Hi, I have an HP pavilion dv 9700 laptop, Windows Vista Sp2. As of a couple weeks ago, I'm having nothing but problems. It began with sound coming and going. Sometimes the volume icon has a red x and I get the message "no audio output device is installed" and device mgr. shows no device for sound. At other times I get sound and the device is showing in device mgr. This seems to be a common problem, as I've tried all the solutions I've found on the internet, including updating the driver, restore point rollback, etc. Now I'm also having programs that don't respond, etc and have had to do several hard resets lately. AVG finds no viruses and I do my maintenance programs every 2 weeks.I'm about ready to reformat the hard drive, but would love to hear any other ideas before I do this. And if I do this will it fix my problems? Any suggestions? Thanks Patricia Owens