Intel, HP Say Flaws Could Affect Some Computers

Intel Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. on Friday reported manufacturing and design flaws that could affect some computers.

Less than a week after the launch of its latest chipsets, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel said it would recall some of the products after the discovery of a manufacturing flaw that could cause computers to crash or fail to boot.

Most of the problem chips were still in the hands of computer and motherboard manufacturers, Intel spokesman Bill Calder said.

“The good news is we think almost none of the impacted product -- or very little -- has reached the end customer because we caught it early and have been working with our customers to replace all the lots with non- affected product,” he said.

The chipsets integrate high-quality audio, video and a faster data highway.

Separately, Palo Alto-based HP said it identified a design flaw in memory modules that could cause blue screens, lockups or memory corruption on as many as 900,000 laptops.

Affected memory modules were built between March 2002 and July 2003 by suppliers Infineon, Micron, Samsung and Winbond. Models affected include some versions of Compaq Evo Notebooks, HP and Compaq Business Notebook nx7000 and the HP Pavilion zt3000.

HP instituted a voluntary replacement program at no cost to the customer, and it created a website to determine which computers were affected.

Shares of Intel fell 17 cents to $27.78, and shares of HP dropped 21 cents to $20.81. Both trade on Nasdaq.