Feedback on the HP ZBook 15 - ChicletW

I'm actually running Mint 17.3, but since it is built on Ubuntu, i think the problem is relevant.

The man problem I am having is with power management. Basically, if I leave the machine be, it goes into a coma-sleep mode; it is also not hibernate compatible (i suspect these are related issues).

when the machine is in this coma, it is actually running and accessible. i can ssh to it, run programs, etc., but the machine cannot see the hardware. it seems that the hardware has turned itself off, and the OS cannot turn it on.

this all started happening after my dual-boot Windows-loader ate itself (probably because i never, never, never used it). before this, the machine ran for weeks and weeks without rebooting.

anyway, the boot-loader partition ate itself, so i did a clean Linux install. i expect that the hardware has its own build in power management system, and it is looking for something very specific in that little boot-loader partition at the very front of the HDD. when it does not find that, it just quits. maybe there is a way to explicitly spoof that partition? when i get half a break, i'll probably restore the hardware via restore disk, and then (re)-configure my dual-boot... unless somebody has a solution?