I was just guessing, since I saw in your initial report that you said you had only Windows, MC, and Microsoft Security Essentials installed. Figured it was worth checking MSSE, since I had experienced that one unusual (but relatively isolated) problem.
But, it looked to me like Matt just tried to help. And in response now you say "getting nothing but 'its (sic) your hardware' instead of ways to diagnose it further"? How do you expect to get help with the issue when you ignore questions and suggestions from the developers?
I can say this... I have quite a few systems with MC installed, including one that runs it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I make SUBSTANTIAL use of power saving features on my systems and have not had hard-locks related to using MC (14 or 15). The 24/7 system regularly runs for MONTHS at a time without requiring a restart or reboot, including going to sleep at night and being programmatically woken up in the morning. The only time I even have to restart MC is to update to newer builds every so often. So, that's why they wouldn't make it part of the "install guide". There aren't rampant similar reports from other users.