Hard drive manufacturer Western Digital told The Register today that system freeze-ups which occur with Compaq Presario systems are unrelated to any of its products. Compaq's take on the freeze now appears to be that the problem is one of Windows resources, and is not hardware related. A representative from Western Digital said: "The system freeze-ups have absolutely nothing to do with Western Digital hard drives. This is strictly a Compaq system issue, which you may confirm directly with Compaq. The WD hard drives are just fine and did not fall 'far short of expectations.'" A Staples US employee had claimed that hard drive failures were part of the problem, not the solution, but WD says its hard drives are perfectly fine. Any problems with hard drives seems to rest with Compaq systems themselves, according to one source who works in technical support at Compaq UK. She said: "If you try to replace the hard drive that came with the system, you may have an issue with the BOM ID which is an ID put on Compaq hard drives. Without that, the Quickrestore will not run. This may not be for all of the systems, but it's definitely an issue on many. She added: "Quickrestore was one of the worst ideas they ever came up with. It's automated and the version of Windows on it that Compaq gives you more often than not will conflict with updates from MS." ®