Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year.

Right to the point...I have an 11 month old HP laptop. I think it's about to crash. I've spent the weekend running all the scans I can find and even reformatted the hard drive, but it's still doing the infamous blue screen at least once a day. It's also making a crackling sound. Does that mean anything? I'm so disappointed that I'm having this trouble already. What's the point in spending so much money to have this kind of hassle? Grrrr. Also HP has Total Care Advisor and it says it's perfectly healthy. Sure. And why would this "Total Care" advisor screen say that Drive D is 91% full? There is less than 20% of this computer being used. What's on Drive D?

Drive 'D' should be HP's recovery partition. Are you making backups and saving them to that partition?

I suspect this is a driver issue - but since it's the 11th month, I'd suggest you get it checked out by HP before the warranty lapses.

It died. HP is sending me a new hard drive (FedEx overnite) for me to replace it. They were very helpful and accomodating. Is it difficult for a novice to replace the hard drive? I sure wouldn't want to screw it up after all this!

Replacing the hard drive is easy, but restoring the OS may be more difficult (depending on what HP sends on the hard drive). HP has been good at providing detailed instructions on system recovery (IME) - but I've never received a hard drive from them.

Remove your battery and unplug the system from the wall
Unscrew the screws for the hard drive cover on the bottom of the case (usually marked with 3 or 4 overlapping circles near the screws)
Carefully remove the hard drive cover (it usually has little tips that hold it in place)
Most HP's have a black plastic tab that you can pull on to either lift the hard drive out - or to slide it away from the connectors and then lift it out.
The hard drive will be inside that "cage" - usually held in with 4 screws (2 on each side). There also may be a removable plastic connector over the pins on the hard drive where it slides into the receptacle in the case (compare the new hard drive to the old one to see if this is the case).

Remove the old hard drive from the cage and insert the new hard drive (being careful about static electricity)- then put it back in the case. Ensure that it's fully seated.
Close up the case, put the battery back in, and plug it into the wall.

Turn it on and see what happens....

If HP provided you with a drive with the OS preinstalled - it should guide you through the setup process.
If HP provided you with a bare drive (with no OS preinstalled) - you'll get some message about not being able to boot or no hard drive being recognized. At that point you'll have to insert your recovery/restore disk and reboot the computer to boot from the disk.