Screen Freeze

[Fuehrer]

I got my Touchsmart about 5 months ago and it started off just freezing up every now and then.  But now it does it daily.  I reset it to factory settings and it frozed up again 3 times within days.  HP only answer is for me to ship them my computer to see IF they can fix it.  I work off this computer and the down time will be longer due to the Holidays and closings.  I am not a happy camper.  I also have Itunes on my computer but it is not been open when the freezes happen.  I certainly hope they find the answer to this soon.  I guess I will try taking off my Itunes to see if they makes a difference.

[MarkJohnson]

My system is back to doing it randomly again.  Not sure what to do and I definately don't want to rma it back to dell.  Maybe I'll get brave and borrow my buddiess Vista DVD and bypass and the HP junk they pre-install and pray it works.  Otherwise I've got a sinking feeling I'lll have to rma this thing back eventually and soon.

Good luck everyone

-=Mark=-

ps. I have absolutely nothing plugged into my system either and only a handful of programs installed (no itunes at all)

[Touchsmartjon]

Hi all,

I too have a touchsmart (UK version) and seem to be experiencing the same problem. My computer's only a couple of months old and the only additional things I've installed on the computer is Red Alert 2, a trial of photoshop, itunes and Mcafee antivirus.

I'm not sure how to turn it off but itunes always starts on boot up. I tried to find an option to turn this off but I could not. I've deselected HP startup now (thanks for the tip) and will see if that helps the situation.

Given that it seems to have all started recently or at least more frequently recently, perhaps we should compare versions of itunes. 8.0.1.11

Jon

[MarkJohnson]

OK, I upgraded to latest BIOS as lockups were getting worse.  well, BIOS update just made things worse.  It locks up so ofetn I can even read email anymore.  I finally bit the bullet and RMAed it back to HP.  They sent a return box for me to send it to them in and they also sent a prepaid shipping label so it didn't cost me anything.  well, except time.  They said it would take about two weeks.

Here's to no delays

-=Mark=-

[Touchsmartjon]

Thanks Mark, please let us know how things get one.

I contacted HP support and the live help assistant asked me to go through my msconfig startup list and be practically removed everything apart from the bear essentials. Touch wood... it's only frozen once since making the change (about 2 weeks ago) but now I'm afraid to install anything on my computer!

[doon]

Folks,

this sounds like what my computer did before it died (hard drive stopped showing up in BIOS). Read my tale of woe here:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=TouchSmartPC&thread.id=287

Chances are you drive might be affected, too. If your hard drive is a Seagate ST3500620AS with firmware HP24, do a back up ASAP!!! Get a back-up drive or use an online service (like Carbonite) to get your data safe.

This is the official statement form Seagate:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

but DO NOT use the firmware upgrade from them. HP has its own version of the drive. Hang in there and hope that HP releases their firmware fix soon.

[Fuehrer]

Well, I ended up having to ship mine back.  It was a nightmare.  But they took off the operating system put a new one on and did all the updates and shipped it back to me.  Long short they didn't figure it out they are just hoping this fixed whatever it is.  I have Itunes 64 which I guess could be running in the background.  But as far as it freezing up only once was I actually using my Itunes.  So far no freezes but it has only been a few days. 

[MarkJohnson]

I finally had to RMA my IQ506 Tuchsmart.  I got the same one back and they didn't seem to work on it.  All they did was restore Vista to the original install and updated the BIOS to V5.07.  The newest one is 5.04 on their website, so try calling tech support to see if you can get V5.07 BIOS to try and see if it fixes your problems.

also, my first IQ507 was returned a little over two weeks with a bad hard drive and OfficeMax exchanged us a new one.  This one has a Hitachi as my old one did.   Not sure if they exchaged it, but I did test it before the RMA and it passed no problem.

If anyone knows how to save this BIOS I can upload it for you to try out if you have trouble getting 5.07 from HP .

Good luck

-=Mark=-

[doon]

as a matter of fact, you can back up the BIOS.

I just tried this with my PC (TouchSmart IQ506). I went to the American Megatrends site and downloaded their Flash utility. Once unzipped, there was a folder with an older version of the flash tool. I used that and was able to save my BIOS version to a .bin file.

if you could try that, that would be awesome.

thanks!

[JTatt]

HELP! We bought out TouchScreen 506 on December 22nd. In 2 weeks the touchscreen stopped working and it started freezing up. I've had to call 7 times since we bought the computer to troubleshoot it. It's been nothing but problems. It still has been freezing up at least twice a day. Finally it CRASHED today! HP support had to walk me through a complete recovery. The support team was great but this is nonsense for a computer less than 2 months old! I'm told there's nothing wrong with the PC itself......until the next problem. I can't return this either.