problems with my dv8000t locking up

Hey everyone,

Hopefully someone will have some insight into my problem. I purchased a hp dv8000t 2 months ago and have loved most everything about it. However, I will periodically ( about once a week) have it lock up where the mouse cursor will not move, I can't use any keys, ctrl-alt-del does not respond and the clock stops. I have contacted hp support and they have been very nice to work with but have not gotten me anywhere. At first we thought it was a virus/spyware but a few minutes after I ran destructive pc recovery (reinstalled the factory settings and wiped everything else out) it happened again. The only thing I had done at that point was intall norton and move my cursor over to an icon on the desktop. I had not run any program and had not added any other program to the machine. When I recontacted hp they said it was likely norton interfering with windows xp pro and suggested I delete it. This does not seem like a viable solution if that is what is going on (the gentleman said it can happen with any antiviral program not just norton) because I will not run my computer without an antiviral program on it.

Has anyone else had this probem? Has anyone heard of a problem with Norton like this? I am about to demand they take my computer back and replace it but I would like to avoid the trouble. Any insights would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Mark.

 

i had a similar problem with freezing before. my problem was a ram defect. you should try testing your ram with memtest86. you also might want to test out another antivirus program. i hear that avast is a very good antivirus program that is free.

 

Freezing problems can be almost anything, hardware or software related. A good first step, however, would be to remove Norton. Besides being a resource hog it is a very invasive program--I especially dislike how Norton hacks your registry to suppress Windows Security Center. Not to mention the recent news of exploits in the Norton Antivirus program.

There are MUCH better free alternatives out there, like the Avast program ejl mentioned. There's also Bit Defender and AVG. I personally use a combination of AVG Free, Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware and Windows Firewall and it has worked flawlessly and overall has a much smaller footprint than any pay for play program out there.