*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 1*

@m8o: You're welcome

After waiting a lot of time (since june, when I got in touch with my rep)... I was finally able to order it!!! :yes:

Notice I've ordered the backlit keyboard. I've let my rep know about the bump on function keys. He'll test the machine before shipping to me
ETA is about 3-4 weeks. I cannot wait anymore!

 

^^ Congrats!!! Finally! Honestly, I thought you'd never pull the trigger Now, for the agony of waiting...

 

My unit finally arrived! HOWEVER.....the BIOS and W7 64 bit are correctly reporting 8GB of RAM, but W7 is saying only 3.5GB are "usable".

?!

 

Sounds great. I wasn't sure if a PM to a mod would be OK, or moreover, which mod to PM. So instead, I simply reported my own first post. (Can't say I've ever done that before!) Hopefully, we'll get some moderator attention.

I put a link to your post from the first page.

 

Thank you!
I PM'ed moderators and their suggestion was - closing this thread and linking it to a new one, but I think our solution is fine.

 

This post will continue what was started by SecretAsianMan.
Big thanks for creating this thread and doing awesome job maintaining it and gathering all the info.

 

What post?

 

^^ sorry for the confusion. Looks like this thread will be closed and linked to the new one and we'll continue there.

 

In the first post, be sure to link to all the various fixes and work arounds people have found, like drivers, removing the buzzing, etc

 

@Aikimox...be sure to reserve the first few posts for yourself to update periodically with any info..

 

Thanks, will do...

 

Quick help please. How can I restore to a restore point if I can't reach Desktop, even in Safe Mode?

 

^^ Can you provide more details on the problem?

 

@Akimox: Cheer up! Yes, you can! :wink:

 

Please continue the discussion here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...ial-hp-elitebook-8740w-owners-lounge-new.html

I have asked a moderator to lock this thread.

 

Does pressing F8 still work while booting Win7?

If you can't boot to the desktop, this is the only thing I've read works:

If Your System Won’t Boot

If you can’t even get into windows, you can boot off the installation dvd, and choose the “Repair your computer” option on the lower left hand side.

Click next on the next screen, and then choose System Restore from the System Recovery dialog. It will take a few seconds to come up, and you will see the same screen that you would see in Windows.

Click next, and on the next screen select the drive that your copy of Windows 7 or Vista is installed on.

Click Finish, and Windows will roll back to the previous restore point.

 

Thanks for the help. I booted from dvd but could not get any of my restore points to work (always ran into an unspecified error). Windows suggested it might be a bad sector my HDD after my last attempt. It suggested I run a disk check (though I'm pretty sure it has already done that and didn't manage to fix the problem). Right now I finally managed to get to my desktop in Safe Mode*. I'm doing a final backup of my stuff before messing around any more. I have a feeling I'll be running on a fresh install of Windows by morning.

Any suggestions regarding a "bad sector" on a disk?

*the problem seemed to be that I was too impatient, it took about 10 minutes to get to the desktop....lots of frozen screen time, but it got there.

 

That's what I was waiting for. Yes, that's most likely a HDD problem. It may be a bad sector/s but checkdisk would have found it, - so, looks like a file table shift. Such things can be fixed easily with a format.
I'm not sure if it's worth trying some expensive disk doctor tools...

 

New thread has been made, please continue discussion here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...p-elitebook-8740w-owners-lounge-part-2-a.html

Thanks.