While researching the problem with my DV9005 laptop I stumbled on this post by memmons111. Here's what I know: I purchased an HP DV9005US model in January 2007. It performed flawlessly until last Sunday (2/24/2008). That afternoon, while it sat in screensaver mode for about 4 hours, it locked up (no hard drive activity light, no response to keyboard, ctrl-alt-delete does nothing). I had to power it down with the Power Switch held down for 5 seconds. It then booted OK. For the next five days it would freeze about twice per day at any time. Sometimes while not actively in use, sometimes while I was keying in data to my word processor. I thought it might be software since I had recently installed two conferencing pieces of software (Gtalk and Skype) and I knew they would be lurking in the machine all the time. I removed these and still had the lockup problem. I then booted my LiveCD of MEPIS Linux, which got WindowsXP completely out of the picture, and the machine still locked up. Aha! Gotta be hardware. Under WindowsXP again, I fired up the Help and Support software from the Start button and ran through the HP quick system test. It passed OK. I ran specific test against Memory, Processor, PCI-bus, and Video sections. All without any error. Then I noticed an "Advanced Test" options where you can test memory and two other things (I can't remember what and can't tell you because my machine is broken at the moment, I'm using an older Toshiba laptop to type this). I started the memory test and it got to the 13% range and the machine froze. After powering down it has now refused to power up. I see a flicker of the hard drive light (or, if I've got my MEPIS CD in the CD drive, the CD activity light will flicker for about ten seconds) but the screen stays black. Now, for the good news. HP sent me an email last December stating two things: (1) there was a "critical" update to the BIOS (brings it to level F3D, I believe) that I should flash. I did this in January without trouble. It had something to do with the fan control. These laptops run hot these days and they want to extend their life, I suppose. (2) the DV9000 series (and DV6000, also) are susceptible to a hardware failure that causes one or more of a list of 7 things to go wrong. Some of these are (a) wireless card is not recognized (b) machine won't power up and leaves blank screen (c) ... HP has agreed to extend the warranty on these machines, for this problem only, an additional year. Go to
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/p...&lang=en&cc=us for more info. Or simply work your way thru
www.hp.com to find it. There is a specific match of p/n (EZ453UA in my case, for my DV9005) that tells if your machine is included in the extended service. Right now I'm awaiting a shipping box from FEDEX to send the machine to HP for repair, which they said would take about 9 days. The phone number I called was 1-866-671-7362 (6a-11p MST, Sun thru Sat). The representative I got was a girl in the Philippines, but the chat was professional. She had me reseat the memory boards and the hard drive, all to no avail. I knew this wouldn't work because I had put the original 1GB memory back in, replacing the 2GB I had installed last Thanksgiving just to see if that was the problem. What I'm trying to find out now by scrounging thru the internet is the true nature of the hardware problem. It sort of smacks like power supply to crucial (aren't they all crucial?) circuits is faulty and the ability of the processor to execute instructions is kaput. In your case I really don't think your setting of powersave options will make any difference. I had my machine freeze just 2 minutes after booting! There's a weak piece of hardware, HP knows it, and will replace it free (shipping included) if your machine is in their list.
Tim O