Thanks for your feed back.
Sadly, this HP laptop, has issues with it’s battery and keyboard, according to help sites.
The solution is to remove the battery...and put it back.
That actually worked, until it became so frequent that I got a USD Keyboard.
It won’t run without the battery in place.
It won’t run on the battery alone.
I do think, after cleaning up a boat load of programs that it is a power issue.
Did I mention that I HATE VISTA ?
I’ve taken the battery out and cleaned the contacts.
Heat and power is my gut, but the OS seems to be complicating my efforts to find a solution.
It’s a “Strange disposition” that I find myself in.
Go on amazon and look for a replacement battery. I found a very good one for my old Lenovo, relatively inexpensive and has given me good service.
The keyboard on it died also, so, I also us a USB, but, I am thinking of getting a replacement keyboard. It still works great, got it running Windows 7 now.
As for Vista, it will not work well without 2 gig of memory. I have had 2 gig in all of my vista computers with good service. No complaints at all. I really like Vista. Found it to be very stable with at least 2 gig of memory.
Going back to the Linux discussion, have any of you guys tried Koppix on a flash drive? I have had that working quite well in the past. When the hard drive died in the before mentioned Lenovo, I ran it first off of Koppix on a CD then on a flash drive. It was a great stop gap.
That is messed up. I do not know of a single laptop I have ever worked on that was not designed to work without the batt in place. They ALL work on 110 ONLY. I would be HIGHLY suspicious that your power supply is not creating enough juice... check the voltage at the output end.
Did I mention that I HATE VISTA ?
*shrugs* I never had a problem with Vista - Under the hood, there is very little difference between Vista and Seven. I like Seven a bit better, no doubt, but I have no complaint against Vista - My main Test Bench is still running Vista, and it runs like a top.
I’ve taken the battery out and cleaned the contacts.
Not meaningful, really, as the machine is approaching old age, and I would suspect the batt has, or is close to reaching it's limit. Especially if it was never allowed to cycle.
Heat and power is my gut [...]
Heat doesn't make a lot of sense - overheating will make it sluggish and freeze, not PowerOff. Memory would likely make it BSOD and reboot... Sudden Death is almost invariably power, providing the fans are turning...
[...] but the OS seems to be complicating my efforts to find a solution.
Then boot it into bios and see how long it runs there... Buy a cheap used drive and load DOS on it, and see how it runs that... Linux Live CDs too...
Rule number one is necessarily to prove the hardware. I always do that from outside of the native OS BECAUSE it aids in the process of elimination once I get into software diagnoses. SO the OS is not in the way at all. In your case, I would have had the hdd and dvd drive out already... anything at all that can be eliminated would be out of the box just to prove that they aren't the problem... If it is still busted without the BATT, KB, MOUSE, ATAPI, and SATA/IDE, then all of those things are *not* the primary problem. Just sayin...