Solved! Laptop turning off by itself & Short Drive Self-Test Failure

Nov 7, 2018
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Hi.. I have been having problems for a while with my laptop just turning off by itself.. It just completely shuts off, doesn't do the shut down process and doesn't restart.
Before it was occasionally and usually only when laptop was idle, but the past week it is doing it constantly, to point it's unusable.
I checked the power settings, all is fine. I have used it plugged in and unplugged and plugged in with the battery taken out, still does it, so I've ruled out the battery.
I checked for viruses, no problems there.
I restored windows to see if that would solve the issue but for some reason that failed at the end, so then I had no operating system installed.. I reinstalled a clean copy of windows but still doing the same thing.
(I left the computer on for long periods of time when windows wasn't installed and it never shut down once, don't know if that means anything..)
I took the bottom off the laptop and gave the fan a little clean just incase it was overheating, although the laptop doesn't get really hot so I don't think it is that.

I ran a quick test in Hardware Diagnositcs and:
'Short Drive Self-Test failed - U0DXJ4-75799E-XD7WMF-60R813

From a google search and some help I had from a few people I understand that means my hard drive is failing?

I want to know if anyone has any idea what could be causing my laptop to be turning off and is it likely to be the hard drive causing it to do that?
I felt for sure it was the hard drive after doing the test but I've since been told by a friend that they don't think the hard drive would cause that problem.

Also, if it's not the hard drive, how urgent is it really to replace the hard drive? Once failing, do they die quickly or am I best the just wait until it finally conks?

Just trying to save money right now, hoping to solve this without taking it to a repair tech.. but looks like I'm going to have to.

HP Notebook-15-ac153sa (ENERGY STAR)
Product number: P0U73EA

So sorry for the REALLY long post! Any help and advice is greatly appreciated! :)

Leanne
 
Solution
A system shutting down randomly is often a motherboard issue, but it may be other things. If the drive has errors, best thing to do is replace it. It will rule out the drive as the cause of the shutdowns. You can try different RAM also or one RAM stick at a time if you have more than one.
A system shutting down randomly is often a motherboard issue, but it may be other things. If the drive has errors, best thing to do is replace it. It will rule out the drive as the cause of the shutdowns. You can try different RAM also or one RAM stick at a time if you have more than one.
 
Solution