Laptop Hardware Problem ?

[aviwil]

A week and a half ago I bought an HP Pavillion dv6526ea notebook with Vista Home Premium . There seems to be a hardware problem - I have some experience with such things - but I just don't seem to be able to pin it down . Tried different diagnostics - they don't reveal anything special . One thing which every so often happens - I'll be typing in on the keyboard , and the input will just stop being received , and not displayed on screen . Another indication - I can do some program install - and it the progress bar will just suddenly halt an dmaybe after 10 secs continue - this is not just because the system is doing some installation tasks . These were things which might have happenned on PC's 10 years ago , when bus bandwidth problems may have been around - but today I don't see such a thing happenning . I've turned off all automatic updating , as I thought these might have been causing it . I've uninstalled almost all installed apps .
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated .
Thanks .

[Steve R Jones]

One thing which every so often happens - I'll be typing in on the keyboard , and the input will just stop being received , and not displayed on screen .

When this happens, what do you have to do to fix it?
Is it possible you tabbed out of the application you were typing in....

[aviwil]

Usually , I just wait some time and it will be OK . However , the charcters I typed in meanwhile are lost and not displayed . Don't think that I tabbed out or anything similar .

[proxops-pete]

Hmm... either heat or memory, I take it... Do you have clear path for the fans underneath?

[aviwil]

I don't think I have any obstructions under the laptop - so fans should be OK ? The memory is Kingston 2 x 1 GB . Before this , I had 2 x 1/2 GB Mosul , which came with the PC . Can't seem to recall that the memory change made anything worse . The laptop has the T7100 Santa Rosa which I believe has a 800 Mhz bus . The memory is 667 Hz . Could this be causing any problems ? I notice that the BIOs has a memory test . Do you think I should try it ? Is there some way of checking for overheating ?
Thanks .

[rimmerchant]

maybe time for a return?

[aviwil]

More input on this :
I was told by the retailer , that if I plan to use the laptop connected to the electricity for an extended period , then I should remove the battery , as it keeps on charging , even after being full , and this is not good . Is this in fact so ?
As a result of this , I run the laptop without the battery and plugged into the electricity . Actually have not even charged the battery yet . Could this be causing some of my problems ?

[bldegle2]

"As a result of this , I run the laptop without the battery and plugged into the electricity . Actually have not even charged the battery yet . Could this be causing some of my problems ?"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

no, and i run my lappy at home with the battery removed, it really saves the battery.

you should discharge and charge the battery once and awhile......

as far as your problem goes, i know exactly what it is. when you had the 2 x 512 in the unit, it ran perfectly, yes? then you swapped out to 2 x 1gig to max the lappy.....

i have about ten sticks of 1 gig PC3200 200 pin sodimms that i tried with my lappy, the only ones i could get to work without errors are some really expensive stuffs from Mushkin......

what is happening is kinda dynamic, caused by the extra load on the memory bus, the internal 1 gig memory runs a lot hotter than the orignal 512, plus you are now drawing extra power to run the larger memory sticks, the combination of the two can cause the system to error with blue screens....

there are a few solutions, you can get mulitple sticks of dimms like i did (very expensive, Ebay is going to get some of my business) and test until everything works right, or you can swap the internal to the original 512 and run with 1.5 gig of ram instead of two. the only problem with the second solution is the possibility you would lose the dual channel advantage if your system is new enough to have it....my lappy is a 754 AMD unit, running a mobile 4000+ @2.6 gig, fast, but not dual channel.............

hope this helps...

laterz...

[aviwil]

Thanks Baldegle2 for all of that . If I recall correctly , I had problems also before the memory change . However you did prompt me to go to the Kingston site and check if this laptop is supported by their memory . Unfortunately , their list of supported products seems to be a little out of date . So maybe you've got something here . Thanks again .

[aviwil]

I ran the MicroSoft Memory diagnostic from HP Recovery Manager for my Vista here . I believe it runs this from the BIOS with a reboot . It gave no errors . Does this mean memory is OK or is that test not sufficient . If not , does there exist a test which can check reliably that there is , or is not a memory problem ?

[bldegle2]

run memtest............................go here for a download of the latest version, scroll down the page , the download section is near the bottom...

http://www.memtest.org/

run it, then report back...

laterz.