Lawsuit claims HP PCs suffer constant lockups, crashes

[Night Hawk]

Lawsuit claims HP PCs suffer constant lockups, crashes

Seeks class-action status, charges HP with selling 'inherently defective' quad-core PCs

By Gregg Keizer
November 16, 2009 03:29 PM ET

Computerworld - A Colorado man has sued Hewlett-Packard, saying that its Pavilion Elite desktop computers are "inherently defective," and constantly lock up within 10-20 minutes of use.

The lawsuit, which was filed with a California federal court last Thursday, seeks class-action status that, if granted, would open the case to all HP customers who have purchased one of the allegedly defective PCs.

According to the lawsuit, HP's Pavilion Elite e9150t, e9180f, e9180t, m9600t and m9650f, when equipped with the "Truckee" motherboard from Pegatron Technology and Intel's i7 quad-core processor, crash or lock up soon after they're powered on.
Pegatron Technology is a subsidiary of Taiwan-based Asustek Computer, which is best known for its ASUS line of netbooks.

More at: Lawsuit claims HP PCs suffer constant lockups, crashes

Glad I'm looking into a Phenom II X4 for the next build here only with an MSI or Gigabyte board to boot! Intel and Asus seem to be taking a nose dive there!

 

[Lordbob75]

Good luck.

I am pulling for him. Customer service like that is inexcusable.

~Lordbob

 

[Night Hawk]

You could always go to another company like Dell and have problems there too since their support often gets a bad rep! On one machine alone you could simply see that repaired or replaced under warranty. But when several in the different model catagories are having problems it shows HP slipped up somewhere along the line and could well leave many with headache systems.

 

[thefabe]

I like Dells answer to updating your drivers for a new OS. If you don't see your system in the list click here to buy a new Dell!!

 

[Night Hawk]

That's called choosing which OS will be on the system you order direct through them. They choose the model and hardwares when you select the OS! :roflmao:

 

[smarteyeball]

when equipped with the "Truckee" motherboard .

Glad I'm looking into a Phenom II X4 for the next build

I'd say it's more of a motherboard issue than an intel one.

 

[Night Hawk]

Whatever or whichever it turns out to be it sounds too much like a temp problems of some type. An inadequate hsf for a stock cooled system will cause cpu problems while the cpus being replaced still saw freeze ups!

The drawback too often seen with prebuilds however is the wimply supplies used while this could well be the memory used. Mismatched or defective memory in large batches would effect numerous people.

 

[smarteyeball]

There's undoubtedly some quality issues with these machines. If it were an i7 range problem, the complaints would be universal.

Others on the thread said that although HP had replaced either the CPU or the entire computer, they were still seeing frequent crashes or lock-ups of the Pavilion

Without seeing the crash dumps etc, it's impossible to say what the true cause is.

I still think the only solid part of those builds is the CPU - unless they are installed incompetently

 

[Night Hawk]

It also depends on how they were assembled as well. If there's a serious lack of QC you could end up seeing numerous problems from the start. The title and case simply points to "defecive pcs" without any specifics being pointed out except mentioning quad cores were used as well as some Asus model boards. But Asus boards have been in the Pavillion series all along.

 

[smarteyeball]

Whatever the cause is, they'd want to pull their finger out and sort it. People buy those pre-built machines and expect them to work. I know I would.

 

[Night Hawk]

It certainly places a bad light on HP with that going on for sure! Walmart just had a one day sale that included HP lower end laptops marked way down and then hear they may not work?!

 

[zezasu]

I hope they really get sued.

semi factual rant down below
I've had problems with HP pavilion with the m9600t or so model, like the one listed. The graphics fans get screwed up within months, of casual use, booting in the morning would not work. I think it was the Seagate 7200rpm models, with the messed up version. the inside lines for the internal work get caught into fans somehow of the cpu fan. After like 4-5 graphics replacements (nividia) and 3 hard drive replacements, i kinda quit bothering, especially when dealing with Indian tech service ( no offense) that is hard to speak even when talking nicely and the best possible.Especially with insurance i bought you think they would hire some American or extremely fluent person with an understandable accent (dam outsourcing on stuff like this). Now i just replaced all the stuff, and actually i learned more of the computer and its how i ended up here in a way. I think Hp is just buying the real crappy stuff and jamming it in and hoping for the best that the consumer doesn't buy insurance to screw them over. Glad i bought 3 years -_-. I guess I'm just a fool after my 1st laptop from them sucked and overheated, oh well. I bought a mac book pro for a laptop and just installed windows (LOL) and my own homemade desktop now.

 

[Night Hawk]

Custom building is generally the best option for those with a little time and cash on their hands in order to put in what "you want" not what limited hardware selections a prebuild sees. A little time and patience however is often the one thing lacking and why many simply will go out and buy the first thing that sort of looks good to them within a price range.

 

[slithernet]

I like this article because in my experiance HP's suck. I have had so many problems with the dv6 and dv7 series laptops.

Just my opinion from my own experiance.

 

[macgyver2]

So far I like the HP Compaq CQ60 series, granted it runs a little hot but what laptop doesn't. I know I would love to be able to build my own laptop but currently there isn't enough options out there for it. Best buy here in FL did a 50% off sale on select HP/compaq models so I grabbed one up and so far its been pretty good and I run it hard and its on at least 10 hours a day. I even play online games with it for 2-3 hours when home.

 

[Night Hawk]

Glad to hear the laptop is working out for you there. macgyver2

Custom ordered gaming laptops like Alienware can run up a small fortune if you have ever seen their price tags! You pay for what you want in it without question there!

As for HP in general while not having run any prebuilds for a decade at this point I know I am usually able to locate an update for an older model faster at their support site over others at times. But prebuilds are still going to be prebuilds with the obvious limitations when compared up against a custom case you build!

The sad part of all this is the usual advice to look at HPs over Dells, Gateways, eMachines, and others given to someone who wants to buy a premade and to see them slip up big time there! But since they use Asus boards and those seem to have been slipping a little in the last few years I will looking for either an MSI or Gigabyte board instead of Asus for the next build here.

 

[Crusty]

I got a Pavilion DV8 (similar architecture) hot off the presses and I found that it hard locked up twice a day. I had a lockup while I was browsing the BIOS and this fact was enough for HP to tell me to send it back and get a new one (I bought through Costco so that was no problem - I could return for up to 30 days with no questions). I had some indications that the hangs were graphics related when running the diagnostics (NV GeF GT 230M adapter). I just got my brand new replacement on Monday and it's operating very well with no locks.

 

[Night Hawk]

This is why there are manufacturers's warrantys and guarantys in case there are any problems with something mass produced on the production lines. Every so often a new model being introduced whether desktop or laptop will have a lemmon!

Even when performing a clean install on a custom build you can have a bad install of something at times where you may end up needing to perform a second clean install when something doesn't go on fully or at all. Now imagine seeing that happen on a certain percentage of how many thousands of machines a company like HP will produce?

Someone besides you got a lemmon as well but made a big fuss over it as it seems!

 

[jblue21]

I have the m9600t. It will crash within the first 20 minutes of using it. But as soon as it powers back on, it runs fine until I shut it down. As long as I keep the machine running 24/7, I have no restart problems.

 

[Zen00]

I just build my own computers, much more fun and easier to work with.