Locks up during the starting windows screen. Ubuntu Livecd boots up fine. It was running Vista. I used the installation disc to attempt to repair it. Didn't find any issues. Installed a fresh copy of 7 to see if that'd boot. Same issue, freezes during the starting windows screen. Not sure where to go from here. Safe mode doesn't work, any ideas?

My first guess was going to be bad GPU but then Safe Mode should work. My next guess was a memory error or faulty harddisk, but Im finding it unlikely that you would be able to complete a full Win7 Install without encountering either of those causing problems. Just to eliminate things, I would run Memtest off the Ubuntu LiveCD and if you attempt another install do a full format rather than a quick format. Does the laptop have any built in diagnostics in BIOS?

I ran the hard drive diagnostic in the BIOS. No problems found. I'll try Memtest next.

If it's freezing during the splash screen in my experience it's almost always video driver related. Though why it wouldn't load in safemode is an entirely different animal.

It was the video drivers. For some reason the first boot after installing windows would work, then fail afterwards. I installed video drivers during that first boot, no issues now. Thanks.

edit: Poop. It stopped again. It seems like sometimes the video card isn't being recognized by windows, causing it to freak out. Or something. I'm going to try installing ubuntu to see if that runs.

Does it have switchable graphics?

A physical switch on the laptop? I haven't seen one for anything but wifi.

Ubuntu seems to be working fine.. really strange.

I'm curious is Ubuntu using Compiz or whatever name its calling 3d accelerated desktop these days. It might default to OFF on those lowend IGP's. If the GPU is really bad than I would suspect that would crash if enabled.

3d acceleration works in Ubuntu.

Maybe I need to get drivers from HP directly rather than Nvidia?

I never had issues with Nvidia ones, make sure you look for the mobile version. Or just stick with Ubuntu.