dv7t crashing/freezing when put to sleep

My dv7t-6100 has been giving me problems for over a month now and i've about had my fill At first i didn't even notice there was a problem because i'd close the lid on the lappy and walk away expecting it to go to sleep, only to come back later and find that it had shut down completely. The first few times i assumed that i'd accidentally hit shut down for sleep....then i started watching what happened when i put it to sleep and found that sometimes the screen would go dark but the machine would not wind down. Only a cold shut down fixed it, upon rebooting everything worked normally no error messages, nothing to let me know what caused the problem.

At other times it will go into sleep mode properly but will not wake up!! once again requiring a cold shut down and reboot. I googled the symptoms and found quite a few users with the exact same problem. One such user mentioned that the removal of a wireless logitech mouse that he'd been using fixed the problem, so i decided to remove the usb dongle for my logitech M505 from my lappy and lo and behold the computer began to go into and wake up from sleep mode normally ( i only unplugged the reciever, didn't uninstall the driver or anything...)

So for the last 8 days everything was A-okay, then last night i tried to shut down my laptop and got a 'DRIVER POWER STATE FAILURE' blue screen the only change made to the laptop was a download by hp support assistant for the 'AMD High Definition graphics driver', i waited for it to get done and went to shut down for the night and BAM! BSOD

When i tried to restart it said windows failed to load or some such thing, finally i was left with the recovery manager window and chose to reset to factory setting.... , I've now reloaded all my programs and personal files, let hp support assistant update all the drivers (including the AMD driver) but chose not to update the BIOS . Everything is ok for now...but i'm going to be travelling overseas with this piece-o-crap in a couple weeks and would like to get to the bottom of things in case it happens again

So what i'd like help figuring out is this:

What caused my initial sleep mode crashing/freezing issue? Was it because i left the usb reciever for my wireless mouse plugged-in, are you not supposed to do this?

Could it be a problem with the usb ports themselves, how do i test for this?

Could it have been caused by corrupted drivers that got fixed when i reset to factory and reloaded everything fresh...? HELP!!!

 

1) It seems that the problem is with USB ports. I have read about that issue as well, and it seems that it occurs not only for HP laptops. The problem is with USB 3.0 ports. By default, hp Pavilion laptops have 2 USB 3.0 ports on the left side of the laptop (sitting in front of the laptop) and 2 USB 2.0 ports on the right side.
Firstly, I would recommend to download the newest drivers (and not old ones provided by HP) from USB 3.0 manufacturer "Renesas / NEC" or "Fresco". To check which brand, take a look at your service manual.
The newest drivers are always in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-drivers-software-forum/556469-drivers-hp-dv6-4xxx-dv6-6xxx-dv7-5xxx-dv7-6xxx-envy-14-2xxx-envy-17-2xxx-intel.html

And for stability, always use the USB 2.0 ports, as they are supported by Windows by default, so you shouldn't get any issues when any device is plugged into that port.
Use USB 3.0 port, when you have external HDD or any other device, which can support USB 3.0 or when you won't have any more free USB 2.0 ports.

 

The wireless mouse reciever was plugged into the 2.0 ports on the right , and hp support assistant downloaded the Renesas driver for me. But i have read reviews for this laptop that mentioned USB ports that stopped working all of a sudden, both the 2.0 and 3.0 ports seem to be working on mine, checked them by plugging in an External HD...

 

Well, if the problem occurs to all USB ports, it might be something wrong with w7. Have you tried to edit Power Options and disable "USB selective suspend setting" both on battery and AC?

 

Any disadvantages to disabling selective suspend? I'm terrified to make any changes to this machine now . Will disabling this feature allow me to start using my wireless mouse again (I've been using the mouse for over 5mths w/ no issues, always left the dongle plugged-in...)