*HP EliteBook 8540w Owners Lounge!*

ring them up, or use the web support to get a new one ordered mate, they will ask for your old one back.

sounds like one of the caps has gone. try not to use it too much cos it could damage your laptop.

Sio

 

Does anyone have any input on where to get additional replacement feet (the little rubber pads under the laptop) for this machine? There's 7 in total, and I've lost 3. Can't seem to find anything on the HP site.

THanks! - M

 

I'd like to upgrade my HP 8540w with a SSD and have some questions.

1.) Can you recommend a good 256GB+ SSD which suits in the HP8540w?
2.) Do I have to replace the optical Drive for the SSD or where to put the SSD?
3.) Obviously I want to have my system on SSD but wanna keep the old HDD for videos,pictures etc. Is it recommended to keep the old HDD in the notebook?
4.) May I turn off/turn on the old HDD via software/windows to lower noise/lower temperature during normal usage of my system.


Any links to guidelines/information regarding SSD replacement in this forum or the www is appreciated.


thx a lot in advance!

 

It is part # 595785-001 (rubber kit):
HP PartSurfer

Found it here:
HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation - Spare Parts - c02034169 - HP Business Support Center

Can call HP directly or their partners:
HP Parts Store - HP Computer Parts - HP Printer Parts - Compaq Parts

Otherwise, try your local laptop / pc retailer - especially if they do repairs too?? Otherwise, you might find similar sized rubber feet from your hardware store, but you'd probably want to replace all of them so that you can make sure they are all the same size so that the case doesn't get any undue stress due to bending from larger / smaller feet.

Cheers.

 

Hi, I don't have a second HD, but check out Intoxicate's review with discussion of seconed hd + caddy recommendations:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/481558-hp-elitebook-8540w-review.html

You would want to take your existing drive and mount that in the caddy and put the SSD where the current HD goes, I expect. In the bios, it seems you may be able to turn it on / off, but that won't help you if you're trying to do that on the fly. I can't find anything conclusive after a quick search regarding whether the second caddy is indeed hot swappable.

Someone with more experience would be able to help more.

Cheers.

 

This may be of interest for 8540w owners: I may have run into a bug in HP's 8540w latest BIOS, F.0F.
My configuration is: 8540w, 8GB RAM, i7-640m, 1920x1080, nVidia Quadro 880M. Works pretty smooth, especially after I have upgraded the nVidia driver to 270.xx series. This effectively removed the annoying "display driver has stopped responding" messages. The OS is HP's original Win7 x64 install (i.e. I haven't installed the OS from the scratch).

In a recent effort to strip the computer of unnecessary startup software like "speed launchers" for software that I use less than once in a week, I decided to disable Intel's AMT completely as well. Since I don't plan to use AMT on this machine at all, it seemed better not to keep it enabled, even with a strong password.

So I went to "Ctrl-P" Intel Management Engine settings at boot and disabled the Intel ME completely, then removed the Ctrl-P prompt from bootup prompts in BIOS. This had a strange side-effect: CPU fan was *always* on afterwards, either on battery or AC power, at 2800 rpm, much louder than it should be. Whatever the CPU/chassis temperature, the fan would never shut off, and HWiNFO32 method of setting fan speed didn't work as well.

Even worse, when I tried to run some intensive tasks to see whether the fan would spin up faster - it didn't (!)
I was used to hear the fan spin up when I recompile a piece of software - this would normally trigger the thermal threshold when the computer is docked. Not this time.

I checked the BIOS options: "fan always on on AC power" was off. Changing the power profiles didn't have any effect: though CPU-Z would correctly report lower CPU speed, the fan kept spinning and spinning. On my old nc8430, I have tweaked the DSDT table to make it quieter, but now I only wanted to get the 8540w to behave as it did before disabling the Intel ME - no DSDT tweaks.

Since the fan was spinning even when outside Windows (e.g. in BIOS), I thought the BIOS must be the culprit. So I attempted to reflash the BIOS with the same version F.0F and it did cure the problem. Now everything is just fine: Intel ME disabled, and the CPU fan behaves correctly again.

So, if after messing up with your BIOS options the fan starts behaving weirdly, before trying out more adverse measures you should try to reflash the BIOS. For what it's worth, this may save you from some frustration...

 

I had this same issue. At my workplace, they're in the process of issuing everybody these laptops; they're being attached to the two DVI/VGA monitors we've always had. Unfortunately, they're still connecting one with DVI and one with VGA like they always have.

I found out you can't have more than two non-DisplayPort-connected displays on at once, and it seems the laptop panel is not internal DisplayPort (although such a thing exists).

I bought a VGA-DisplayPort cable from Monoprice and was able to enable all 3 displays using that. It works great, although I haven't tried waking it from suspend/sleep, so I'm not sure if that will be a problem.

Anyway, I think in order to use a DVI-DisplayPort cable, it has to be an "active" and not a "passive" one. Active ones are pretty pricey - but all VGA/DP cables are "active" from my understanding... and they're much more affordable.

 

Hey guys, my first post here. Have tried to find an answer to this question, but i havent found it in the 40 or so pages of this thread that i have managed to read thusfar.

I have the 8540w with the i7 Q720 1.6Ghz the 880m and 4gb 1333 ram. I have had massive problems with it, ever since I let the HP updater install a new gfx driver. I get a very annoying "display driver has stopped responding" problem often. I have noticed a very large decrease in the speed of the laptop in general and it struggles to do things my 7 year old desktop can (ie boot up Firefox or run a PDF). It also takes forever to boot up. PReviously it was less than 45 seconds. Furthermore, direct3d does not work with 3ds max and photoshop complains about unsupported card. This is really killing my work at the moment.

Does anyone know any solutions? I have googled it a lot and have found nothing to resolve the issue. At the moment, it is simply not fit for purpose. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Hi,
I have FX880m on my 8540w too, and after i updated driver from HP's page to v268.83 i have no problem with display driver has stoped working. I that doesnt help, try updating driver from nvidias page it's v275.33 and it should solve display driver has stoped working issue.

 

Hi there. Hopefully the fix above will take care of your graphics issues.

Regarding the slow boot times and general slow down, it sounds like your issue might be more severe than mine, but I prevented several services from starting automatically (changed to manual or even disabled) and that solved the problem for me. I used Black Viper's article on Windows services and their uses and decided which were not necessary for me, and also took most of the HP ones off too. I only left the 3D Driveguard, quick launch, portrait display (DreamColor) and finger printing drivers running. Others have also confirmed they had slowdowns from HP protect tools I believe, and since Windows has its own power / wireless / diagnostics, etc, the HP equivalents aren't necessary. I manually check for HP updates once in a while, but if things are running smoothly, there isn't a need to muck with that.

Hope that helps.

 

after being annoyed with "display driver stops" and also incompatibility with recent versions of PyCUDA, I tried to update the driver to the one from nVidia site, version 270.xx. now everything is fine. (at the time there was no 268.xx on HP site, but I was annoyed enough to try nVidia's driver in place of HP's)

 

Hey guys, thank you very much for the time and your responses. I tried the suggested drivers, however the situation has not improved. It all started happening when i allowed the HP tool to update the computer. Prior to that it was super fast. However, now, in the last 5 minutes the computer froze twice whilst simply reading Word documents. I think I will start from scratch and reinstall everything. If the problem persists I will consider returning it/try to get a replacement. At the moment, it is just not performing what I need it to. Especially considering i can even rotate a model in 3ds max anymore without hundreds of glitches. Again, thank you for the responses.

 

try this tutorial, only need to do the nvidia settings.

let me know your results.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/585523-potential-fix-nvidia-owners-stop-whea-event-17-errors.html

 

hey guys, thanks for the suggestions. I had time this weekend to try out a few things. One of which was go onto HP's support chat feature, which I figured was worth a shot. I was recommended to download a specific driver which i hadnt been able to get anywhere. Turns out the driver fixed all occurences of the driver crash and now I have the speed back, can run 3ds max with large models and even better, the computer starts up faster < 45s till desktop.

Unfortunately, being the idiot that i am, I installed the driver and deleted the file (assuming id be able to see the driver listed on dxdiag). the only info i can find is:
mainn driver: nvd3dumx.dll, nvwgf2umx.dll, nvwdf2
Version: 8.17.12.6796

Sorry guys! I would recommend anyone to go on the chat support if you;re havinmg this problem and still have the warranty. I just want to say, thanks again to everyone who gave me advice on the problem.

 

interestingly, this driver is recommended for the new generation Nvidia cards. however, i have been able to get it for you, because i'm me.

The link is here.

8560/8760 8.17.12.6796 Driver

 

That's great, thanks. I would definately recommend this to anyone suffering from the "display driver has stopped responding" issue.

Now, does anyone know where I can buy more RAM?
I currently have 4Gb and feel like i could do with 8

 

Hi, my G.Skills have worked well bought from NewEgg Canada:
Newegg.ca - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Laptop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBSQ

There is a similar one - PC3-10600 - not sure how different it is from mine PC3-10666. When I was looking the item was out of stock too, and I signed up to be notified when stock came in, and grabbed some that way. Of course, this is a 2x4GB kit, and since you have 4GB already (1x4GB?), you might just want to match another stick with similar timings and speed (done in order to capitalise on dual-channel memory.)

Cheers.

 

We are dropping people... so bump back up.

I just ordered a secondary heatsink from HP which I am going to mod up and see if it helps drop temps.

More info once I get it

D.

 

Can anybody with DreamColor panel please run AIDA64 and report what is the "Monitor Name", "Monitor ID" and "Manufacturer", from DISPLAY->MONITOR section of the program

I tried latest beta and it seemed to be able to read those strings just fine; mine is not DC2 though :/
Downloads | AIDA64

 

update:

Never-mind. It still reports - LGD0220

 

A new graphics driver for our mobile FirePro cards, 8.85.7.1, is up today on the AMD site http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx I'm downloading it now and will report back later on the results.

 

Ok, a quick mini-review of the new 8.85.7.1 driver for our HP FirePro cards. Note that I have only loaded and tested it on the 8540w, not yet on the 8740w. (Note: Both machines are Dreamcolor and Win7-64.)

First, it appears very stable with no perceived glitches during general usage (although see MDA comment below).

Second, of great interest to many, is that 10 bit mode appears to have a slight improvment when displaying ramp.psd in CS5. Some banding still appears, but is minimal. Note that 10 bit mode does automatically turn off AERO and that some programs still will not work in it (e.g. Blu-ray players).

Third, MDA does work with the new driver, however not at first. MDA screens would appear at strange resolutions and the reported resolution setting itself would keep changing to weird #s. After a couple of re-boots, this has settled down and now appears to be working properly (for now at least).

And fourth, most important to me, is color rendition. I have compared Full Native mode to sRGB and AdobeRGB, both with and without Spyder calibration turned on. Note that differences are as perceived by me at 189 nit luminance in a properly lit room, and are not AS MEASURED in this short period of time. And the results are basically the same as reported by me in my mini review of the prior AMD (non official HP) driver, with one minor exception: in Full Native, yellow/orange appears to have once again been slightly desaturated. It is still bright, but the level of posterization appears toned down when compared to the prior differences between it and both my calibrated settings and RGB settings. Full Native continues to be my space of choice, both calibrated or not depending on use, and this driver continues as a step in the right direction. As usual, I will perform full calibrated measurments when time permits to test my current visual only perceptions.

So far, I think it's a good idea to try out the new AMD driver and Catalyst Control Center app.

 

Has anybody else had the rubber feet fall off on the bottom of their laptop and gotten the correct replacement for them? These are the rubber feet, of which there should be approximately 7 of. HP has sent me Rubber Kit Part #595785-001 twice but this kit does not include the rubber feet at all. It includes about 20 screw covers (which are noticeably smaller than the feet) and also some other random square piece, which I don't know what it is. I tried using the screw covers and they're way too small. Both that i put on fell off within a day.

 

Strange, as the HP Maintenance and service guide and parts list both say "Rubber Kit (includes rubber feet and rubber screw covers)" for Part #595785-001. I had done a search back in July and this part was the only one I had found from HP.

If they can't figure out where those feet got to, then try your local laptop / pc retailer - especially if they do repairs too?? Otherwise, you might find similar sized rubber feet from your hardware store, but you'd probably want to replace all of them so that you can make sure they are all the same size so that the case doesn't get any undue stress due to bending from larger / smaller feet.

Sorry about that.

 

Hi VisionLight, always appreciate your feedback on the new drivers.

Cheers.

 

Just to let you know the new FirePro drivers continue to be stable with no problems. Although, IIRC, AMD said they would try to release new drivers for their dedicated mobile products on a three month schedule, it looks like a six month schedule in reality (last one was February). So this will probaly be it for a while, unless HP issues a new official driver. However, with HP's current announcements about shopping around their PC unit, I won't hold my breath waiting.

Which leads me to wonder why they would make such an announcement without already having a firm deal in the works? Or do they, and are still just holding their cards close to their chest? Either way, last week I was still recommending and buying HP tech for clients. This week, I'm NOT. Too many future variables that outweigh perceived current value. As an investor and businessman, I can speculate that they were attempting to rally shareholder interest by announcing, basically, a wish to divest a low margin segment. Bad move though, because now as a customer I am worried. And the investor in me agrees with the customer in me. And also agrees with the 20% drubbing the market exacted on HP's share price. Glad I wasn't holding any HP shares in my portfolio that day.

 

Did you do the search because yours had fallen off, or were you just looking for someone else? It seems that everything online indicates that it should be in this kit, but after receiving two of them it's clear that the feet are not. I am trying to go this route simply because it's all covered under the warranty so was hoping to find a solution from HP.

 

Hi. It was for someone else. I agree - I'd be calling HP first.

Cheers.

 

Thanks for the update. The HP graphics drivers still crash on me periodically, so I'm thinking its time to try these.

Cheers.

 

Hello!
I have the same problem you reported. Almost all the rubber feet have fallen (i just have 3 ...out of 7 left) But i do not know if they are replaceable. I pulled on one of those white plastic parts that were left behind when the feet fell of.
Those white parts seem to be non replaceable as they are heat deformed on the inside part of the laptop. I see that in the spare part catalog the rubber feet are marked as self adhesive but the ones that fell of are for sure not adhesive. I for one am going to replace those rubber feat with something else. Do not know yet with what though.

 

One more observation re the new AMD graphics driver, this time as pertains to the "official" HP driver.

I usually perform maintenance on my machines on Mondays, including running the HP Softpaq Download Manager. All the time I had the first AMD driver loaded, the Softpaq Manager reported that I did not have the latest driver installed, even though the HP driver was older. Now that I've installed the new AMD driver, Softpaq Manager is reporting that my graphics driver is up to date. Could this mean that HP is no longer issuing updates and defering to AMD? Or could it just be another glitch with HP's servers after the flaky weekend they had?

Either way though, the New AMD driver remains stable.

 

My 8540w laptop is running Windows 7 and has an NVIDIA QUADRO FX 880M graphics card plus I have a HP Advanced Docking station connecting to 2 external monitors: one external monitor is using VGA and the other monitor is using DVI.

Should this setup be capable of connecting the 3 monitors to extend the desktop to use all 3 displays at the same time ?

At the moment, I'm only able to connect 2 monitors at a time. Am I missing some setting or is this a limitation of my graphics card or something like that?

 

HP has now shipped me that kit two times and neither time did the kit include rubber feet. I spoke with HP again and explained. They of course wanted me to ship in my laptop. Sorry, not going to do that for such a simple problem. They are supposed to be shipping me the correct rubber feet instead of just sending me the same kit again. I was told this six days ago and haven't heard anything about them yet.

Let me know if you find another replacement for the feet. I'll keep you posted on what I'm able to get.

 

Thank you ! I will post when I find the time to replace those rubber feet. As of now all of them have fallen off!

 

What about HP is about to sell its PC business? What will be about the laptop business?

 

Hi All and Hello forum community,
Recently I have also been getting TDR events 4101 "display driver.." and read most of this thread. The driver you suggest is for:

Can someone confirm if it is really advisable to install this driver despite it not being for the 8540w?

Looking for GPU drivers I have found this description

in the Fixes for this NVIDIA Graphics Driver Version 268.83 (16 Jun 2011) for Microsoft Windows 7.

So far I have had tested Nvidia drivers 275.33, 280.26 and 261.55 from HP's site. With all of them the TDR kept coming back without even using GPU intensive processes. I am now going to use 268.83 and will report back on the issue.

However since I have not changed the setup or drivers and the laptop was performing excellent beforehand (CAD, gaming) I am considering sending it in since I still have the guarantee running. Since without change to the OS or drivers the error started appearing I am concerned this might be a hardware fault, but I could be wrong. Is it advisable to sent the book in? What are your experiences with doing that?

 

To those that don't frequent the 8740w thread (and why would you if you don't have one ) ....

Does anyone run a SATA-III/6Gb/s interface SSD such as the Crucial M4/C400 (which states that it is backwardly compatible w/3Gb/s interfaces) on their 8540w ? Unless I'm mistaken I'm pretty sure our machines have a SATA II interface, and I'm not expecting SATA III speeds. I'm just looking for confirmation there's nothing whonkey with a SATA III drive's operation in the 8540w, and thus 8740w.

-thanx

 

Hi, SSD's are a distant dream at the moment, but I can help with the confirmation. My device manager shows I have the QM57 express chipset. Easier to just link to this than take a screen shot:
HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation- HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation - Overview - c02030608 - HP Business Support Center

Per Intel, that means you're looking at a SATA II (3GB/s) interface. Scroll down past the eSata stuff:
Mobile Intel QM57 Express Chipset - Overview

Cheers.

 

So.... HP decided that the best way for me to replace the rubber feet is to send me an entire new black bottom piece and have me replace it. This is like using a blow torch to light a brithday kindle. Overkill. To say I'm disappointed with this arrival would be an understatement. Maybe if they sent someone out to replace it it wouldn't be so bad, but not sure I really want to do this myself...

 

I am thinking of getting the 8540w with 720QM CPU, i read posts here about problems with Nvidia GPUs in these laptops.

Do you guys recommending getting the ATI GPU instead? is the ATI problem free?

Also can this laptop take the heat when running Furmark for example and not overheating?

 

Take a look at what I did here to get an idea of heatload and what the system can handle
HP 8540W - Quick and Dirty Teardown w/Heatsink MOD

D.

 

Wow...I hoped it would not come to that. The only alternative I can think about is to find some rubber pieces that are of similar size to the rubber feet and glue them to your chassis in place of the old feet. You need to remove the white pieces of plastic that were left behind when the feet fell of. Those white plastic pieces are made from something like Teflon...nothing sticks to them...super glue fell off in 2 hours, industrial strength double sided sticky tape fell of in 5 minutes.

 

A CRITICAL BIOS UPDATE was just released for the 8540p and 8540w. The importance of this update has increased the BIOS revision number to F.20.

You cannot flash back to a previous version once you apply this update. Please review the release notes and flashing guidelines before proceeding.

Visit the Business BIOS thread below for official HP download links and more information.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...ss-bios-releases-huge-update-9-23-2011-a.html

 

Hi all!
I don't know why my hp elitebook 8540w with core i7 620m,ram 4gb ddr3 and fx880m startup so slowly.After boot,welcome circle loading about 5 seconds and disappear.And only bluescreen with logo windows 7 profesional on display.After 2 minutes logo user,finger and insert smarcard is appear
Anyone can tell me why?Pls

 

Hi all!
I don't know why my hp elitebook 8540w with core i7 620m,ram 4gb ddr3 and fx880m startup so slowly.After boot,welcome circle loading about 5 seconds and disappear.And only bluescreen with logo windows 7 profesional on display.After 2 minutes logo user,finger and insert smarcard is appear
Anyone can tell me why?Pls

 

Since the fingerprint and smartcard icons appear, it is aparent that you are running HP Protect Tools. Don't worry, it is normal for this to add 2 minutes to your boot time. Annoying? Yes. But normal.

 

Thank you so much!So how to improve my startup speed?I have used thinkpad t520,it cool,only swipe and windows will startup.It's fast and convenient.

 

Hi, as you've found out, HP Protect tools does add start up time. I was able to reduce my start up time to about 1 min and still have the fingerprint reader active. When the laptop first arrived fresh, it had about 100 processes running, and I reduced that to about 45 (before adding antivirus and all), which you can imagine did help too.

I use the driveguard, fingerprint and quick launch button features, but nothing else from HP. I had to disable the HP Protect Tools service (maybe that was the culprit??), I kept the HP Service on automatic start up, and the HP Software Framework starts up even though I have it set to manual, like all the other HP services. It was so long ago so I don't honestly remember what was what or what made the biggest impact, but there was trial and error to make sure I still had the HP features I wanted to use. You may want to use extra HP features, so try shutting things down one by one and see if everything you want still works.

Finally, I hear that there is a non-HP driver for the fingerprint reader. I haven't had a chance to search for it yet, but if found, that would be one less bit of HP software requried.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

 

Thank you for your help!Do you think soluto is best software for improve startup time
So I want know 8540w can use ssd caching!If not,the best ssd(p/p) for 8540w is what?

 

For me the solution was software. Couple of reasons
- I don't have the funds for an SSD
- Why load 100 processes if I only care about 50? Everything extra that is loaded will slow down the boot, use up your RAM or virtual memory.

I can't comment on the SSD caching for the reason mentioned above, but people who do use them report boot time and overall performance increases.

Good luck.