Mike...
I share your frustration. In the last couple of months I have had to reformat my HD twice.
I paid for HP service on one occasion. The guy I talked to said two things:
1) Reformat the HD and it will be like out of the box...(which it wasn't...but it did make it useable)?
and, get this
2) Don't download the windows updates which can screw up your system.
After my last reformat, the Blaster Worm came along and I caved and downloaded the upgrade, plus the McAfee virus updates.

So far no major problems...but some of the minor ones still exist.

I also got myself a zip drive to save a lot of my music bizz files in the event things go haywire again.
Eddie