HP Probook 4510s/Linux-- Random Shutdown Fix

I recently aquired an HP Probook 4510s from a friend. It's a couple years old, but it's pretty solid businesslike style laptop, and in my experience business computers tend to be very reliable, despite that most companies will ditch them after only 3 years. This computer originally came with Vista (yuck), and my friend had been running Ubuntu 12.04. Although this model was offered with OpenSuse Linux as well, it seems that there were intentional bugs in the bios, so it would work almost run perfectly on Linux. I say intentional because that's what I've deduced from examining the ACPI tables that the bios gives Linux, and it collaborates with research I've done as well.

When I first received the computer, I had problems with the machine randomly shutting down on me. (I updated it to Ubuntu 14.04). It was not overheating, and upon examining the dmesg logs I was unable to determine what the cause was, except that I kept seeing messages warning me that the bios was broken, and telling to find an ACPI driver. The random shutdowns are seriously irritating, and eventually the hard disc fried on me, so I had to replace it. I bought a new battery, after doing God knows how many software adjustments, and the issue seemed to have resolved, so I attributed it to a bad battery. However, that is not the case.

I recently reinstalled the OS in order to have an encrypted disk setup with LVM, and to put Ubuntu Gnome on it because Unity sucks and the code is cleaner, the system is less glitchy, and the CPU idles around 5% vs 16% running Gnome over a Unity install. But then the random shutdowns started to happen again! So I set out to figure out which software configuration had fixed the problem. I think I found the solution.

This device has an Intel chipset, with a Core2duo processor and Intel integrated graphics processor. There is now an open source tool available from Intel for identifying and upgrading your graphics driver. This is pretty ground-breaking stuff, because although Intel has always been nicer to the open source community than say, AMD, it's still a rough road when you have driver problems with Linux, as you are often left at the compete mercy of the hardware OEM. But Intel is getting with the times. Anyway, I believe that upgrading the GPU driver fixes this problem! Upgrading the bios did not fix it, and the only drivers I've updated have been the GPU. It's been 7 days since I did the reinstall, and about 4 days since I updated the intel driver's again, and I have been running random shutdown free!

I hope that this helps someone. Please do not go back to Windows because of these issues, leave me a message or check the forums and either I or someone will help you. Going back to Windows is exactly what Microsucks wants people to do. I say f--- that.