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[Bubs]

I got this 2008 laptop from sort of a sketchy origin. Basically, it was an almost brand new laptop that was owned by an acquaintance of my father. The guy just went to jail for some rather substantial charges, and he requested that we retrieve his items and use them as we want - he just didn't want any of it to sit and rot.

This left me with a HP Pavillion laptop with a Windows Vista operating system. However, the gentleman ran a data-scrubber before he went down, which completely removed everything - including the operating system.

So, I ordered an OEM recovery disc from HP, and installed it. Failed the first time, apparently that happens from time to time. So, I installed it again and it seemed to go just fine. However, I finished setting up the system and now I can log in and access the desktop. The system continued installing all of the extra features and seemed ready to go.

Within thirty seconds of accessing the desktop, the system shuts down for no apparent reason. It doesn't just black out, it stops what it's doing and goes to the shutdown dialogue. There is no way to avert it.

I'm not paying HP $50 for them to tell me what's wrong with the computer, any of you gents have a guess? Or, should I take this shiny new laptop out back and shoot it?

In the meantime, I grabbed the data scrubbing software from the laptop case and am running the longest, most detailed data scrub option available, and I will attempt to reinstall the software when it is done.

Footnotes:
Laptop is basically brand new in physical condition
All basic functions of the computer seem to operate as designed
Laptop had no operating system - data scrubbing software removed it
Tested harddrive through BIOS, passed both simple and detailed tests
Installed OEM operating system, correct operating system confirmed by serial number
Successfully installed all software and extra features
Computer automatically shuts down within 30 seconds of desktop access

[khat17]

Try booting in Safe-Mode and let us know if the same thing happens.

Just for testing purposes please download a Linux distro such as Ubuntu and boot with that for us to see if the problem is OS related or hardware. Most likely it is OS related still.

*EDIT*
I kinda just scanned through it previously and didn't see that little detail - automatically shuts down after 30 seconds.

Is this after installing drivers and going online?

At 26 seconds press the WINDOWS key on your keyboard and R > WIN+R < and then type CMD. From there quickly type "shutdown -a" without the quotes. If it still goes down after 30 seconds then it may not be an OS problem and may be a heating issue. Try with the Linux disc at this point.

This post has been edited by khat17 on Jul 22 2010, 05:41 AM