it was working perfectly fine just a few days ago with the latest turbo boost drivers: 8.15.10.2302 suddenly, i don't know what happened (the last thing i did was change the font dpi settings) but now, loading the os takes much longer and with those same drivers, the screen displays nothing but black even after reinstalling them in safe mode. i've resorted to using the older drivers: 7.15.10.1908 which actually work perfectly, but i'm very concerned about what may have caused this in the first place. one possible clue: when loading the os in safe mode, it actually hangs for about 20 seconds on a file that it also hung with when attempting to load the os from a hdd that then shortly died. could it be that this hdd is dying?

ouch. i never made any restore points. actually, this whole install is about a week old; the old hdd died and i'd just finished installing all the drivers a few days before this happened. now i'm wondering if overheating may be a problem. the tablet tends to run a bit hot -like a scalding cup of coffee- although oddly enough, the cpufan tends to remain barely audible despite this. moreover, pc wizard is reporting 3 conflicting temperatures for the cpu (simultaneously): 32C, 45C and 54C respectively. if the real temp is 54C but the fan sensor is going by the low temp, perhaps that could explain the low fan activity. EDIT: also, shortly before this happened (maybe a day or 2 before) i'd just installed nod32 antivirus, so my pc should be clean. AEDIT: it took hours to update vista. actually, it took well over a day. i'd rather not have to go through that again. actually, i'm mainly curious to know what could have caused this problem. it couldn't be installer corruption because the installer is on a separate hdd and the drivers used to work fine. it's so weird that reinstalling them does not solve the problem.

I deleted my comment because your system specs show that you're running Vista 32bit business and the 8.15.... driver is consistent with that.

On the other hand, HP has this proviso-

These downloads are available for customers according to the terms in the HP Software License Agreement. Certain software may require a valid warranty, current support contract with HP, or a license fee.

Don't ask me how to tell if you meet one or more of this terms.