HP Notebook issue

Ok, I've racked my brain over this for the past few days. I've got a HP nw9440 notebook with a docking station. When the machine is not docked, it will boot up and work correctly. When it is in the docking station it will instantly shutdown once you sign into the machine. In Safe Mode, no problems. No entries in the event logs, no BSoD, nothing. We proactively replaced the mortherboard and have swapped out the docking station with another known working device. Same thing.

I have no more ideas on what this could be. Anyone else run into something like this or have any suggestions?

EDIT: We also reformatted the hard disk and reinstalled Windows; which is fully updated.

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Smallguy

RTmarc wrote:

Ok, I've racked my brain over this for the past few days. I've got a HP nw9440 notebook with a docking station. When the machine is not docked, it will boot up and work correctly. When it is in the docking station it will instantly shutdown once you sign into the machine. In Safe Mode, no problems. No entries in the event logs, no BSoD, nothing. We proactively replaced the mortherboard and have swapped out the docking station with another known working device. Same thing.

I have no more ideas on what this could be. Anyone else run into something like this or have any suggestions?

EDIT: We also reformatted the hard disk and reinstalled Windows; which is fully updated.

no luck using selective startup in msconfig either ?

it's usually the first place I go once safe mode works

undomiel

Do you have a different brand of docking station to try out? What version of windows? If it happens to other brands of desktops and you have all of your drivers up to date but no other software installed on the machine try going through and disabling services until you have it stripped down as far as possible. Also try booting into VGA mode (not safe mode, VGA) and see if it still powers down. When you say that it powers down does it hard shutdown or do a safe shutdown like you had issued a shutdown command?

RTmarc

Ok, a little update. I decided to check out the power options and it lead to actually moving the docking station to another power outlet. We started cranking it up with none of the devices attached (and the laptop docked) and it worked perfectly. Through a process of elimination it looks like his 24" monitor attached via DVI is the culprit. I swapped it over to VGA and so far it works with no issues. My first thought is that the monitor is pulling too much power from the docking station creating a brown-out issue but I'm having trouble convincing myself of this since he was using this setup for months with no issues until recently. I do not push out driver updates via WSUS either.

Thanks for the input so far. Any ideas why a monitor connected via DVI would shut it off as opposed to VGA?

RTmarc

undomiel wrote:

Do you have a different brand of docking station to try out? What version of windows? If it happens to other brands of desktops and you have all of your drivers up to date but no other software installed on the machine try going through and disabling services until you have it stripped down as far as possible. Also try booting into VGA mode (not safe mode, VGA) and see if it still powers down. When you say that it powers down does it hard shutdown or do a safe shutdown like you had issued a shutdown command?

It's an HP notebook and HP docking station. It's a hard shutdown.

undomiel

I would say try a different DVI cable and if no change try a different monitor.

RTmarc

We tried a different DVI cable with the same result. I don't think I'll be able to convince him to go to a different monitor. This is our CFO's machine and he's quite fond of his 24" monitor.

undomiel

Sounds like it is time for him to switch to VGA then if you can't test a different monitor.

RTmarc

Found the answer:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?admit=109447626+1203717772653+28353475&threadId=1090816

Apparently this is a known issue (over a year) and HP has yet to do anything about it. Wonderful...