We've got six IE33 systems (18-24mths old) and unfortunately had alot of problems with them. Problems include: Patient data becoming corrupted (resulting in patients having to be re-scanned), systems crashing on a regular basis and tracker ball failures. Anyone else had similar experiences??

We have four Philips IE33 systems all purchased in March 2008. Every one of them has failed with various faults - hanging up, going into sleep mode, crashing and trackerball.
We also have an number of IU22 systems that have had a number of keyboard/console problems ie sticky keys.

open the user interface and clean the keyboard with alcohol pad (under the keys) . open the track ball and clean it. if you lose the patient data, probably the storage HDD has problem. There are 3 hard disk drives in iE33 and iU22. One of them is for OS and software which is connected to the Host computer. The patient data stores inside other ones. Creat a backup from information then replace the HDD. If the system is slow or crashing and frezing all the time the OS and software need to be reinstalled. You have to get the software directly from Philips. For installing the software you need the Bios's password.
* The OS of these ultrasounds is Win XP.

First of all ... a belated welcome to the forum.

That's all good stuff ... but what causes all those problems, do you reckon?

My guess is that the units don't get closed down properly, or the power cable (cord) gets yanked, or some such thing. Both equally daft, not to mention careless.

After all, I believe that Win XP is reasonably resilient. I'm not sure if it's as tough as Win 2000 ... but it's not as though it's really doing much here, is it? It just needs to be closed down with a bit of care!

But how to overcome all that? Am I right in assuming that there's no built-in UPS?

Maybe the real solution here is:-

1) Some way of disabling the main on/off switch
2) Hanging a UPS off the cart!

Of course, what is really needed is a ROM-based operating system (you know:- "instant on", no need to boot from disk, and good stuff like that) ... but I can't see that happening these days (unfortunately).

@Gerry: as recently mentioned elsewhere, sticky keys and tracker balls are almost always due to "sticky fingers" (that is, gel on the operator's paws)!