E-mail to HP Tech Support - dv2000t Vista audio driver issue

Well, I've emailed HP about the issue, this is the correspondence thus far. Knowing how they're probably expecting a currently resolvable issue, this is probably going to take a while. I'd like to see how they reply. It's one hell of a reply for sure:

If there are no plans for correct Vista audio drivers to materialize, I'm going to request a return and exchange for a current CTO with proper Vista drivers (even tho it's already been past 21 days).

 

I love that you provided enough information in your email to them, so that anyone with half a brain could understand EXACTLY what the problem was, yet they sent you back an email telling you use Windows Update, and good luck. Then they said that if you respond back, be sure to answer a question that you clearly answered in your original email.

My total so far (imagine a Mastercard ad):
HP notebook: $1500
Windows Vista: $260
HP Support: Worthless

In my Better Business Bureau claim against HP I demanded either proper drivers, or a new motherboard which has the new audio codec. We'll see what I get.

On the plus side, at least the tech didn't try to tell you that installing Vista via an OEM disc versus a Retail one would magically change the audio chipset in your notebook like they did me (the latest of the many techs I spoke with). After demanding to speak to his supervisor, and informing his supervisor that the answer I was receiving was complete ******** and that I knew they had changed motherboards for the currently shipping models, I was informed that the only solution that would ever be provided was to use the XP drivers. When I started to explain the myriad of reasons that was unacceptable, the supervisor hung up on me. And they want me to buy an extended support contract? I've yet to get support while my unit is under warranty.

 

I had something similar when I was testing vista ULT this past year before RTM. Updating to latest drivers straight from the developer alway helped. I have a conexant modem & Realtek audio (link in sound ... SZ450). This info may be bogus for your units, but if not working how much could it hurt? - - --
btw, My nephew works for HP, I would not buy based on his word about em. Printers good/OK, LT/NB blah! - - - -
Where were the phone calls answered, or email (who-is?)
- - - - - -
HP reply almost as bad as the head WD tech (at least he apologized when I asked for his tech supervisor (it was Him!)] telling me to check jumper settings on older SATA 150 HD, before the 3.0Gbs were released. WD On-line info that I referenced even stated fact that NO Jumper on sata 150Mbs

 

digital8doug -- The developer (Conexant) doesn't sell directly to consumers, and they refuse to provide drivers directly to consumers. When I spoke with them (at their corporate office number, as they also don't provide tech support), and explained that many people needed a "Waikiki" driver for Vista, they made it sound like that codec was no longer produced and wasn't being supported. When I said that HP was shipping systems with that codec, he seemed shocked, and then reitterated that Conexant didn't supply drivers directly to consumers, and that he couldn't say anything else. He, of course, suggested contacting HP, which as everyone has found out, is the biggest waste of time on earth.

 

Am I getting the idea that HP terchnical and fault support is below standard?

 

ok update (i'm impressed, two replies in one night from hp) here it is. it's nothing like i've ever heard before but it's worth a shot. at least this guy looks to have technical knowledge:

 

it works??????

 

this process looks sooooo shady. first of all, it's an ATI driver, then upon installing it windows tells me that the driver was not meant for the hardware. lastly, i have no idea what i'm doing when i type in "bcdedit.exe -set nointegritychecks ON"

anyway, i tried it and all i can say is, don't waste your time. not only does it not solve any of the issues, but it causes windows to think the computer motherboard changed (meaning new computer) and is no longer activated. the drivers are labeled ATI Integrated Audio and are dated back to 2005. the audio device doesn't even function upon a restart, after which windows automatically reverts and re-installs the default vista drivers for it.



*I advise everyone experiencing this problem to e-mail HP tech support for help. If enough people are experiencing problems, they must recognize that there is a problem and that a fix is needed.*




i've used the XP drivers before and those seem to work well. I don't experience any startup lag or anything. the microphone works as does the mute button. i haven't tested it from a "wake up" from sleep or hibernate mode yet though. right now, the XP drivers look to be the best bet.

Update: with the XP drivers, audio appears to be working. audio continues to function even after "waking up" from sleep and hibernate modes.

i don't know if there are any variations in the XP drivers provided to people, but if anyone wants, i can send the ones i have to someone to upload somewhere so people can download them.

Update again: there is most definitely a period of idle time when windows boots up using the XP driver. It doesn't exist with the default basic Vista drivers.

 

Read my sig on the customer service. You might want to email the top dog yourself!

 

hey dynamius, tell me which drivers u installed on your computer after a fresh install of vista. i wana copy your way and see if it will work like yours. because i think i installed the worng drivers that cause me the lagg. because the lagg dosnt happen untill after i installed the drivers. so can u tell me which driver u installed in order? thx

 

It depends on how low you set the standard, I suppose. But I've only gotten to talk (er... email) to a person with a clue once, and all I got out of them on this issue was that HP wasn't planning to provide updated drivers for the device. Everyone else just makes stuff up and tries to get you off the phone/chat session as soon as possible.

I'm impressed that he tried to help. Unfortunately, the driver he linked to is an x64 driver for AMD HP notebooks and does nothing on the dv2000t. Nice effort though. Also, I believe the -nointegritycheck function no longer does anything in the final version of Vista. It was a trick (in the beta) that could be used to get unsigned drivers to work, but I'm almost positive that now it does nothing.

Ditto the everyone should contact HP support, but be prepared for a migraine. Also, they know it's a problem, but since its my understanding that Conexant isn't supporting this device under Vista (only these notebooks have used it in the recent past -- all others have used newer chipsets for awhile now) I wouldn't expect a true Vista driver ever. Unless HP gets Conexant to develop a driver for them, the only "solution" is to replace the motherboard with the new ones that use the "Venice" audio chipset... not something HP seems likely to do.

 

hey dynamius, tell me which drivers u installed on your computer after a fresh install of vista. i wana copy your way and see if it will work like yours. because i think i installed the worng drivers that cause me the lagg. because the lagg dosnt happen untill after i installed the drivers. so can u tell me which driver u installed in order? thx

 

third reply from a different person. useless info:

I've sent another email out repeating my experience from a different e-mail. I'll keep at this as long as i can. we should probably get Conexant involved also.


HP Fan:
The original drivers were automatically installed by Windows Vista ("High Definition Audio Device"). From there...
-go into Device Manager
-under "Sound, video and game controllers", right click "High Definition Audio Device"
-select "Update Driver Software..."
-choose "Browse my computer for driver software"
-choose "Let me pick from a list..."
-click the "Have Disk..." button
-browse for where you have the original XP drivers. In my case, I had burned the original XP SWSETUP folder onto a dvd, so i selected the dvd drive, "swsetup" folder, "audio" folder, and selected "wis30B2a.inf"
-after selected, hit "OK", it should now list "Conexant High Definition Audio" and the driver should be signed.
-hit "Next" to install.

that's all i did. to get the microphone working, you need to go into Sound properties from the control panel and set the microphone as the default device, as windows has the "Sum" device as default. after that, you should be able to see the volume level bar responding next to the microphone.

 

reply #4, glad it sounds like that they'll start to dig now. i'm gonna make sure they get multiple people on this and make it known. i have to say though, i am very impressed at their responsiveness.

this should be fun... oh boy lol

 

u only install the audio driver after the fresh install? wat about the card reader, quick launch, and other stuff. i need to know which driver that u install on your comp after fresh install
can u list the drivers that u installed thx

 

well i installed the audio driver at the very end. however, i've done some testing. i never really paid attention, but after comparing the default drivers to the XP drivers, i notice the lag people are talking about. when you first log into windows, i opened the task manager and noticed that the cpu and hard drive will kind of sit idly for about 15-20 seconds before starting up again and loading everything else in the background. but i notice that you can still open programs and other windows during this time (word, IE, etc), just that the sidebar and networking are waiting to load (it seems that those two were always the last to load even before)

i'm going to continue using this driver as everything works correctly even tho there's a slight idle time in the beginning until this whole issue gets resolved.

 

yeS, that is wat im talking about. that idle time at the begining. i need to fix that too but i dunno know how

 

alright, since the e-mails have expectedly stopped being answered on their end, i spoke to tech support on the phone. fortunately, the tech support member I was transferred to was located in British Columbia so communication was a breeze. now onto the issue...

Initially, we went through the whole finding a driver that she thought would work by directing me to the dv2000 Vista drivers page with the Conexant driver where I then said that those were the ones I have tried but said it was for different hardware. I mentioned that there was probably a hardware change with pre-Vista models and post-vista models with the dv2000 CTOs.

the main points:

-Because it was a retail version of Vista, it was kind of a grey area since it doesn't include the HP drivers and software intended for that model, so HP support will be limited. with the hp upgrade, they will completely support it and make sure it functions properly.

-I asked if all the Vista drivers were currently online, and she said that they were definitely not all ready and up and things were slow getting Vista drivers ready due to a lot of waiting on Microsoft and other companies for drivers.

-The upgrade shipped from HP is exactly that - an upgrade. You use the upgrade they send to upgrade Windows XP to Windows Vista. Based on what she said, I'm assuming there's no clean installation option here, but I didn't clarify on that issue with her.

-She mentioned because it was a CTO, there would be hardware differences in each one (obviously) and it was definitely possible that you could run into problems when upgrading to a retail version of Vista.

-I eventually mentioned that the drivers online did not function because I believed that the audio codec was different with the pre-Vista dv2000t and the post-Vista dv2000t. She kind of lit up when I said this and said, "You know, now that you mention it, let me check something..." After a while of waiting she confirmed that the audio codec was indeed different than the current ones. She was kind of stumped after seeing this and called this entire situation "very interesting."

-Currently, there is nothing more they can really do but complete functionality is completely supported with the upgrade disc.

-She then documented the whole thing, took a while to make some notes on the situation, and gave me a case number.

She was very very helpful and put a lot of effort in helping, but it appears that this situation is just simply beyond her control and that of tech support in general. Seeing how HP's WW Headquarters is actually located 20 minutes from where I live, I'm probably going to go walk in pretty soon and ask to speak to someone regarding this issue.

in the end, the main concern is that the audio would not function properly even with the upgrade. i guess we'll have to wait and see for now. here's to hoping they'll have proper vista drivers on the upgrade.

For those hoping to run Vista x64, seeing how things are, I would start to involve Microsoft and Conexant in addition to HP in this situation.

 

f---- hp is retarded

 

I have everything working on my dv2000t.... in 32-bit Ubuntu linux. I'll be trying a 64-bit installation tonight, so far every component I've researched has at least basic support. I guess the silver lining of HP ****ing me on this laptop is I've finally ditched Windows for good. Although I'll still keep a 32bit XP installation around for Oblivion.

 

Well, I got my response back from HP.

 

^^^ Interesting response, however, they don't appear to have changed the onboard audio codec until they released the systems that were shipped for the Vista consumer release (1/30/07). I like their attempt though. Maybe things will look up. Anna (HP_Total_Care) definitely made it sound like they were going to try to do something for us in another thread.

 

Ok guys, this is what I did, I also was experiencing these problems. What I did was like the poster installed the windows xp driver and everything is working great. I just got the driver by going to the hp website and selecting the right model type, i then click windows xp instead of vista, got the installed the driver. The mute works, headphones work, mic works by changing the default. Problem solved

 

The XP drivers do work, but they have their share of problems as well. I personally experience a major slowdown when windows boots up in the beginning. when you first log into windows after booting up, there is a period of 30-60 seconds where the CPU and hard disk sit idly waiting on something before continuing to load all other background services (such as external monitor display, windows sidebar, wireless network, etc).

In addition, the sound enhancements options that you get when using the default drivers (and proper Vista drivers) are no longer available in sound properties under the XP drivers. This is in contrast to the notebooks that do have Vista sound drivers, where they are still available (I've seen the options available for sound in the Vista notebooks in stores).

It also seems that some people are also experiencing system lock up issues with the XP drivers as well.

oh yes, and in addition, installing XP drivers isn't even an option for those running the 64-bit version of Vista.

 

the slow boot up problem is not caused by the sound drivers because I didnt have the sound drivers installed and using the default sound driver and still had that slow problem. maby its another driver thats causing it to slow down

 

Hello people,

Just wanted to say I've had the same problem when trying to install the latest audio driver for my dv2040tx.

Tried the online support without success.

Sounds like some of you guys have done some good work in finding out what's going on, and time will be our healer.

Just wanted to ask if having this old audio driver could affect the poor performance of video in full screen mode or is this purely down to the nVidia graphics driver.

Cheers,
The Morgs

 

actually it is. your computer may have slowdown caused by another program trying to start up and run in the background. i went back and forth countless times testing the standard basic included vista driver and the XP driver. with the XP driver, there is most definitely a period of around 30-40 seconds during start up where the computer is idle for a while before it starts working again. it disappears as soon as i revert back to the basic vista driver.

 

the XP drivers are NOT ENOUGH - I get system crashes, slowdown and you cannot use them on vista x64 bit -- and here is one example - the SPDIF does not actually output a digital signal so you can't hook it up to your stereo and watch a DVD in dolby digital (I just tested this last night)

ps- the October 26 thing is a lie- my computer was ordered on Dec 19th and arrived Dec 28th and has the waikiki codec -- but i am happy they said they are addressing the problem - let's keep pushing for it though - the more people who call and complain, the fast they'll want to address the issue

~ L

 

which drivers did u install altogether?

 

Yet another Update

 

sounds like HP is holding off on shipping the Vista upgrades because they don't have all the drivers ready quite yet, hence by the end of March. Well i'm glad they're taking to time to ensure that everything functions with each model (at least the ones sold since Oct. 26, 2006) rather than hand out a half-assed upgrade to everyone. it's probably safe to say that the issues will be resolved by then. if not, well... HP will have one hell of situation on their hands.

HP Fan: i'm just using the XP drivers that came with the laptop. they're the same ones as the XP drivers posted online at HP's site.

 

I'm bought in 27 december 06 it's still waikiki coded --*--
I'm was did same you,i'm try to use conexant driver both from hp site lasted driver and old driver it's from swsetup folder,sound work good with any all function but have you try this,gain volume to max and play game or open mp3 from windows media player with internal speaker with max volume [not line-out or any jack output] while sound comming to choppy sound [in music most in hook rythm and in game most in gun sound] sound are too laggggg !!!

but it's not to be like this when useing external sound with line-out like headphones,driver for xp it's can use fine with basic function only it's not compatible to use with full function

i'm contact to hp customer chat but solution not help anything better