[Ken Maltby]

Hmm... Interesting Ron. Perhaps you should use the USB cable and ChkDsk repair the
internal memory, (after backing up its contents, of course) as well.

As happy as I am that you got your's back, spontaneous remissions are hard to fit into
a diagnostic effort. It may imply that there could be a "time-out" mechanism involuved.
Either hardware or software where a cascade of waiting routines, for some wanted
response, physical or logical gets "looped" or "hung" in some fashion. (On the software
side of things, this is often an "error handling" issue that is hard to find in quality control
efforts.)

The lack of response to efforts to engage the low level firmware routines could
implicate the even lower level power management routines and hardware, as you
suggest.

I will, of course keep this thread informed of my efforts and results. Maybe something
I run across will spark another poster's discovery of the actual cause.

Luck;
Ken