BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): I attribute "random" errors with old hardware, new SSD, and Windows 8 to incompatibilities between the old hardware and the SSD. Fix is to replace the SSD with a platter based hard drive (as there are no updates for older driver software).
**********************************
We've been puzzling out installing Windows 8 on an HP DV6736NR laptop originally equipped with Vista Home Premium (32 bit).
The customer just loves this little laptop and wanted to put some power behind it.
So they opted to:
- install an Intel 520 series SSD
- install Windows 8
Being adventursome, we installed the OS on the new SSD and spent a lot of time finding compatible drivers. We ended up using 2 sets of nVidia nForce drivers (HP version and nVidia version for Vista) and 2 sets of video drivers (HP version for Vista and nVidia version for Win7). We had issues with the coprocessor installing, but managed to find a Vista driver from a German website that worked.
And then the troubles started! BSOD all over the place, black screen errors, app crashes, etc.
The most common involvement was video, but the system passed all video tests gracefully.
As with other seemingly "random" errors - these usually point to hardware.
BUT...we were working with hardware that was likely to have compatibility issues
So what was the problem? How could we identify it?
Finally, out of sheer desparation we cracked open a new Seagate Momentus 250 gB drive.
Even more issues with installing drivers for Win8, but we persevered.
We finished up yesterday around noon and ran stress/benchmark tests overnight.
Came in this morning with no errors found overnight
I'm going to let it run all day today and then will call it "fixed" if no further problems arise.
