others

check them all for current revisions, download from either your laptop makers support site or the chipset (intel, amd, etc) makers site.

 

The problem exists whether the HP supplied and ATI updated drivers are installed or the Windows default ones are used. No matter what drivers are used (at least in my case) the problems do not go away.

Yes please let us know, It did not fix anything for me when I installed it.

 

Compax, my comment was meant for the OP, not you. It's his thread......

 

I understand that the comment was directed to marcklaser. I was merely making the comment that in my case it did not matter what drivers were used that is why I said "(at least in my case)". Since I have very similar problems to marcklaser I feel that could be valuable information to solving the problem if marcklaser comes back stating the same, indicating that there could be a common cause.

 

On installing drivers:
I am pretty sure I installed all the latest drivers. In any case, why would the problem only manifest itself after 2~3 months of usage of Windows 7 RC?

The problem is that this HPQ004 appeared after a buggy update and I could not revert back for some reason. This problem occurred to many others as well (see dv5z thread at HP forum and HP support forums at hp.com..)

I haven't had the chance to restart yet (after restarting from the driver install) to see if everything is fine..

 

It could be a Windows 7 update that made the problem appear.

 

Anything else about the problem and the steps/mods/updates you did in the past 2 months?

It's extremely hard to offer meaningful help without all of the information, preferably contained in one post.

 

First of all, installation of the HP ProtectSmart didn't work. I'm still getting the problems.

Second..

Really, I only develop on this machine. When I first used Windows 7 RC, I installed:

Firefox, Eclipse Ganymede, NetBeans 6.5, MySQL 5.0 Community Edition, Visual Studio 2008, Apache, Tomcat, PHP, Google AppEngine SDK, all those tools. Photoshop, etc.

When I was on Windows 7 RC, the problem never existed for 2~3 months. It just appeared one day, and I don't recall tinkering with anything. I shut down the laptop after a few days (I normally do this to refresh the system, if that helps) but when it booted, the first problem initially was:

Consider replacing your battery.

I was bugged by this so I checked out Windows Vista. It wasn't reporting the problem and I'm still getting the full ~2 hours I usually have. I tried removing the battery, putting it back again, nothing. Windows 7 gets the problem, Windows Vista doesn't. For a time, it was just doing this. I got used to it since removing from AC doesn't kill the laptop anyway.

Then came the second problem, without me doing anything again, just merely developing. Mind you the apps I develop are usually school stuff as of now and don't really tinker with the system. The problem was that, now, the battery icon doesn't say "Consider replacing your battery." it now read just empty, with the charging icon. Clicking on it doesn't open the popup tool dialog showing power options. Removing from AC still retains the charging icon. A Windows 7 gadget for showing battery life shows the meter fine, so I was again, fine with this for a few.

Finally, the most annoying problem came, when I booted up my Windows 7 installation, battery problem like above was present. WiFi now cannot be detected (notification area settings disable it saying the device was not found) BUT I can connect to the Internet if there's a signal and the network was previously configured already. When I try to connect to another network (using Control Panel) the popup dialog for found networks doesn't appear. Same goes for the sound icon, with the notification area disabling it saying the device was not found. BUT I can hear sound from my speakers.
Explorer was being buggy, had to refresh whenever I moved icons or renamed. Opening My Computer just doesn't load anything. The loading bar (in the address bar) goes to 99% but icons don't display. The window won't close, ending the explorer.exe process doesn't remove it from the list but terminates Explorer. Starting it again, I cannot click on anything in Explorer anymore -- start menu is frozen, desktop is not responding, etc.

It is basically unusable after you open My Computer.

Again, on the same laptop, booting the Windows Vista installation shows NO (0) problems at all. And I basically do the same things in Windows Vista. I just tried out Windows 7 for the hell of it.

This machine is strictly for development only, I have another machine to do other things on. I regularly update using Windows Update -- automatically downloading and installing the updates for me.

--------

Now the 2nd part, I tried formatting Windows 7 to install Windows 7 Pro RTM (finally, it was released, and got it from MSDNAA).

First two days it was working, then the problem manifested. Of course, I always install the drivers and I make sure everything is installed.

 

Okay, I'm partly convinced that its not the drivers. I think its really the battery and how Windows 7 handles it (...of course I don't really know much about how it does)

But anyway, for the past 2 nights I've been trying to drain all the battery from the laptop, so to do this, I usually play my sleeping playlist on WMP and leave the laptop on battery.

Now usually, when I wake up, it locks up to the "Logging off..." screen (same problem with manually logging off and shutting down). For the past 2 tries, I tried to plug in the laptop to AC again, and voila, the Logging off screen continued to shutting down, and then the laptop shut down.

Now, I noticed there's a trend in my usage. Whenever I would check Everest for the battery status, if ever the battery wear level is around 50%~ higher, the problems would manifest. Currently, the wear level is at 30% and I have no problem at all.

I'm thinking of trying out my friends battery (dv5z too) to see if the problems exist, however I cannot do that right now since school is on break and won't resume 'till the 14th.

@Compax2405
If you can try this out, it'd be nice.

 

Now I'm worried...

I only installed Windows 7 on my laptop 2 days ago!

 

i have a tx2500z which is very similar to your laptop's specs and i've never had any problems with it. i'm also running the pumastatecontrol thing. maybe you can wait until hp releases its windows 7 drivers by october.

 

Since my last post I decided to give one last install a go before going back to Vista. I took my time on it (a lot longer then I was planning) and rebooted after every single app/item I installed or change made to settings. Everything seems to be working now. I haven't had any stability issues, no logoff/shutdown screen hanging and no need to refresh explorer. It's too early to tell if it is a good install, but it has lasted longer than my previous RTM installs.

I do have a feeling that the problem may stem from the HDD drop sensor driver/software. Every other Win install it hesitated to install, but on this one it installed no problem (mind you the drop sensor still doesn’t work under Win 7). Also it is the only feature on the DV5 that currently does not work.

I even gave undervolting a shot on this new install and it is working perfectly. For some reason this current install has seemed to stick.

 

If you are still running the RC get the RTM. I have had zero problems with the RTM so far. Ok, i'll be honest, there is one. You cannot copy over an exe until you delete the old one first. It says another program is using it... For people compiling stuff that could be a problem.

 

If the OP isn't a member of Technet/MSDN, then the RC is the latest and greatest version. And - I have no problems copying an exe file over another one.

 

Update: I found a problem, laptop will not go in to/come out of sleep sometimes. I end up with a black screen, but the quick launch lights are on as is the power button.

Looked at my windows system logs and I have a few errors:

Level: Error Source: Disk EventID:11
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR1

Level: Error Source: hpdskflt EventID:1001
The description for Event ID 1001 from source hpdskflt cannot be found

I also get 2 atikmdag errors (ID's 43029 and 52236), but only on system start up it seems. Also checked out the HDD and everything checks out health wise...



Marcklaser, have a look and see if you have any similar errors, maybe there is something common.

 

As stated a few times throughout the thread, I've already obtained a copy of Windows 7 Pro RTM through MSDNAA. The problem with copying over an EXE does not exist for me, nor for any files related to compilation (unless of course, they ARE currently in use...)

 

I get the atikmdag event as well during start up. As well as a few errors related to the hard disk including hpdskflt.

One of them were said: An unsupported disk adapter was found.
The other was same as yours: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\DR1.

I have a question, does the middle light on the lower left portion of your laptop still light up? The one that has the lightning bolt (AC). Mine lights up the moment I connect it and then turns off after I get into Windows 7 (but the laptop is still charging).

For some reason, searching for "An unsupported disk adapter was found." gives this as one of the top results http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service...47627+1252287675434+28353475&threadId=1278047 and is related to the dv5.

Also another link related to this:
http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/8854-hp-protectsmart.html

 

The middle light on mine only lights up when it is charging my battery, once it is charged it turns off (so it seems to work properly).

I also noticed that my desktop also has some atikmdag errors (it is an AMD770 board with an HD3870 card in it) so maybe a normal ATi error?

As for my perfect current Win 7 install it has gone back to refusesing to sleep or come out of sleep and it hangs at shutdown. I also ran an HDTune benchmark and it came out very poor. I ran it a second time and got better results, but still not great. I will try to upload some images of it, in more then one occasion it dipped down to around 5MB/sec and had a minimum of 0.8MB/sec transfer rate!?

Also, I tried to run SpeedFan and it just hangs on the apps start up when it is “Scanning ATilgp SMBus at $0B00…”

Edit: Found another HDD/controller error

Source:ACPI EventID:13
The embedded controller (EC) did not respond within the specified timeout period. This may indicate that there is an error in the EC hardware or firmware or that the BIOS is accessing the EC incorrectly. You should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS. In some situations, this error may cause the computer to
function incorrectly.

Marcklaser, what version BIOS you running? I am on F.37.

 

An update, successfully got the drop sensor to install and is now working. I followed the steps (outlined by Wondimagegn on Jun 30, 2009 11:54:04 GMT http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service...47626+1252288833351+28353475&threadId=1278047) and installed driver/software package SP42565 ( http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...n.jsp?swItem=ob-70262-1&lang=en&cc=us&mode=3&)

I will test this for a few a little while and get back with the results.

 

I have that error in my event log too, along with the previous ones you posted. I haven't ran any HD benchmark tool however I did notice that my transfers are getting slower.

I am running on F.35 because when I got it, F.37 was released a few moments after and I was lazy to update.

Great! Thanks!