A Few Small Problems: dv6500t

Hey everyone. Back in August of this year, I bought myself an HP Pavilion dv6500t laptop for my trip to Macedonia. Couldn't be happier with the purchase; I just have a few small gripes and was wondering if anyone would be able to help me out with those.

First would be the network card. I have an Intel A/G/N standard wireless card, and bluetooth. I'm not sure why, but ever since I got the laptop, the wireless connection drops every 24 hours on the dot. Well-- precisely, 1 minute after 24 hours from the last reboot. Very odd thing, and while not a huge deal, a hassle nonetheless. I have all the updated drivers for my card. This laptop is part of a home network with 2 Buffalo routers (one in extender mode to repeat the network), an XBox, Wii, and 3 PCs (two wireless, one wired to the router) all connected; as well as the occasional extra laptop. None of the rest of these, all with various methods of connection, experience any similar problems. Right now, I'm running Panda Titanium Virus Protection, WinPatrol and the Vidalia Tor bundle all for safety's sake. The only things I leave on all the time are various messenger programs. No matter how many variations I've tried of running nothing or everything, it still happens-- 24 hours later, it disconnects.

On the same subject, whenever I change a setting, wake my laptop from sleep or connect to a new wireless network, I have to restart my computer much in the same way as above. Windows Network Troubleshooter doesn't come up with anything wrong. Basically, I'm just connected, and then either 24 hours, one wake-up or one reconnect away from a "Limited Connectivity" or "Local Access Only" connection; depending on my laptop's mood. I've played around with various settings and ran both of the WMI and Network fixes I found for Vista Home Premium. Obviously, I don't use sleep very much, since it negates the purpose of itself if I have to restart it to effectively use the internet. I've tried this laptop on dozens of networks all the way from Macedonia to Germany to New Jersey, all with the same problem. Very weird.

Also, related to sleep, despite me having set all of the options necessary to do so, even if I leave my laptop on and the screen open/closed (plugged in) for hours, it will never return to the Windows login screen. I like this feature in XP for the password protection, but I don't want to set it to go into sleep mode, as the wireless won't work after that! See my dilemma?

The Bluetooth doesn't appear to have these problems. Every other bit of hardware works perfectly.

One Vista-esque gripe, if anyone can offer some help... I've read up on all the administrator and such options and turned off group policies and such, set all the programs to read and write capable and made myself the sole administrator with total control... I've also turned off User Account Control. Despite all this, I need to boot into safe mode with networking to update anything like Firefox, Steam, XFire, etc. (Also, Xfire doesn't seem very Vista friendly.) It says that one or more of the files, basically, can't be changed or deleted during the update process, and cancels it. It's a big hassle, since Steam comes out with weekly updates. I've narrowed it down to changes in .exe files mostly, as whenever a .exe has been run I can't delete or modify it until I restart my computer. Even then, it sometimes won't let me. Continually says I need to 'Try again', because the file is 'still in use', despite me having killed the processes accessing it, etc.

So, yeah, a long post, but here's a TL;DR summary.

1. Network connection resets every 24 hours and needs to be restarted to renew.
2. Changing a setting in the wireless or waking my computer makes me have to restart my computer to access the internet.
3. Never returns to the login screen unless it goes into sleep mode or is locked. (I kinda want a "lock after x minutes" feature)
4. Can't update programs/delete files/otherwise alter .exe files without a reboot; sometimes needs safe mode.

If anyone has similar problems or, even better, solutions, please post! I guess the majority of it has something to do with DNS resolution and renewal, but I'm not sure. I can give specifics of routers, hardware, software, etc. if necessary. I run Panda Titanium, WinPatrol and the Tor Vidalia bundle as my protection suite.

I love my laptop otherwise, and couldn't be happier except for these few things. But, these things are major to me in a lot of ways, and I've been looking at downgrading to XP as a "fix".

Oh, one other thing: I seem to have misplaced my recovery discs... in another country. I lost my whole CD binder. Yeah, stupid of me to bring it with me. It's probably somewhere in Hungary right now. Is there any way to get another recovery disc set? Recovery manager says it can only make one set.

Thanks much in advance!

 

I'm pretty sure you can order new recovery disks from HP.

Grand Admiral

 

Ahh, I can order some from them indeed! Thanks!

 

Try uninstalling all or parts of those apps and see what happens. When I initially uninstalled the crap norton off my dv6500t it killed my internet connection. I had to do a system restore to put it back and use the symantec remove tool. The point is, security softwares can drop your internet connection sometimes. I am thinking its some app you installed causing the issue. Reinstalling vista may not be necessary unless you are sure it was doing this BEFORE you put the panda stuff on.. Good luck.. Also, there is a nice sticky on doing a clean install with a anytime upgrade Disc.. Don't know if you can still buy the Vista disc from CompUSA for 5 bucks since they are going out of business.. but you can try.. I am sure you can get it pretty cheap from MS as well. If you are going to reinstall Vista you might want to get the benefit from a clean install.. There is a amazing amount of bloat on HP systems that come with the factory disc.

Also, I use Kaspersky with regular AV, email and spyware protection. I have Vista firewall on and turned off windows defender. Everything works good.. no problems. I personally don't like the big security suites. A good AV like Kaspersky with spyware protection and vista firewall is all I need and it does not take too much resources. The big suites in IMO can cause too many problems and take too much system resources.

Oh yeah.. don't forget system restore.. you might be able to use that instead of reinstalling vista.
Sometimes the system discs that HP sends you can create issues.. since they are not always tailored to your model system.. Its best to use make discs from your backup partition or boot to that.. or use anytime upgrade disc to do a clean install.. Using the discs HP sends has the highest chance for installation problems.

 

The first thing I would try if I were you is uninstalling and reinstalling the wireless card's drivers. After that give the computer a reboot and try it out again. If that doesn't work post back and let us know. I wouldn't uninstall and reinstall the OS until you have exhausted all other options. Also, for the drivers, go out to the actual manufacturers website and not HPs, because HP is always behind on providing up to date drivers. If you do in the end plan on reinstalling I would say do a clean install it is definitely worth it. You will notice a huge difference if you do a clean install. All the bloatware that HP puts on the machines really lags them down. You can purchase Windows Vista anytime upgrade disks at CompUSA (but they are going out of business soon) and I've heard you can buy them from Microsoft as well. Also, you will have to go out and download all the drivers for your hardware (but that's very easy and doesn't take up much time).

I have Vista Ultimate 64-bit and I use Steam and Xfire and have only had one issue. I've noticed the same thing as you with Xfire, it will not automatically update because Vista will stop it, but, I have clicked inside of Xfire and chose to update manually and it downloaded the update and installed it find without having to go into safemode. With Steam I've had no problems yet, in fact, it just updated itself last night and was waiting for me to restart Steam. If you haven't updated Vista yet, I would do that as well.

Also, Vista SP1 will be coming out the first quarter of next year and hopefully will address a lot of the problems that have been plaguing people with Vista.

 

Well, I tried reinstalling the wireless card drivers and setting the defaults. When I change a setting or put the computer to sleep, it still can't reconnect without a fresh restart. It's about 2 hours until the 24 hour mark. I'll see then.

 

I was having similar network issues with the Intel A/G/N, so I downloaded the latest driver from Intel which are here: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/fil...32-bit+version&lang=eng&strOSs=156&submit=Go! (the ones on HP support website are outdated) and it fixed the problems I was having.

Also if you haven't done so already, update the bios to newest version F.33 from: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3369405&os=2093&lang=en which fixes a problem where the system will hang when it is idle if the Intel A/G/N installed.

Good Luck.

 

Well, the laptop failed the 24 hour test last night. I installed the BIOS update and the update for the drivers again, but when I tried a sleep test, still I had to restart to get connectivity.

Also, I'm unable to download the QuickPlay buttons fix, as the download fails through the HP Update Center without giving any real reason as to why. And when I try and update things though the HP Health Check, clicking on the automatic updater links just brings up a black DOS window for a second or two before it closes and nothing else happens.

I can't update Firefox, Steam or Xfire anymore, and there are still bunches of .exe files I can't delete without restarting twice. Any ideas?