So today I wanted to share a note from Paul, who tried the Microsoft hotfix on his Windows 7 system, but had no luck: his HP continued to freeze at random times. Paul didn't say what prompted him to do so, but he tried a rather unconventional workaround--and it worked.

"The idea," he says, "is to delay the signals from the keyboard significantly longer than the mouse and other USB devices to prevent any race conditions. To accomplish this, I just attached an extra USB hub to the keyboard cable to increase the electrical delay."

Sounds weird, I know, but Paul says he hasn't had one lockup since implementing this solution. I have no concrete evidence this will work for anyone else, but if you're at your wits' end with system lockups and you've tried everything else, there's no harm in giving this a whirl. Any inexpensive USB hub should do.