A couple of years ago I bought an HP Media Center from Best Buy, I think it was. A demo model. I got it at a nice discount.
When I got it home I immediately started updating all of Microsoft’s stuff, Service Pack 1 and patches for every damn thing I never heard of, and installed Microsoft Office (licensed to use on home PC via corporate contract) and lots of other stuff. I had a lot of hours invested in this PC. Those updates ran dead slow.
Then, lo and behold, while browsing around on IE on the Internet, the cursor freezes. The keyboard is unresponsive, the mouse won’t work, even the power supply button doesn’t do anything. The only way to reset it was to pull the plug from the wall. With all the hours I had put into this damn thing, I didn’t want to go to the “recovery disk”, which would be a total brain wipe. So, I lived with it. Sometimes I reset it this way a half dozen times in a day; sometimes, not at all. It happens more if I’m going to video, but sometimes it will freeze when opening simple text pages.
Freezes on Firefox, too. If something is playing through the speakers, it locks onto one tone: “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”
I noticed also that the power management doesn’t work… if it goes into hibernation, it never comes out. You have to yank the cord out of the wall. It means this thing runs 24 hours a day, and I don’t dare use any power conservation features.
Anybody know what’s up with this stupid box? Anybody know what needs to be enabled/disabled? Or do I just have to go to the recovery disk and re-initialize the system?
