*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 1*

Thanks for the update!
This could be a bad news...
Hopefully, they can fix the problem without the need to redesign the mobo.

 

When I replied, I pointed out that going down to 2 populated dimms does not solve the crashing, but it helps a lot. Maybe just the presence of the empty dimms is problematic too. But I would be VERY interested in hearing from anyone with a dual-core model (which only has 2 dimms) who has this crashing problem.

 

Isn't the M17x panel 6-bit (AFAIK the only 8-bit panels are in the Precision M6400/6500 and Elitebook 8730w)? Other than viewing angles and assuming the RGBLED backlights are similar, the IPS panel will have a wider and more accurate color reproduction range than the TN panel.

 

Or w/o need to slow-down everything with waits or other timing delays.

 

FYI - I spoke with the product manager for the performance Elitebook line at HP. The issue is being addressed at the source.

For those of you that are still having crashing issues, HP will be contacting you directly to get your laptops fixed.

 

You are right, that picture is the 8540w's hinge. The original source is here.

I still cannot understand why a premium product like this may have these assembly defects (small though, but they are present). This machine is a precision machine, built following military standards, it's not an ordinary computer.

@vasbinde: Thanks for the head up. I suppose all new 8740w orders will have this issue fixed and units already delivered will have to be sent to HP for repair.

 

Same 8-bit panel as in M6500.

 

So they are working in the fix at the factory before they've found and tested the fix!?!?

I dunno, I'm going to believe the guy doing the work over the guy managing the brand. My blind guess is that the manager was given an update on progress and a projection for completion, and he is pinning his hopes on the best-case scenario. I do find the statement about the fix at the factory to be highly suspect even after discounting for the required marketing slant.

 

Mine should ship in 2 days and I already got extra 8GB of RAM.
Will install 16GB and and test in both W7 and Linux.

 

That's understandable. We'll need to keep a "days w/o crash" counter for the new recipients somewhere. Legs and toes crossed (need my fingers and arms to type this ) I can't begin that counter however, as I only used the machine about 4 hours a day, for one day.

 

Mine has been running for 12 hrs continuous yesterday - no crashes. Today 4 hrs so far - no crashes yet.

 

Populate all 4 dimms. If you pay shipping both ways, you can borrow my 2x2GB sticks.

 

HP has found and tested the fix. Things are happening to correct it, but all of the ducks have to be in a row first.

Hold tight - personal opinion: it shouldn't be too much longer.

 

By the way, knight, where did you get the cool logo for your laptop generated for your sig?

 

I thought you tried and got crashes with 2 DIMMs too? I thought everyone had suffered crashes before yesterday w/the non-DC2 display even if infrequently. Am I wrong?

Mine may crash w/4 Dimms. Will give you that; needs to be determined (can't be me tho for a timely answer as I rarely have any time to myself these days 'til, I dunno when). But if my previous paragraph is correct, we're showing progress in this batch.

All previous 8740w owners, please check in about this.

 

Hi knight, can you PM me with the name of the engineer doing this investigation so that I can confirm where he is at and make certain that the PM and him are in sync? Thanks!

 

Could you provide us the panel model ( extracted from Everest or other softwares)?

Thank you.

 

Not for a bit of time. I only get to work on the machine after I get off work, and I still have a lot to setup for what I bought it for before I set my sights on things like that.

Others have tried. It seems to be an elusive piece of info.

 

Looks like you need to open the system to actually get the panel s/number.
I doubt we'll see someone attempting to do this in the nearest future.

 

Maybe LGdiplay someday will upload their datasheets.

Since 10bit IPS is evident and truly amazing,now I am waiting for arrival of new machines. ( Yes, Two 8740W DC2 IPS)

 

Sorry, I did not know you were an insider. I give your source more credit then. But now I'm really confused.

That was done by Aikimox. He did several versions.

Yes, I get crashes with 2, but they are less frequent. But after installing 4, it crashes every 5-15 mins. So it would be a way to really test the new systems.

Sure.

 

Hi Vasbinde, are you from HP representing them in this forum? (your sig says HP) If so, that's good news and the pushing and complaining to the management paid off.

 

Have you used the search function for this software Throttlestop?

Maybe it will give you some help.

 

Yes, I work for HP. I don't like advertising that heavily though. I'm pretty low key and don't go for fame and fortune.

I work in HP Software, which is a separate group, so I am sort of "unofficially official". But I have a high interest in making sure our products are the best in the industry, and as such, I have direct contact with our PMs for the laptops that we use on a regular basis.

Our Elitebook PM's know me as a very squeaky wheel.

 

That's good..and now we will be the Squaky wheel for you
To start with "if possible", find out the specs for the DC2 display. Its sad that we have the display in hand and yet don't know the specs All i hear from my channels in HP is that the specs are waiting in "Legal".

 

I would love to help you on that, but attorneys tie my hands as well in this regard. Sorry. If I hear differently, I will let people know, but so far I am restricted as well.

 

So far LG hasn't listed any IPS panels for 17" in thier website. This link is a good source for info.
LG Displays for Notebooks

 

To Everyone in RE to crashing issues:

I just spoke to the powers that be again. In summary, there is progress being made in correcting the issue. I am not able to disclose any more information - you'll have to wait for all of the approvals to come in to place to get that. That said, hold tight, you ARE being heard and your concerns will be addressed.

Sorry I cannot disclose any more, but the legal restrictions are still there.

 

@vasbinde: Since you are in software, I thought I'd throw this at you. I use the HP Support Assistant to help keep my machine up-to-date on drivers (others around here like to do it themselves). This is my second 8740w and both times I was annoyed by this catch-22 in the software. When you first run it, there are lots of things that need updating, so it finds them all and downloads all of them, then starts installing. About half way through, it installs its own update. But then it needs to restart, which then requires a new scan and finally has to re-download the remaining updates.

I've run into similar problems with other auto-updating systems. They never seem to check themselves first, which always causes some problem or another.

Also, when the ATI driver was released the other day, I ran the Assistant and it did not find the driver. I easily browsed to the website and did it myself, but I was wondering why it did not detect the update and makes me wonder if it is missing anything else for me.

Finally, I think I just realized why you like to keep a low profile!

 

Eric, Great to see you here. I'll jump right to what I wanted to pass along. Just an FYI and ask you pass this along please. I posted the behavior a few pages back about the reboot hangs I and others have seen. I saw this both times after a) 1st time the machine started-up for the 1st time ever after the OS applied fixes, b) later, making a change to the ATI config.

1) The machine reboots, then a dark screen.
2) The machine makes tones to state the OS is starting, with disk activity, but no screen.
3) And no responsiveness on the keyboard to the Fn+Space to turn one and off the backlit keyboard. (I don't remember checking Num-Lock or Caps Lock)
4) The Sleep Fn key works, and machine goest to sleep.
5) It can come out of sleep, disk activity, but still no screen or backlit KB.

... so I use the shutdown button, for a hard off, wait a bit, then restart with success. I'm afraid to re-boot now; Always shut-down. This is one of the newly released machines w/DC2.

Thanx much.

 

Yep. Unfortunately for this issue, HP is so big that I can honestly say in RE to this issue that this is not my dept., and actually say it with a straight face. If you would like to see what I do, here is the SW that I work with (think "HP OpenView, Opsware", etc.):

https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-271_4000_100__

 

Have you contacted us (HP) to open a support case yet? That would be my first step - we do everything around here with support cases - so that we can track what's going on more easily.

Also, has this issue occurred with other forum members or with other OSes (e.g. Linux)? It may not be an OS or driver issue, but we'd need to rule those out.

 

Oh, one more thing, it's likely that there was a small delay from the posting of the driver to the file that the Support Assistant uses as an index being updated with the new file. With other vendors and products, I have seen updating utilities take up to a week to have their "index" files updated with new driver posts.

I wouldn't be too concerned personally unless it took longer than a week for it to appear in the Support tool.

 

Thanks a lot for the update here --- nonspecific as I'm sure it has to be, it's still greatly appreciated.

(I've added 2 x 4GB of RAM to the 2 x 2GB that my 8740w came with, and had no crashes so far overnight...hopefully it will stay that way. I am getting funky issues with not seeming to recover from sleep, though, without doing a hard reboot. I've just turned sleep off for now.)

 

As one of the last two original software developers still in this company I work for which is a surviving late '90s internet era company that grew from a few employees to hundreds, that has in the last few years embraced a "big company" mentality inherited from the latest company we bought (that was 3x our size) that itself inherited that when it bought a piece of AT&T, I feel I have to say "Ugh, another guy asking me to open a Remedy ticket!" lol j/k, ya, I was sure that would have to be the approach for real action.

To answer your other question, Yep, it had occurred with two other members yesterday before me. As members posting here are just a teeny tiny sampling of recent owners, chances are there's a lot more that hit it.

 

Perfect, they fixed the fan-on-after-sleep issue by breaking sleep all together!

 

Same for me as well.. Just when windows does any OS update and asks to restart.
1 - First time asked for restart, went all the way to restart and came back with no display but with hard disk activity. I had guesswork that it came to login screen and typed the password and behave like a blind person to shut down adn the start again.
2 - 2nd time froze while shutting down showing the applying updates message. Had to Hard power off and the start again.

 

Is $509 a good deal for the OCZ Vertex2 XE 240GB SSD (SF 1200 firmware with SF1500 performance)?

 

Just checked Everest, the only thing it gives you on the monitor is the manufacturing date (2009), and my monitor ID (LGD0270)

 

The price isn't bad if you're looking for performance and capacity.

 

I have W7U-64bit installed and it has frozen on a few occasions. Typically at the "Windows is Loading" screen, right when you see the four color specs flying around. They suddenly freeze, before forming the "windows" logo.
At that point I have to perform a forced shutdown. Once I turn it on again, it works fine.
I've had my laptop for just over 3 weeks and I've noticed the freezing maybe 5-7 times total.

I haven't experienced any crashes or blue screens. However, I'm only using two memory slots.

 

@Koshinn - Your 8GB - is it 2X4GB or 4x2GB? If 4x2GB - have you seen any crashes with your laptop yet?

 

@vasbinde: It's very nice to have a HP employee on these forums. Currently we have no other person working for HP participating in the HP section. However, on Dell forums there is a product manager taking part actively.
We were very dissapointed when we knew that HP employees don't participate on forums. We think this is a bad move, since it's important to listen to users. Well, many users read these forums and notice these problems (sleep fan issue, random crashes) and they might decide to not buy an EliteBook because there is no official word on these issues. This may damage the HP reputation.

On the other hand, I'm a spanish user, and I'm still waiting for the launch of the i7-840QM processor in my country to order my CTO 8740w. I know you're a software expert, but I wonder if you could pass my query on to another colleagues which may know something about this (i7-840QM availability worldwide, not only in the U.S.). In Spain, I can configure an EliteBook through a gold partner, but my rep doesn't know anything about this launch. Thank you in advance

 

^^ Second that.
Same thing here, in Canada.
I wish we could order the systems directly from HP (with the same level of customisation), same way we have Lenovo and Dell. That alone can sway many to go for Lenovo W-series and Dell Precision workstations.
I had to order the 8740w through my relatives in the US,...

Anyway, I'm glad there's a growing attention to these boards nowadays.

 

I get those. I always assumed they were a side effect of the sudden crashes, but perhaps they are a separate issue. I don't get the fan spin-up prior to these freezes but I've been counting them as the same.

So from this I am thinking there are now three separate issues.

1) Fan - fan stays on medium after waking from Sleep mode and will not shut off regardless of CPU/GPU temps...this problem is reportedly fixed in BIOS F.04, but that version is not yet through testing and is not currently available

2) Crash - fan suddenly ramps up to maximum speed, 30 seconds later the laptop goes blank as if it has lost all power...suspected problem is GDDR3 conflicting with 4 dimms...problem is perhaps solved by HP, but no official word yet on when solution is to come...claims made here suggest all newer laptops should not have this problem as the fix has already been implemented in the factories...anticipated fix is mobo replacement

3) Freeze - during startup, the computer freezes at some point during the animation (4 color dots rotate and flower into the Windows logo)...freeze may also occur during blank screen after this animation just before the Login screen appears...users must hold down the power key for several second to power down the system and reboot normally goes without any difficulty

I'd be interested in compiling a list of who has which problems, which components and when your computer was made/delivered. Here is the proposed format.

NBR username | Shipped Date | CPU | GPU | RAM config | OS | screen | Problems
Notes:

For example(s)

knight427 | 6-1-2010 | 720QM | M7820 | 2x2GB | W7P | WUXGA+ | 1, 2, 3
Notes:
I traded this one into HP for an upgrade that was supposed to be tested and ready to go...not so much

knight427 | (see "a") | 820QM | M7820 | 4x2GB | W7P | WUXGA+ | 1, 2, 3
Notes:
(a) HP had on-hand, made way before DC2 units
(b) 4 dimms was completely unstable, reduced to 2 and now crashes/freezes 1-3 times per day
(c) still feeling out new ATI driver, it did change fan behavior under heavy GPU loads

If you have suggestions for improving the formatting, I'm open to that (just get your suggestions in quick). Also, I encourage all users reading this to participate EVEN IF YOU HAVE HAD NO PROBLEMS.

 

I have 2x2gb installed and 2x2gb on my desk, but I haven't had the time to install them yet. So far I've had zero crashes and problems, except with 10bit (which was explained as inherent in windows7) and with trying to get my CAC working to allow me onto Dept. of Defense sites from home. I fixed the CAC problem so my computer is actually running perfectly, I needed a program called ActivClient to run as middleware. Supposedly Win7 doesn't require it, but I was having a lot of trouble logging in before I installed it. My only gripe is that I'm really annoyed at this 250gb 7200 RPM HDD. Coming from RAID0 X-25Ms, this is PAINFUL. Oh and the top left of my case near the power button is loose, it flexes a lot under a little pressure, whereas the right side is solid.


Koshinn | 7-14-2010 | 840QM | M7820 | 2x2GB | W7P | DC2 | No problems so far. Haven't tested 4 sticks of RAM.

 

I wonder if latest Linux can natively support 10-bit?

As for the HDD, we might see a G3 soonish with up to 400GB per drive. Plus you can always use the ultra-bay for another drive.

 

Yeah, I'm waiting for the Intel G3 SSD. I didn't wait for sandy bridge but I am waiting for that. And I'm considering replacing the drive with a HDD, but still weighing my options.

 

G3 will have 300GB and 600GB variants in a few more months.

 

I'll be watching the marketplace for a 160GB G2 then.