At the end of last year I got this:
HP Pavilion Elite e9280t PC
* • Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
* • Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-920 processor [2.66GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache]
* • 8GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
* • 2TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s – two 1TB hard drives
* • 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
* • LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
* • Integrated 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet, No wireless LAN
* • 15-in-1 memory card reader, 1 USB, 1394, audio
* • Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
HP 2159m 21.5″ Diagonal Full HD Widescreen LCD Monitor
4-year HP Care Pack House Call Service for HP Pavilion Elite or MS200 Desktop PC
I turned it on. A minute later during Windows setup the screen went black. A balloon popped up that the video driver had stopped responding and recovered. This continued periodically – sudden black screen then the message about the video driver. I went to the Nvidia site and downloaded the most recent driver. This stopped the black screen. Then it proceeded to crash every time I went full screen on anything – black screen, had to hard restart. Plus it just randomly froze when I opened or dragged a window. Unresponsive. I discovered this thread which proved I was not alone.
I fought with HP on the phone. Only the lowest level of customer service ever answers the phone. I tried chat. Same thing. I tried email, got one stupid reply, complained about it, then got a couple of actual replies and convinced them there was a problem. They came and replaced the motherboard. No difference. They replaced the video card. No difference. It continued to crash randomly when I opened or dragged a window. I don’t even try to watch video full screen any more. At the end of last week I downloaded the fifth new driver in four months.
Waiting for the next freeze.
Refund time, item sold has proven to be “not fit for purpose”
If the motherboard and graphics card still crash after being replaced… Perhaps it’s a power supply unit issue? Kind of running out of things to replace though.
Could be. It took days of my time to convince them to replace the motherboard, then more time to get them to replace the video card. If I call again I will get the morons who’s response to everything is “You have to reload Windows”. Ugh. I’m hoping the last video driver update took care of it.
wow… this sucks! The specs look like a great machine but it’s terrible that you’ve had such issues. I really hope you can find the cause and get it fixed. Guess it’s good you got the longer warranty!
Hey jeannie,
I have predecessor to that HP Pavilion (m8523) and had only one issue with it that I am hoping a new Hard Drive will fix. From day one at least once a week it goes crazy accessing the Hard Drive and I can’t use it again until it stops. I reinstalled Windows, upgraded to 7 and it still happens. Between you, Molly Wood and myself and who ever else is having issues I would say that HP needs to improve quality control and provide real customer service.
Trying to find drivers & updates on their site is an exercise in futility too.
André Aka Androne
I have been hearing A LOT of bad things about HP of late… kind of sad really since they used to be 2nd only to Dell as the best on the Windows OS side. What happened to them? Dell had been #1 in Windows PCs (even rivaling Apple/Mac) for ages but then they kinda fell in customer service pretty poorly a couple of years back. Now they are back at the top again because they apparently managed to fix whatever went wrong.
Let’s hope HP can do the same.
In the meantime, assuming you are far past the point of returning for a refund by now, hold onto that warranty and monitor it’s expiration closely… you may actually want to consider an extended one. Normally I would NEVER say that about a desktop (or cheap netbook) – but my God gknee! You have been put through torture!
Stupid question time: When they replaced the motherboard, did they replace the CPU as well, or just mount the old one on the new board?
Memory’s another possibility, obviously, and the PSU as Morn suggested.
Or it could still be the motherboard. Wouldn’t be the first time they replaced a faulty motherboard with a different faulty one. Especially if the problem is common to this particular model.
Man, all that time we spent picking it out. What a let down.