Hard drive preventing clean shutdown/sleep/restart stop 0x9F

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I was able to successfully update the bios using winflash. I had to install the Asus ACPI driver in order for winflash to recognize my system. I've doubled checked everything else and it looks good. What about the Intel Rapid Start driver; would that help?

BTW I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but when the screen goes black I can hear the second drive spin up.

As for further troubleshooting the only thing I can think of is to try a completely new install. Both a factory restore and fresh install and see if the problem is present in these configurations. Unfortunately I don't have the time for that right now.

Any other suggestions would be helpful. I may just have to live without the second hard drive Thanks.

I would do a clean Install.
Download Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool, run it and under Win 7, choose Win 7 HP OEM.
Burn a DVD or install it on a USB Flash disk with Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way
Remove the HDD (important), leaving only the SSD.
Do a Clean install Clean Install Windows 7
Use the COA key to activate.
For the updates MS releases SP2 for Windows 7

Well I just tried an SSD and that didn't solve the problem. I'm officially giving up. I will just use external drives for the time being. At some point I will reinstall Windows 7 and see if that fixes the problem. Maybe at that some point Microsoft will have released Windows 11. The upgrade Win7 users have been waiting for Thanks for the help anyway.