G62 series laptops with lockup / freezing / pausing / delayed response / not responding

[flenk]

This particular model is a - G62-452SA

6 months or so of working OK then very strange behaviour with  lockups / freezing / pausing / delayed response / not responding.

Tried a million things most of which are suggested in the forums etc. none worked.

Reinstall Win 7 from the HP recovery - NO

Complete Partition delete - install freshly with known good original OEM Windows 7 disc - NO

BIOS upgrade - NO

Memory swapout - NO

Different drivers - NO

Windows update - NO

No Windows update - NO

Even installed XP Pro instead but got exactly the same behaviour straight away.

Tearing my hair out, about to throw it against the wall.

Took out Toshiba Hard Drive (MK3261GSYN) replaced it with Seagate (ST9500420AS).

Reinstalled Windows 7 from the OEM disc as now I couldn't install from the HP image as I'd deleted it.

No strange behaviour.

Very carefully and slowly installed all the relevant drivers one by one making sure I made system restore points.

No strange behaviour.

CCleaner and 3rd party Disk Defrag.

Windows Update about a third of the "Critical" updates at a time.

Still no strange behaviour.

Service Pack 1 from Windows Update.

Still no strange behaviour.

Did all of the remaining Windows Updates.

Still no strange behaviour.

Installed various programs utilities etc.

Still no strange behaviour.

Reinstated all the data, e-mail etc. etc.

Still no strange behaviour.

Everything is working exactly as it should, with speed and without any strangeness at all.

So in this case, at least, changing the hard drive for a different make / manufacturer completely solved the problem.

I would be very interested to know if other people have a G62 series with a Toshiba had drive in that displays the sort of problems mentioned.

I hope this helps someone.