Bad motherboard, or...?

[Frustrated99123]

Bought my p7-1254 about 3 months  ago. Almost immediately i started noticing random hang times and freezes. Chrome would crash, but i attributed that to a buggy 64bit edition. Sometimes pulling up a file would take 15min. I saw the writing on the wall and bought 2 brand new 1tb hard drives just in case, and some dvds to back up my data.

Well, last weekend the HD failed as expected. Wouldnt restart, couldnt run restore, DPS returned Error 7.

Called HP, and the super helpful (not) tech guided me through the usual "is the computer on?" timewasters. Eventually he came to the same conclusion i did and transferred me to his sup. Sup authorized a new HD, but insisted I send my HD back to them or get charged. Um, no.... It has my personal info on it, and work info. Not happening. I had him just send me the restore discs instead and ill use one of my two that i was going to use in a RAID.

Got the restore discs, replaced the stock drive and... Restore stuck at 70% for hours. Then it gave Error 0xe0ef0003 and couldnt complete, indicative of a bad hd. Fine, maybe I got a bricked brand new HD, it happens... So I installed my second brand new unused HD and guess what...?

Same thing. 

So, i checked out this forum, found out that the restore getting stuck is about as common as the cold, and downloaded the cyberlink fix to allow the restore to work with new discs that NOBODY decided to tell me about over the phone (or is indicated in the packaging). Tried with both hard drives again, and both did the same... Stuck at exactly 70% and then the error. Oh, and now they both also throw the DPS error 7.

So, what are the chances that two unrelated brand new HDs are bad and fail in the same spot? Or, is it something like the mobo needing to be replaced? I'd rather shell out another couple hundred to build my own rig from scratch rather than go without a computer for weeks while this gets sent back on warranty...first and last HP product, for sure. Any help would be great, thanks.

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

If the power button is flashing red 7 times then it's system board issue.  No sense doing the below if this is the case.

Windows 7 64 bit?

RAID 0 or RAID 1 or non-RAID?

Make and model of the new hard drives?

Go into the bios and change the Storage ---> Storage Options to AHCI.               This is non-RAID.

Download KillDISK boot CD and format the hard drive. (connect only one hard drive)

Down a copy of the Windows 7 64 iso and see if it will install. Windows7 download from My Digital Life Site via DigitalRiver.  You will need to use a product like Imgburn to burn it to a DVD+R.

[Frustrated99123]

Stock computer as indicated.

Bought Windows 7 from Best Buy and installed without an issue.

HP, you've lost another customer.