HP random shutoffs

[Theslowone]

I have a cheap HP pavilion ze4500 that keeps shutting down. It only does it when no one is at it, but it can take anywhere from 10 minutes or a day, but it will just shut down.

Few specs its running windows xp home sp2, 512 ram, celeron cpu, plugged in and batt in.
After we restart it, it sometimes comes up with ipconfig fail error, so we disconnected the cat5 cable from it but still no luck. I have changed all the settings in power management to portray a desktop, but that didn't work either. Norton doesn't pick up anything, and I have all(I think spyware and adware) off of it.

If anyone can point me in the right direction i would be much appreciative.

Thanks.


EDIT: probably should of posted in tech support.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Sounds like overheating/bad PSU in laptop. Have you tried running the system with a clean drive? For example do you have a external HDD that you can hook up, Bypass the whole system (Internal HDD) and boot from the external? If you can just install XP for example on that drive and try running the system. If it continues I would assume its one of the problems listed above. Could also possibly be a bad power adapter, your probably going to have to send in the laptop if all tests pass (If does it even with the clean install). Good luck!