Hi Patrick,
I have installed all the essential HP OEM software and have booted (not restarted) the laptop 6 times without any BSOD - thanks for your help.
However the slow starting (taking 2.5 minutes to boot) is still undesirable. I tried Memtest for >7 hours and it passed. I also tried your OEM HDD test and there was a peculiar problem. The HDD is by Seagate for which I have downloaded their Windows tool. No matter any test I run, it fails - which may reflect bad sector or otherwise. I doubted the Seagate tool so instead I used Win 8.1 check drive by right clicking the drive and scanning it for errors. It did found errors and quickly fixed it too - happened within 11 minutes. After this I still ran the Seagate tool but still all the test fails for Win 8.1
I am not sure if this is the cause for delayed Win 8.1 boot time? OR is it that Seagate window tool cannot run on Win 8.1 pro 64 bit?
Chandar
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You can't see it but you can feel it!
