Two years later, a random, hopeless e9105z PC from Hewlett Packard with continual freezes.

Question

I posted a message over a year ago with no luck, and wanted to see if a second posting would give any advice.
In short, my PC freezes randomly, with no predictability or triggering events.  The only thing that happens is the system locks up, the mouse pointer is frozen on the screen, and the system is essential unuseable.  All I can do is a hard power down.
Over the 100+ freezes I've had, here are some odd things that have happened:
(1) Around 30% of the time, pressing F8 to run system diagnostics fixes the problem.  When I run system diagnostics, 90% of the time, the system comes back perfectly clean.
(2) Of the times that systems diagnostics has been run, here are the errors that have been found:
--several times, it warned me that my Western Digital 640GB HDD was about to fail
--two times, it warned me that I had no boot path
--two times, it warned me that my Intel X-25M SSD was on the fritz
(3) Sometimes I can turn back on and be okay, other times, I have gotten something to the extent of 'boot sector missing, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reset'
(4) system has been unplugged/replugged several times, motherboard dusted off, SATA connectors unplugged/replugged, etc.
(5) the system sometimes will fully boot up in Safe Mode, other times it just freezes up during the initialization.  when it does hang in Safe Mode, it does not get hung up on the same file twice.  
(6) For Windows Update, the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller June 2009 driver update crashes my system.  I have to do a system restore.  This update is hidden/disabled in the Windows Update profile
Recently the freezes are happening once every 1-3 minutes every time I turn on.  They used to go once every 2 months, then maybe once every 2 weeks.  Tonight, oddly enough, my computer has worked for over an hour without problem.
HP's tech support has been useless.  It seems like they are more or less following a flow chart that has little applicability to this situation.  Telling me that my printer and Microsoft keyboard were the problems.  (Really?  Am I that stupid?)  They succeeded in gringing me down over the phone.  And besides, I'm out of warranty.  
Is this most likely a bad motherboard, or an NVIDIA chipset bug, or a Windows 7 compatibility issue?  I have no idea where to start (or end) in this problem.
My configuration:
Win7 clean install
6GB memory (Stock)
Phenom II X4 945 (stock)
Intel X-25M primary/boot 
Western Digital 640GB HDD (stock)
Microsoft mouse
Microsoft keyboard
A printer that is hooked up about 30% of the time (Lexmark X8350 POS)
Any help is appreciated.  
Thanks,
--Geoff Miller
Ottawa Canada

Answer 1

I am having a similar issue with random freezes/hangs as many posts with my Pavilion Elite m9350f that I bought a year ago or so.  I have automatic update turned on and have gone to HP and MSFT sites to ensure all drivers/software are current.  I have also attempted to clear the fan and heat sinks of lint.
This has been a chronic issue since the PC was new that has good days and bad.  On good days I will not see a crash at all.  Bad days, the PC will randomly hang every 5 minutes or so EVEN when cold, while in BIOS setup, and operating in safe mode.  The software applications I use don’t seem to be relevant (they are limited to Office Pro 2010 and StarCraft II).  The typical “crash” is a hang that freezes the display and all user I/O.  USB ports will often power down (laser mouse light will often turn off as does PS2 keyboard).  I also don’t hear the buzz of the hard drive (it appears to spin down).  I do hear the fans even after a hang.  A power cycle is needed to reboot and bring the PC back online.
The ‘crashes” seem to corrupt data on the HD.  As a workaround to fixing this issue, I reinstalled/repaired Vista several times because as time from install increased, it seemed bad days became more prevalent.  Then, three months ago, because the PC crashed too hard to reload/repair vista, I installed Windows 7 and replaced the hard drive.  When I attempted to attach the faulty hard drive as a secondary drive, my PC would not boot (faulty drive was confirmed?). 
Now with the new OS and HD, I am seeing the same problem again.  Like you I am running out of ideas.  I took the PC in for troubleshooting with the GeekSquad where they kept it for a week (three days longer than planned) to run several virus scans and hardware diagnosis programs.  All test passed.  The tech claimed to not duplicate a crash so I thought maybe it was my keyboard and mouse.  I bought new keyboard and mouse on the way out of the shop.  When I got home, the hangs continued…another bad day.  The event log recorded several crashes while the PC was in the shop…I hate being told lies.
My PC Event viewer logs close to 50,000 events most of which mean absolutely nothing to me.  I am unable to find events that appear prior to the 41 and 6008 recovery error notices that might signal a cause.  However, I am getting many instances of Event ID 12 with indicates “The platform firmware has corrupted memory across the previous system power transition.  Please check for updated firmware for your system.”  I assume this means to look for an update to motherboard BIOS?  I am working on finding the right BIOS now.  I don’t believe it likely a BIOS update will fix the hang issue.
Reading through the forums, I see this issue on many different PC models configured with many variants of software.  Like you I don’t have my PC working correctly yet.  Maybe we just need to accept that we bought a lemon and start replacing parts?  I’m thinking power supply and motherboard…