notebook freezing terribly -- even in safe mode.

[rav0n]

I got my new HP pavilion back in February and ever since I got it it's been freezing up. I can't leave it on for more than a half hour or so without touching it and it freezes. At first I figured I could deal with it, I'm used to dealing with difficult computers and I was just happy to have my own.. but then it started freezing up and once in a while when I tried to turn it back on it would bring me to a black screen with blue text saying it didn't even have an operating system. I'd leave it for a bit and restart it and suddenly windows would be back and it'd work fine. The freezing continued and then it started freezing while it was loading windows. I've tried restoring the system to a previous time a few times. Now it's gotten to the point where I can't turn it on without it freezing about a minute after the desktop has completely loaded. I don't even have time to open anything to try to find out what's wrong and it's doing this in every safe mode as well. I'm completely stuck on where to go from here. I don't even know how to restore it back to its original state if I can't even open the control panel before the laptop entirely freezes on me. And I mean freezes. The mouse doesn't move, the screen doesn't change, the time doesn't change. I can't do anything about it but hold down the power button to shut it off.

I'm really desperate for help or I wouldn't be here. I've been reading through forums for two days trying to find a solution.. so here I am. Any help would really be appreciated.

[DavidPK]

Hi,

Shutdown the notebook.  Tap away at f10 as you start the notebook to enter the bios menu.  Under the Advanced or Diagnostic tab you should find the facility to run tests on both the Hard Drive and Memory.  Post back with the details of any error messages.

Regards,

DP-K

[rav0n]

About 4% in to the Primary Hard Disk Self Test I got a pop up saying "Hard Disk 1 Quick (303)" to which I could only press enter. It didn't seem to complete the entire test, though, after that. The memory test completed without any problems.

[DavidPK · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Well that may well be the answer to your problem as a 303 error is a failure of the short HDD test - the only solution to this is to have the Hard Drive replaced.

You will need to contact HP and arrange to have the notebook repaired under warranty.

If you live in the US, contact HP Here.

If you are in another part of the world, start Here.

Regards,

DP-K

[rav0n]

Thank you.. what a bummer. What could have caused this?

[DavidPK]

Hi,

I know what you mean, but at least this happened while the machine is still under warranty ( although it's a straight forward procedure to replace the HDD and the drives are not expensive nowadays ).

Regarding why this happened, it's probably just bad luck - drives commonly last 3 - 5 years or longer but can fail after a month on rare occasions.

Hope you get it sorted out.

Regards,

DP-K