The two primary causes for freezing are heat and bad memory. Hard drives can also be a problem but apparently rick ruled that out in his case.

If your setup is not getting good air circulation such as being mounted under a counter in tight quarters or on a desk - such as mine with a roll top - heat can build up and cause it to lock up.

In some cases a bad RAM (memory) module can cause freezups as well.

From a hardware standpoint, bad drivers can be an issue. There was a short period of time a couple days ago that a "finepoint touchscreen" driver showed up as a windows update on several of my non touchscreen computers. Knowing that they were not touch screens I unchecked the download and later in the day the download disappeared from windows update. I read a tech article about it the other day too and will try to find it to see if that may be causing your problem.

Have you tried to install any hardware drivers of your own? Any programs lately?

Thanks,

David

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l299/xz550rj/HPMagicGiveaway.jpg

Woohoo! I won my Touchsmart!

Just wanted to let you know that 2 days after I got my computer back, it is having the same problems. First is starts locking up, then it starts freezing. Then when you restart, Windows doesn't load. Tried to do a restore and it worked for about 1/2 hour. Now, I am right back to where I started with a computer that doesn't work. I use my computer everyday and this is becoming a hassel. Either it doesn't work and I can't use it, or I will have to send it back, AGAIN, and I won't have it. As for poor air circulation...it sits on a desk with no obstructions to the back. Don't know what else to do with it, but the down time is killing me.

Well I just picked my IQ816 up last week and shortly after all the updates it too was freezing up. For some reason the registry editor was running and my TouchSmart Notes was being deleted. I did a couple of restores to try and get the application running to no avail.
What I noticed was that the computer was running just fine. I tried to crash it and was not successful (that is a good thing).
Nest I got ahold of HP Support and they showed me how to get Notes back and yes the computer started freezing again. I went and uninstalled HP TouchSmart Notes and my IQ is running fine. The Windows hand writing still works and I am Ok with tmy fix.
If you don't need to use the HP TouchSmart Notes then this might help until HP comes up with a better solution.

Lost in my own little world, Randy

Yes, I did turn off the auto start for the HP TS, in fact I uninstalled the "HP TouchSmart 2.0" program from the computer (it can be reinstalled by the "Recovery Manager" if and when I need or want to use it).

I am using the side bar and have the CPU gadget on and can see what kind of power is being used. When the computer slowed down I could see that major power was being used and open the Task Manager to check on the programs using power.
Sure enough a HP TouchSmart group of programs were all running at the same time trying to do something with IE [*32 exe (?)]. I killed them all and the computer ran better. Thus uninstalling the TouchSmart program became the cure-all as the other HP programs don't work without it.
I did have to reinstall my new wireless HP printer after this, but that could be another problem.

No more freeze ups, I am still using Norton (trial version) on the Vista 64 bit system with Windows Defender and IE 7.
Oops, I forgot, I have never used the key board and mouse that came with the IQ816 as it would be too uncomfortable for me to use. I am using a Logitech Wireless Wave keyboard and mouse.

I did buy the IQ816 touch screen for the big beautiful screen not the HP TS software, although it would be nice to be able to use it when I am bored.
I am hooked on the Touch as I want to use my finger not the mouse. On other screens I chuckle to my self when I try to use my finger instead of the mouse.

I hope this information helps others with a similar problem (to get the freeze-ups out of their computer) and that HP fixes the power demand of the HP TouchSmart 2.0 program. Maybe a quad processor?

Lost in my own little world, Randy

The TouchSmart software is just an application developed by HP to make touch more friendly. I'm sure it is also a marketing tool, but thats another story. Anyway, you can uninstall it if you do not use it. You will still have touch supplied by the nextwin drivers. However, you should be aware that Windows Vista does not have any concept of nor does it support touch at any level.

-Joe

I don't know what HP has planned for Windows 7 but the application they have now is not really relevant on Windows 7. I can't see them spending money developing a product if they do not have a sizeable user base, thats just bad business. Unless, like I said, its more of a marketing strategy. But anyway, the taskbar in Windows 7 pretty much does what the TS sofware does now, at a low level.

-Joe

I have a iq816t that has been freezing up also. While reading email (gmail account) it will say that the program is not responding. Sometimes, if I wait a long time it will suddenly start working again.

I had a lot trouble even booting up the system. I would sometimes see Disk Errors asking I do a CNTL-ALT-DEL. Sometimes I had to repeat this to get it to boot. I also got a lot of Startup Recovery messages. (It just froze while typing this reply, I waited 5 minutes and it came back!) I have done a complete system rebuild. I have done several system restores. HP needs to find a fix for this.

I have run the complete hardware diagnostics with every test passing. (just froze again, waited for a while and it came back!!)

I will call HP tomorrow. I have only been using it for a little over a month. It only started acting strange about a week ago.

Well, the HDD connection cables seem to be stuffed in at an angle that seems to me will put pressure on the plugs, sort of pulling them out of the socket. I reseated them but there's not really any other way of feeding the cables to them from the motherboard so that "pull" effect is still there. ANd lo, within 2 hours of doing the work, the system froze again. Then last night, I got on bootup.. "SAMSUNG HDJetc etc is about to fail, back up your important data ASAP. F10 for set up, F2 to continue". Going into F10 and trying to run the smart disk checking software fails instantly with an error 8. :\ Yet when I did these checks last week, the HDD came back as fine. Will call HP tomorrow and ask for a new HDD, though the first time it crashes, the whole unit goes back after that.