Envy 14: New owners in Paradise Lost Thread: (Got Problems/Questions/Issues?)

Hi all,

Short time lurker, first time poster. I am about one week in with my Envy ( this one here: HP ENVY 14-1210nr Notebook PC Product Specifications - HP Customer Care (United States - English) ) and so far so good with one exception...the battery needs to be replaced...after one week. Upon charging out of the box, I only got up to a 79% charge; even though it was charging for several hours. It ran fine off A/C power...but no matter how long I was using it, it always remained at 79% charged. Weird, right?

Well, fast forward to today and mid-session the laptop shuts off - even with, you guessed it... a 79% charge. I plugged the A/C and even now, I'm at 0% charge.

I ran the battery diagnostic and got the "you need a new battery" message...which is strange after exactly 7 days of little to no use.

I called HP and they were kind enough to send me a new batter which should be here by the end of the week...which is nice.

I"m just wondering if anyone else has had a similar issue? Seems somewhat unusual to ship a new laptop with a used or defective battery.

Thank you, and if this was discucced previousy my apologies - I could not find his topic after seraching this site for some time.

cheers, and thanks for this site.

~ mike

 

Ah gdammit...

3rd hard freeze this week... my Envy passed the hard drive and memory diagnostics from BIOS.

Also, may or may not be related, but I tried to upgrade my ATI drivers (10.7->most recent) the other day, but the installer said that my config. was "not compatible" or something.

 

I'm curious, what will run games better, and envy 14, i5-580 (everything else standard), or the laptop in my sig.?

Thanks.

 

The envy would run games slightly better, but not by much.
However the 5650 should support newer games better as it is more modern than the 3870 (2 generations apart in fact)

In the end, it all depends how much you want to spend. And if that Force OCZ is your current config, don't even think about changing, that would be a waste of money.

 

First post here, about 2 weeks into my new Envy, (which I am LOVING, btw).

On my first usage, I was able to achieve about 4:30-5 hours of battery life from reading up on these forums and doing some light software installs and the occasional youtube video and one-off How I Met Your Mother video.

Now, about two weeks in, I'm achieving under 3 hours from the same workload and power settings.

The hp scan says my battery appears to be functioning normally.
BatteryBar has been reporting a discharge rate between 15k-18k mW from just reading up on these forums, and apparently, that's not a great rate. This is also with my screen brightness on lowest.

At medium brightness I had up to 21k mW discharge rate being estimated when balancing between watching movies and reading on these forums.

My estimated full lifetime on BatteryBar has been displayed as 2:52 hours for the last hour. (2:45 before, when I was watching movies).

This is a fairly drastic difference from the 4-5 hours of usage I was able to gain from the start, and I'm wondering if there's maybe anything that I could be doing about it.

 

^
Additional info, -I installed Granola as recommended by the owner's lounge, and after a while realised that it wasn't contributing to an optimal battery life, (been at 2:50-3:05 hours for the last week or so), and so uninstalled it upon reading something about some existing program on intel drivers which already did that job probably better than Granola.

So now I've recently uninstalled Granola, and am now currently wondering if that may have been the issue or not, since my estimated battery life is even lower yet.

I feel like a noob, but I'm wondering if it really is indeed something to do with the frequency whatever whatevers that Granola deals with, and the intel program (that apparently exists) might have been thingo'd with and that might be my problem.

OR is my battery faulty and am I eligible to ask for a new one from hp? <-this one I'm having doubts about since the support thingo said it was fine and batterybar says there's no battery wear.

 

The 1st few charges of the battery often last longer than the following ones.

do you have an i3, i5 or i7 ? If you get less than 2.5h on an i5/3 this is not normal.
Make sure you are in power saving mode, dedicated GPU off, 0% brightness, bluetooth off and use a browser that has a low power profile (like google chrome)

I returned an i7 last week, I got over 3h the 1st charge so I was stoked, then it went down to 2h45 and last charge I got around 2h30. I only had it for a week, so I suppose it could have gone more down.

 

Yup, those are exactly the settings I have it on atm. Still can't work out why it would lose a whole two hours from it's initial lifetime over just two weeks.

 

Hmm, read through random posts on this thread, and people were talking about battery wear supposedly starting at 2%. Mine doesn't show any change, staying at 0.00% the whole time that I've had it. (this is BatteryBar, btw.)

I haven't had any problems charging up to an (apparently) full charge of 100% either, so I'm suspecting something wrong with the battery output again..

 

Thanks for the reply. The Force OCZ is not very portable, and with all the flashing lights and skulls built into the design, it is not something I can take to work. I'm glad I can expect the same performance / video quality out of my games, though.

 

Does the envy 14 house a 1.8" or 2.5' serial ATA drive? I assume it is unable to house 2 1.8" like the 15 inch can?

 

2.5" SATA drive

 

Iv had my envy for almost two weeks now and havent really used it much away from a plug until now. Now that I have, Iv noticed something funny about the battery indicator. After first unplugging it stays at 100% for a couple of mins (not really sure how long exactly) then drops to 94% without hitting any numbers in between. Is this a problem with my battery or just the battery indicator? Anyone else have this problem?

 

This was already posted in the owners lounge before I saw this thread - thought it may be better posted here:

I just purchased a 14-1111nr from the Microsoft store. They come with the signature image, which is pretty cool, except I can't get the intel graphics card to be recognized. I've read through these threads, but I'm confused on a few things:

1. I've completely uninstalled the ATI driver, all the way back to the 800x600 VGA driver thats on the OS by default. I've tried both the current driver and the earliest driver that's posted on the drivers thread.
2. In both cases, unplugging appears to not change anything and there is no option in the desktop right click menu to switch graphics cards.
3. I've also noticed my brightness keys do nothing, but I understand from previous threads this is due to the latest ATI driver.
4. I've checked the version of the chipset drivers and they seem to be current.
5. I dont see anything special to change in bios.

Is there anything else I'm missing to engage the graphic card switching? Perhaps another piece of software I need to install or some weird software switch that turns on the intel driver?

Thanks to anyone who can help.

EG

 

Just go my new Envy, and moved over all my stuff from my old HP DV6 series. Love everything about it except how my mouse pad sticks out on the bottom right side...but thats less pressing.

I have an iphone 4 that has tethering, it creates an ad-hoc network that I can use to piggy back off of my 3g service, although the Envy sees it under wireless networks, it cannot connect. Anybody have any suggestions or fixes other than upgrading the driver? I did that and it didn't work.

Thank in advance!

 

PDAnet works great for tethering with my android. Maybe there is a similar program for your iphone? Tethering via bluetooth doesn't require your computer to have a program downloaded.

 

THIS IS URGENT FOR ME AS I AM GOING BACK TO SCHOOL SOON>

How hard is it to replace the top screen with another one?
I just got a spare one
(from my new envy 14 which is 1150 CTO or something newer but hopefully that shouldn't make a difference right?)


Also, how hard is it to replace the keyboard?


*Note, my parents wanted one so I got another one but they said I could swap my parts (keyboard and screen) with theirs since they didn't care about cosmetics and keyboard stickiness.
Any help or comments is appreciated!

 

keyboard shouldn't be that bad.


screen is a pain in the butt (like all/most laptops) but can be done.


replacing the screen replaces a few other parts (wifi antennae, webcam, other stuff maybe)

there should be a link to the disassembly manual thing somewhere in the owner's lounge.

edit: btw, doing these will probably void your warranty

 

I found an Envy 14 w radiance today. Open box price was 1099.

But the restore partition is borked. I discovered this at 47% of the recovery. All partitions are borked.

Installing from the oem disk that came with my desktop. The envy's Coa key probably won't work, Eh?

 

When I tether I turn off laptop wifi. Works great.

 

I did a clean install and I did everything the standard way and it all works fine (switching, brightness keys, etc).

I did a clean install (your equivalent would be uninstalling all of your ati drivers). Then I let Windows update find the driver for the integrated graphics and installed it. Then I used the driver on HP's site for the 5850. Then a few days later, I installed the latest catalyst package from AMD's site and everything works just fine. Give it a shot.

 

the latest latest ATI drivers fixed the brightness key issue (ATI 11.1)


it was 10.8 or 10.9 through 10.11 and/or 10.12 that broke the brightness keys while on the ati gpu.

 

When I said "replacing the screen", im not sure if I'm really going to need to replace my screen. Meaning, it was the top cover that was dented, and so if replacing that means replacing the screen, then yes we are talking about the same thing
But its only the top cover is damaged, so will I need to replace the screen also?

 

yeah..there's no way to just replace the dented top cover.

you'd be replacing the entire top half of the computer (monitor and all) if you replace stuff.

 

And you said it was difficult to replace?

Do you think an hour (before church) is enough to replace the keyboard and screen?

 

well difficult is more of a "Do I have everything I need and am I able to not break stuff."


http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02508020.pdf

read through that, it has guides for both things you wanna do. When replacing the keyboard be very careful or else you WILL cut the power cable for the keyboard light while pulling it out (it's not that long of a cable and is easy to tear)

edit: also, several things are held down by double sided tape in the computer so don't lose that stuff or ruin it.


also also are you doing this to their computer with their permission? 'cause if not. I'd ask them first (among other things).

 

Yeah, we are working on it together.

eek.
I'm really scared now...cuz I need the computer for school.

 

eh. you'll be alright so long as you follow the directions and take it kind of slow.


the guide isn't 100% accurate by the way so watch out for things that may not be mentioned like double sided tape on cords it doesn't say there will be tape on, etc.

 

3 hours to burn recovery disks.

2 hours to restore system.

30 seconds to uncover mbr problem.

Can not boot into recovery partition.

Time to give up.

 

I get a black screen when trying to do a restore.

Is this a feature?

(my vanilla oem win7 disk was able to repair it)

This is why people should avoid open box units. Grrrr!

 

it is sort of a feature.

meaning "screw you I'm a confused gpu vbios/motherboard bios that likes to give blank screens sometimes. You can fix me by trying again or maybe lowering and raising the lid"


also "my feature is exacerbated if you install the original video drivers because then you'll get to see me go blank whenever you try to update your video card drivers"

that feature gave me so many headaches while we were trying to figure out why the computer wouldn't install the newer ati drivers.

turns out it was, but we were turning it off mid install (it was still working with a blank screen). you had to wait until the hdd light stopped blinking to turn the computer off and then things worked fine..well sorta. In the end hp released newerish drivers that solved the problem for windows after it is instaled at least (not so much when you reinstall windows but...well yeah)

 

Install over stock? Or clean install?

 

install over newer stock (meaning the latest hp drivers, version 8.473.1 I think is the correct version)

 

I take it back. HP released a third graphics card update.


ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp50501-51000/sp50656.exe

wonder how these function.

edit:

oh so did they finally "officially" fix those issues? cool. took them long neough.

 

Ha! As a former alienware owner I appreciate HP trying to make me feel welcome.

 

Did you install 11.1 hotfix over the latest HP drivers?

 

*shrugs* I haven't tried that one I don't think.

at the moment I'm back on HP's second set of drivers (because I didn't know about the two newer sets) and because my long history of screwing with my gpu and its drivers for the good of this forum caught up to me.


my texture filterer for dx9 was horribly corrupted. Had to reset stuff back to default default the hard way (windows update kept reinstalling the drivers with the corrupted texture filter even though I was driver sweeping them).

 

Question I'm hoping someone can try for me: Does HDMI work with the integrated Intel HD graphics? Or do I have to be using the 5650? Someone give it a shot, because everytime I plug in an HDMI cord, the auto-switch dialog comes up and I'm unable to switch to integrated.

 

yea HDMI only works with the 5650

 

Thanks.

Also, if it helps anyone, version, 7.12 of the HDMI driver is in this package and doesn't appear to be in any of the other Catalyst packages I dug up, they all still had 7.11. For me, 7.12 fixes an hdmi popping sound problem.

ATI Radeon? Video Card Drivers

 

I tried installing the moddded 11.1a with no luck. So I am using the most recent HP cats. Good enough I guess.

 

Did you try these modded drivers?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-owners-lounge-part-deux-732.html#post7139178

The first one I tried didn't work either, but these are working without a problem.

 

hi there!
I have an Envy 14 Beats for like a month now.

I'm a terrible english speaker, so I think it's better if I show my issue to you guys. It took me so long to notice, but it feels like the reproduction doesn't fit the screen, it misses the top of the screen (you can notice this when you look at the trophy symboll).




I don't know how to solve this problem, but it's kind of annoying...
I already tried to change the screen resolution, it didn't work.
I was hoping there was a way to simply push the screen down like we can usually do with TVs (pull the picture up down right or left).

help me please!!
and I'm already sorry for my bad english..

 

after someone answers paronetto...you see how his start menu is black and has that beats "b" watermark?
is there any way to change that??? im trying to use MS Excel and the top menu bar (thats says file, home, insert, page layout...) is almost impossible to see cause its black letters with that faded beats background. i tried changing the menu bar color, inactive window color...etc in advanced appearance settings and it doesnt work.

thanks...yes im a noob.

 

paronetto, unpin all those programs in your start menu. Its just making it expand too tall vertically. Pin them to your taskbar instead

 

I think my backlight keyboard is starting to dim, or get uneven. When i first got it...it was perfect...but now around that volume up/down keys, and wifi/pause/insert keys seem darker than the rest. It makes me sad, but there is nothing to do about it

 

well there's the slim possibility that you're just seeing it is darker due to the relative brightness of your screen overpowering the lighted key.

...though yeah it could be getting a little darker. It seems to happen.




in an unrelated note: I suddenly feel your pain people with the cpu whine. I can hear it in mine now. 'course if I put my headphones on (even with no music on) the sound is muffled so...whatever.

 

hey i just got my envy 14 and i saw that people with clean installs generally got better battery life and my computer has a good amount of bloatware on it anyways. my only question is that if i do a clean install using the winodws 7recovery disks i got, won't i have to use the hp recovery disks to get my drivers up to date and then won't the bloatware just come back?

 

I think you can pick and choose?
I actually messed up files and had to restore without recovery discs. I'm missing all my drivers and it's a mess. If it's fine how it is, don't try and fix it.

 

how have people done it in the past? i can definitely do a clean install and the guide that's linked is really helpful but if using the disks does in fact bring back the bloatware and programs i want to get rid of, then what's the point? i'm hoping there's a way where i can just have the drivers