Yeah I had similar issues. My old laptop (back venue I swore off HP, and one of the contributing reasons) had an issue where if you loaded an app and it needed memory that spanned both RAM chips… it would power cycle. Most users at the time reported the issue using Photoshop at the time so HP released a patch… that fixed it for Photoshop.
The actual issue lay in the Northbridge of he laptop and was a defect. HP refused to refund the laptop even though it was fairly early within the warranty period. Best I could do was run with one - slightly larger - stick of RAM than what the thing shipped with.