Used HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop Quirks

[rkoenn]

I just bought an HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop with NVidia1050 video and it arrived looking good. It is an AMD Ryzen 3550U so a big step up from my old HP I3. I made sure it was working and he sent it so the NVME SSE started a Windows 11 install at powerup. It went through that fine although it seemed rather slow. Anyway it appeared OK. I switched out the 245GB SSD with a WD 1TB and the wireless adapter with wif96/Bluetooth adapter. I then did a clean windows 11 install and all went fine albeit slowly. When I started using it I found it was constantly stalling, just no response for a few seconds a couple of times a minute, very frustrating. I did all kinds of things software wise and it continued. I checked the cooling fans and they are working., I finally got so frustrated I requested a return/refund which the seller agreed to. One final thing though after that was I knew it had two different brands and speeds of 8GB DDR4 memory sticks. So I pulled one out. Since then it has run actually what seems quicker and no more stalling. I am now thinking it. I would buy a couple of 16GB matched memory sticks and don't mind. But one final thing is the display doesn't seem to get as bright as I am used to and doesn't seem to be controllable. I am going to see if there is something not set up right but I know backlights can and do fail and are a pain to repair. The memory thing still bothers me but seems t have been the problem. Has anyone ever had any experience with mismatched memory sticks causing such an odd problem?

 

[rkoenn]

I spent some time working with this machine and discovered one very odd thing. When he shipped it to me he did not include a charger. My old laptop, 10+ years, was HP and I had a generic charger I used with it. It worked so I used it and didn't think twice. While troubleshooting when I pulled out the second memory stick it apparently jostled the charger connector and it wasn't charging. So it continued working basically fine without the freeze problem which I credited to the mismatched memory. Then I noticed that the charger wasn't connecting and pushed it in further so it was. After I noticed even with 1 memory stick it started freezing again! I made a connection and now am further testing. Right now I have typed all this with both memory sticks with nary a problem but the charger unplugged! Go figure, it has something to do with my replacement charger! So it is working freeze wise nicely but the screen is still very low brightness I am going to see if I can correct that and if not will be returning it Monday. But for all you geeks who troubleshoot keep this in your problems data bank, one of the oddest quirks in all my years of computer work and servicing and one I fortunately stumbled on.

 

[rkoenn]

And another note just now, I plugged the charger back in and for 10 minutes of browsing all seemed fine albeit maybe slower. I then opened CCleaner to uninstall some MS bloatware from this new Windows 11 and noticed the uninstall operation and moving the highlight up and down the list was very slow. So I unplugged the charger and suddenly things were normal again, quick and responsive. Now what in the heck would a generic charger be doing to cause this to happen? It is simply power in although I have seen in the past a machine "know" what brand charger was being used, or at least that it wasn't an "official" Dell or whatever it was. Just a scheme to charge high prices for inexpensive generic hardware aka Apple.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe it is throttling the system due to being a generic charger, and not knowing how many watts the laptop can safely pull, but it could be the "power Profile", which generally has a section for "on battery Power" and "on AC power", for settings such as "CPU performance" and "backlight brightness". Might want to check those out (but don't burn out your generic charger).

 

[rkoenn]

A final report that I am keeping the laptop and have resolved all the issues. First off as the memory issue and freezes appear to be fixed and even with this generic charger the HP BIOS didn't like. Next Windows 11 did not automatically install the Vega 8 Integrated video drivers so I did and suddenly the screen control works fine and the screen looks great as well as the machine being more responsive and text better. Now I will upgrade to 2x16 GB DDR4 and keep it. I'm glad I kept plugging away at it and I think 80% of the buying public never would have. Oh, I also lost the GTX1050 in device manager but downloaded NVidia drivers and after installation it was back and is the primary video. It is a nice machine and a good price and I hate to deal with returns so now I am keeping it very happily.