6720s, Bios, Battery issues and no Space bar

Hi there

Just joinded this site and hoping to get some help.

I purchased an HP 6720s (Vista home prem., 1.73 celeron, 1Gb ram) and it was supplied with just the power supply, no discs etc.

It loaded up ok but was very slow and had 3 user accounts on it.
Last night to remove all the previous owners stuff i loaded a clean install of Windows 7 64bit after reading here that it works fine bar one or 2 devices (i have 1 device not recognised in device manager, this may be the SD slot from what ive read).

Stupidly i have only read the bit about creating a restore disc this morning


Now it seems that the battery wont charge and the Space bar has stopped working.

Previous owner assures me that it charged ok previously (battery dead when i got it) and im pretty sure i used the spacebar during the setup of Win7 so im wondering if putting Win7 requires a Bios update?

When i plug the charger in (with the screen closed) the side LED goes white then blue then turns orange for less than 1sec and goes off.

Do you think a bios update would help, if so how do i do it using Win7?
If not any other suggestions to fix?

Cheers Neil

 

hmm a whole host of issues.

If the battery won't charge, it may have gone past the 'point of no return' as in has less than 0.3% charge left in it. which means it will report it'self as 'battery bad' to the bios.

If this IS the case. when you are in windows 7, there should be a red cross over the battery icon (the power icon next to the clock in the task bar)

if it isn't showing a red cross, and you are able to click on it to see the battery, then it's something different.

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The battery may also be recalibrated, so if it is the case, there is software within support assistant to help with that.
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You are able to find a bios update via hp.com and type in 6720s as your model and go to the os and find it there.

You may need to also, after updating the bios, take the cmos battery out from the back (it should be near the memory slots underneath the computer) and leave it with the big battery out for a few hours. this will reset the bios.

Win 7 shouldn't require a bios update, but, your KBC firmware (keyboard controller) may need to be updated - it's very rare that this is the case however.

You can also find a list of things you need to download, by downloading something called :

HP Softpaq downloader

we use this at work to update all our hp notebooks at once. it will load up your model and os and install all the things you are missing (specifically drivers) and hp software, automatically.

Quite nice if you are new to hp, and you don't have a driver disc!

HP support assistant (which can be downloaded by the softpaq method, will tell you the state of your battery.

Hope this helps a bit mate.

Sio

EDIT:

to make things easier here is the link for the softpaq downloader

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...7514-1&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=4138087

install it and then click on update, show only my model.

it will show you what you can install, etc

pick and choose.

it will also update the bios too.

some you may need to manually install, but it tell you about this also.