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My HP DV6t-2300 recently crashed while using FLV Player. It wouldn't start up after this so I had to do a hardware reset (remove power sources, hold down power button ~15 seconds, put back power sources). After this it would turn on, but start up would freeze in Ubuntu, Windows 7, Ubuntu Recovery Mode, and various Linux Live CDs. The only successful way to boot was in Windows 7 Safe Mode.

The HP Customer Service was very polite, but they are trying to blame it on a corrupt operating system which is clearly not the case (since I have tried 4 operating systems and none work). I am thinking it might be the GPU since 1) I was watching movies when it crashed and 2) Windows Safe Mode might not use the dedicated GPU. I already ran Memory and HDD tests and there were no detected errors.

Any ideas of what's wrong, or suggestions for tests that I should run in safe mode? Should I try reinstalling Windows 7 to convince HP that it's not the OS?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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What you can try and do is use their recovery software, and if the issues happen again blame your GPU, as this does look to be an issue since Safe Mode and the boot screen don't really use the GPU all that much. I would say call up customer services and get it sorted.

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  • Thanks Sandeep; I messed up the recovery partition when I installed Ubuntu, so I'm thinking I'm just going to try a clean install.
    – Rob
    Oct 4, 2010 at 2:33
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Back up your data, Recovery will wipe all of it. Back it up if you send it off for repair also.

HP does not have much in the way of hardware diagnostics, just memory and hard drive, that is why they always suggest reinstalling the OS if memory and hard drive come up clean, its all they can suggest. If all 3 fail to solve it and it is under warranty, they will have you ship it to a HP authorized repair facility.

Test procedures here, make note of any errors if they appear.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00439024&tmp_task=solveCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=4121249

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Here is a way to test the hard drive and memory using non HP utilities.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Lockups-Freezes-Hangs/How-to-test-RAM-and-HDD-Hard-Drive/td-p/301638

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  • Thanks for the input Moab! I have already done the BIOS memory and hard drive tests as well as the memtest86+ test from a Linux live disk. They all came back with no errors, so I guess that I need to just reinstall the OS and call HP after that to tell them that there are still issues.
    – Rob
    Oct 4, 2010 at 2:31
  • Oh, and it's still under warranty, so that's not an issue.
    – Rob
    Oct 4, 2010 at 2:35

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