TouchScreen 506 Crashed in less than 2 months!

[JTatt]

HELP! We bought out TouchScreen 506 on December 22nd but wasn't opened until Christmas. 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.

[JimT]

others have also reported crashes, some have identified the issue to be itunes, otheres have disabled the virus software and for some others have lost their drive from a known issue.

you need to be more specific when you mention crashes, does it crash with a blue screen, or does it reboot or does it hang, there are many more definitions to what a crash could mean.  this is why you need to be a little more specific and describe how it crashes and what happens when it does crash...

anyway, hope that the recovery has helped to settle your PC now...

[Wekam]

Welcome to the club. I bought mine in late November, it is the worst computer I have ever owned, and I have been using computers since 1980. Outside of the early DOS based machines, I generally purchased either Gateway or Dell. I then began to build my own machines. This time around I decided to go with an HP due to great service from their printers and laptops. This is nothing but a glorified, low end laptop, with a big screen, not at all upgradeable, onboard video, and audio, of the lowest caliber.

In all fairness, the Vista operating system is of no help, and to make matters worse, it is the x64 bit version.

The touchscreen is the gimmick that grabs you, the actual touch software is a joke.

It is usable, as long as you don't try to do any real serious computing, it is terrible at multitasking. I wish I could say something nice about it, because I am also stuck with one.

My solution was to buy Nortons Ghost, and make a drive image to an external hard drive, so everytime it goes down, I just let it rebuild itself.

Good Luck, Windows 7, may help this memory hog out, I don't think I will have mine that long.......

[JimT]

well i got mine around the same time as you, i liked the fact that it was all integrated into the back of the monitor which suites my situation exceptionally fine.  i don't think with vista touch screen technology, it is good enough, maybe with how win7 is developing it might be a different story.  so i had no high hopes on touchsmart to begin with.  Windows x64 is used so that the full 4GB ram is addressable, as you mentioned the touchsmart software is a hog...

my overall experience though is that i am fortunate that i did not come across any h/w related issues, (not yet anyway) some minor niggling issues with touchsmart software, (but i didn't expect much to begin with so my expectation wasn't so high) if i do have any h/w related issues then i'm happy to have the thing returned to base for repairs as long as they don't take an extraordinary time to fix or resolve what ever it might be...

but one thing I noticed and actioned almost straight out of box while setting up the pc was removing the anti-virus software and not installing itunes (no need to as I don't own an itune gizmo thinga-mi-bob).  I believe this in itself saved me lots of problems down the track.  I am very cautious when opening email and attachments and when it comes to installing software and even when i save crucial data, i always make a backup copy to my NAS.   I've had some 3rd party software related issues in that the company doesn't yet support x64 so that i can't blame the PC for...

all-in-all my experience has been very good...

however back on track with the first post in this thread, you need to try and narrow down why your pc was freezing up, you need to know what things you have installed in those 2 months and if you installed itunes or any virus softweare, you need to try and temporarily disable them to see if that helps to settle the PC and from there you might then figure out what could be causing the problem - there are many other techniques in troubleshooting issues like these but what i'm suggesting is a starting point for you to try...

[doon]

Please check your hard drive type (check in BIOS). Likely, you have a Seagate drive (ST3500620AS from the 7200.11 Barracuda series).

If do and can still boot, make a back up of your data ASAP. You may not to be able to boot for much longer. Creating your recovery disks may not do anything for you with regards to your data, it just lets you create CDs with the restore software currently found on the restore partition.

If you can't even see the drive in BIOS, you might indeed have the same issue I and others have. Your data is still there. This drive is affected by a serious firmware bug which HP needs to address (Seagate already has on their website).

please provide more info so we can help you further.

cheers!

[Wekam]

Thanks for the heads up regarding the hard drive problem, I haven't experienced that yet, but I flashed it anyway, sort of a prophylactic

If anyone is interested in obtaining the firmware, here is the link  http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/firmware/MooseDT-SD1A-2D-8-16-32MB.ISO .

Just burn the  ISO, boot from the CD, and flash the drive, be sure to pick the correct the drive, there  are three options, you want the second one.

Message Edited by Wekam on 02-10-2009 08:05 PM

[lizard]

I also got deceived into buying an IQ506 (and an IQ504)

It is, without a doubt, the worst computer, out of the box, I have ever owned....

As mentioned, the Vista software just makes it twice as bad....

My browser locks up somewhere between 10 and 50 times a day, requiring restarts  (Wife's IQ504 does not have this problem, but her's has HD issues)

There are so many things, apps, programs and websites this thing cannot handle, I have my 4 year old XP machine set back up, so when this junker doesn't work, I go to old reliable.

A simple example is, (I have an iPhone) this IQ506 will not allow me to schedule an appointment with an Apple rep in the store.  Just won't get thru the reservation form, locks up everytime.

Oh well, live and learn......

Waiting for Windows 7 and drivers for this clunker...

[killerlane]

Hi, I had the same problem with my 506 so HP had me send it back to their service dept. HP changed my HD & sent the unit back to me at which time I found that when they closed the unit after installing the HD they damaged the case. I called & informed them of this situation & they sent me the part for me to install myself what nerve they damaged it & they wanted me to install it. The unit lasted about 2 months & then the same problem started happening I called them & they directed me to return the unit back to service dept. Two weeks later they sent me a new unit. Everything was fine until I started hearing a whining  noise 2 months  later. This time  I decided to replace  the HD myself & also  decided to install windows 7. So far 5 months  later & everything is running fine. The only problem I do have is that  I was unable to make the restore  disk & lost all my programs that were on vista.