*HP ENVY 14 & Envy 14 Beats (1XXX series) Owners Lounge, Part Deux*

@Mike415
have you downloaded the HP system diagnostic off their website and installed to a USB drive and then installed the HP BIOS updater after installing the diagnostic utility?

 

Go into BIOS, just press esc at blank screen it should take you to the list, and disable quickweb if it is enabled.

 

thanks, also how can i check what bios version i am running?

 

fn+esc when your in the Windows OS. If that dosen't work press esc at computer startup and select system info at the list. It will show you your BIOS revision.

 

thank you very much

 

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I am thinking of clean installing my factory default Envy 14, and I would like to know if there is any guide that tells you what drivers to download after clean install, etc?

Thanks.

 

Are you still waiting for your Envy Sasjegbruv123?

 

Have you tried minimized system recovery? A lot less headaches with getting drivers to work and much bloatware removed. HP mediasmart and HP Support Assistant are the only pieces of software installed and it's alot easier to do it this way. People can't update their BIOS very easily with a clean install either though HP does seem to be adding stuff to their website that I believe may help to be able to update the BIOS on a clean install. Page one has a guide to help with clean install. I tried it, but used the recovery partition to do minimized recovery as I couldn't get some of my devices recognized after clean install.

 

nah just havn't changed it yet lol

 

Your old computer is very similarly specced to my old computer. This Envy 14 is a very nice machine so far. Much slimmer and more powerful than my old Toshiba Satellite m35x with the Intel Centrino 1.7 GHZ. I bought the 1.7 GHZ centrino to upgrade it from 1.4 GHZ and it only cost $25.

 

So this is what happens when i try to play Sniper Ghost Warrior. This game worked at first but now it doesnt.
When it starts i can hear the sounds and its all black screen. And if i go into single player mode by just pressing bunch of enteres, the screen becomes like the picture shown above. All i see is bunch of yellow stuff moving with sound. What do you guys think is the problem?

 

why does it take ages to get into the startup options once i press escape? a good 10-15 seconds at least before options appear

 

There is something with this Envy 14 laptop from day 1. Its been getting alot of spyware/malware etc whatever you call it. There are programs that after 2-3 days of using the laptop the spyware starts and starts automatically downloading and running exe files. It installs stuff like Tango toolbar and all that other stuff which are marked as spyware. The computer slows down alot and the Windows keep crashing.

In my last Laptop I never use a Antivirus or any protection for years and never had a problem, but in this one I had to install a Antivirus and it keeps notifying me that it is blocking those exe files from being downloaded, which means if I didnt have antivirus it would do the same thing again and fill the computer with spyware again.

I had factory restored 2 times already and that does not fix it, there are no outside unknown softwares I am using that might be causing this.

The only reason I can think of is something to do with all that bloatware on this computer as I have not removed any and kept it as is factory default.

Anyone else with similar problems?

 

I haven't had any problems, but I did minimized recovery after I got it which removed alot of bloatware. Do you have UAC on, turn it up all the way, Kaspersky internet Security is the antivirus I recommend to use. You gotta pay for it but it 's the best AV suite I have ever used. It has an option for a "Rescue Disc" that you can create that will let you boot to a UI and run a scan from CD without booting off the HDD. Once I was brought a computer that wouldn't even work and using the Recue Disc I was able to get it back to full functionality. It sounds like you have a Trojan downloader, or the websites you are visiting have "Trojan clicker ads". Try a minimized system recovery and see if the computer is ok without much bloatware, applications sometimes are hijacked by virus programs, but I have little to no trouble on any of my PC's.

 

I suggest scanning your laptop with Malwarebytes or something and remove what it finds.

 

Yea thats nice that they are waiting on the radiance display, but I already have the display so I am not waiting for that part.

I am waiting for a part to fix the CPU whine.

 

hi all,

I got my envy-14 a couple of weeks ago, and am happy with it but would like to upgrade my 500GB HDD to a SSD. Does anybody know what spec of SSD I should be looking for (i.e. 1.8" or 2.5"? interface?, etc) in order to replace my hdd?

 

2.5" SATA.

 

Are the backlights incoorporated into the keyboard? Mine are dimmer in certain areas such as j,u,i,k,o,p,l, shift, and up, left, down arrow keys. Im getting my keyboard replaced anyways, but should I make a note of the uneven backlight also?

 

hi i bought an envy 14 with windows 7 home premium but then i upgraded it to windows 7 ultimate manually. of course every hp feature was erased but i managed to recover most of the drivers and that stuff from hp support group. but then i dont know if i was able to recover the beats audio system. i downloaded the audio driver off hp support site but i remember i used to be able to turn on/off beats with fn and b but i can't do it anymore. can anyone help? is the audio driver i downloaded beats? o also i troubleshooted the computer in the devices section in control panel but it keeps saying the driver for pci simple communications controller fails to install. anyone got a solution for that?? thanks PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!

 

Not sure if any one has noticed this but when customizing an E14 now this is what comes up in the battery selection option:

3.75 hours for the standard battery is far cry from the 7 they claimed in their original videos

 

Got mine a day early from fedex. This thing is simply awesome.

I am also psyched to play around with the AES encryption stuff and seeing if it makes a difference. Maybe if anyone else is curious they can run the included benchmarks on an i450. I have the 520. Going to be using this: TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

 

Look on the first page of this thread and go down to the drivers link. For audio, download the IDT PC Audio driver. The PCIe thing. I completely forget what that was. I believe it's the pcie Ethernet Family controller or the Intel Rapid Storage Technology, or something. I don't remember.

 

Just received my laptop... and it wont boot!

The screen stays white for ever, plugged, unplugged with the battery, without it...

I did an Hard Reset but still nothing, then I managed to get an image on an external monitor but it was like in 800*400 and the colors weren't right... I installed the AMD Display drivers from HP's web site and I rebooted... but i get the same withe screen and now I can't even use and external monitor...

I have a Windows7 disc so I could do a clean install, but I can't boot from the DVD since I don't have anything displayed on screen... Can anyone help? I'll call Hp tech support if not, I hope I won't suffer too much.

(Any Idea of hoe the tech support is in Canada? Anyone tried to reach someone in French?)

 

try this HPToneControl.zip


also the simple communications controller is either one of the misc1-misc4 drivers in your swsetup folder (which you better have backed up) or it's the hp 3d hard-drive guard which isn't in the drivers folder inside swsetup but in another different folder. hpprothd or something

 

Does the bios show up at all or no picture at anytime? If its just in windows i would reccommend doing a clean install, but if the bios isnt showing up a clean install wont help and it would most likely be hardware related.

As for the canadian support, they are better than the american support. Call the canadian line and u can get french right away.

I have talked to bilingual support and they are actually from canada and pretty good.

 

Thanks for answering tornbacchus!

I chatted with someone at Hp via their online tech support, after 10 minutes he had a box sent to me, the problem is probably Hardware related... I'll be a week or two without my laptop.

 

I just ran into a huge issue, guys. My Envy doesn't detect any wifi networks, and doesn't even detect my WLAN device. I've tried re-installing drivers but to no avail. I'm using a wired connection right now, but I need the wireless.

 

Does it show up in device manager at all?

 

Nope.

But when I toggle the Wi-Fi action key, Device manager does refresh.

Oh, and I get a message on start-up saying it doesn't detect my wireless adapter.

 

Here's a picture of the start-up error message. The only thing that got cut-off was that it said "adapter" after wireless.

 

which HP program shows the bar for brightness and volume ? i can't find it and i don't want to install some random program.

in advanced, thanks

 

Okay, I looked back into a thread and tried the procedure where you unplug the power, shut down, take out the battery, hold the power button for 30 seconds, put everything back together, turn on.

And it worked. It's like magic, I tell ya.

 

Got offered a $200 refund or a cross-shipped replacement. I took the replacement and since I got it from ebay, not HP I'll get it in a week and a bit.

I'm so glad I don't have to worry about the lack of stock on the radiance display.

 

There is no Brightness OSD (on screen display). For volume, I believe it is a combination of "HP Media Smartmenu" and "HP Music ..." (I'm not at my Envy so I kind of forget).

 

Does anybody know what we get when we call in America?

 

The HP website now says "UP TO 3.75 HRS"
?

 

Competely agree with you. This computer is fantastic and I am glad someone seems as impressed as I was on day 1... How do I run the benchmark? It looks like it is just an encryption program. Does it have a benchmark utilty built in?

edit ok My AES score was 82.5MB/s Encryption 83.5MB/s Decryption 83.0MB/s Mean
AES-Twofish was 48.1MB/s Encryption 48.6MB/s decryption 44.4MB/s Mean
AES-Twofish-Serpent 25.3MB/s Encryption 24.9MB/s Decryption 25.1MB/s Mean
Serpent-AES 34.4MB/s Encryption 29.0MB/s Decrytion 31.7MB/s Mean
Serpent-Twofish-AES 25.2MB/s Encryption 25.2MB/s Decryption 25.1 MB/s Decryption 25.1MB/s Mean
Hope this helps you out I am running i5 450

 

yeah that changed.

magically mine lasts about 4.25 hours

 

What browser do you use, and what screen brightness?

 

I can only output in 1280x720 and then scale the image...but obviously i rather not do that since it doesnt look as nice as true 1366x768. Does anyone know how to get the e14 to output at 1366x768 through hdmi??

 

well I haven't done an estimate since then (few weeks ago during x-games) but it felt like 4 hours and 15-20ish minutes.

also Firefox, around half brightness or something.

 

I am doing an experiment with the battery. I had left my laptop on it's side the other day, longways w/ optical drive facing down, and in the 3 hours it had been like that, the battery contacts came disconnected! Wouldnt even power on though I knew I had 9% battery left when I had left it. So I am taking a small piece of cardboard and sticking it in the righthand side to snug the connectors up to see if my battery life improves. I was really worried when I wasn't getting any power till I realized that I had left it in a way that may disconnect the contacts if it had sat like it had (damn you gravity).

 

Not sure if its been posted (well the BIOS has) but there is a new Graphics driver out.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-86539-1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&os=4063&product=4252394&sw_lang=

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-86514-1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&os=4063&product=4252394&sw_lang=

 

How many processes does everyone have running right now? With no clean install Im running 76. Is that bad?

 

I'm a little weary about downloading this because I dont want it to screw anything up, has anyone already tested it out?

 

Meh, I have 62 right now, the less proccesses running the better so far as battery, and performance. There are probably many guides out there detailing services and whether you can cut them off. It's generally on a user by user basis as to whether or not you actually need this service or that. I edited all startup programs that I do not need out of the registry so the stuff I don't want isn't running at computer startup. I advise against MSCONFIG as it is a troubleshooting tool. Always backup registry keys before deleting them so they can be restored...

 

ooo. It's a legitimate catalyst 10.6 driver.

sweet.

'course now I don't remember whether or not it was cat 10.6 or cat 10.5 that had that crippling "Oh crap flash video is making the computer BSOD if it's hardware accelerated and using that new codec" bug.

 

I chatted with HP and they confirmed it. HP Envy lines do NOT have TPM (Trusted Platform Module). Makes Bitlocker easier

 

Clean install with AdMuncher, reils touchpad program, MSE, and then the regular, I have 53 using 20% of 6GB