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

yeah i did a system restore and now i set the top left as turn off touch pad, top right as refresh webpage, bottom right as minimize, and bottom left as previous webpage


i don't mind not having four finger swipe =P.

 

Hello,

I love my envy 14 but however, one thing bugged the crap out of me.

I found out that if you close the lid (when playing music on speakers or headphones), the music will chop up and stop playing every 5 or 10 seconds).

For example.
I'm playing a song on my envy 14 speakers.
- it plays for 10 seconds
- stops (its silent) for 8 seconds
- the music plays again (But it wasn't a pause because the song is at a place as if it were playing the entire 8 silent seconds).

This is extremely annoying if you want to save battery power (turning off the screen by putting it down)

Anyone else getting this?

and is there anything we can do about it?

Thanks!

 

I have a bizarre touchpad driver problem. It seems "click lock" doesn't want to ever really turn off. Anyone have a fix for this issue?

 

Hey arch,

I did the mir about a day after getting my envy. Backed up what little I had on my hard drive then ran the recovery without a hitch. You may wasn't to unplug poul battery hold power for 30 seconds and then try again and if that doesn't doit perhaps try to restore back to the original factory stings and try again.

 

Hey hapbeeboy,

yup i tried that too but didn't work for me I havent done anything to the laptop other than creating the recovery discs and backing up the SWSetup files. Shouldn't it already be in factory settings? If not, how do i restore it to factory settings?

Thanks!

 

anyone using the hp envy theme and have a hard time making a window become full screeN?

 

You could try updating the audio driver with the one on page 1 (envy 14 drivers thread) or you could try using a different music player. It didn't do this to me listening to a song on VLC. You could also check in Beats audio panel to see if the advanced power management audio features are enabled (preferences/general), they might cause problems too. Sorry if none of this helps, I made it through a 13 minute track with no skips but I haven't tested it much.

 

i had that yesterday.
i did a system restore lol

if you didn't make system restore points after almost every driver installation (like me, sorta OCD lol), then.....you could TRY downloading the synaptics drivers

then go to device manager, update your touchpad driver
browse your own files
and trial and error for the....12+ listed drivers

 

Thanks Zman,
I'll see how it goes after I get a chance to test it...
another issues with the speakers just came up...are any of you guys getting some buzzing with higher volume sounds produced by the right speakers?

 

When you say high pitched, do you mean something like the Windows 7 startup sound? Because I get some kind of vibration, but mine comes from the left speaker.

 

YES! That would make the screen a LOT better! It was like night and day on my previous Sony F. No one seems that have E14 seems to have access to those screen calibrator tool though.

 

yes please do get a screen calibrator tool if you can... i've wanted to try and get this screen calibrated for ages. Let us know how it goes if you do

 

Owners lounge didn't really have a section just for peoples recommended tweak,tips, and mods. Does anyone have any recommended tweaks? I noticed my external speaks are pretty quiet. Any fix?

=Jason-

 

Which program lets me use the fn + esc to get information about my PC ?

is the "HP recommended" battery power better than the "Power savings" mode ? if so, where do I download the HP recommended one ?

 

On the 1st page of this thread there is a link to JJB's audio tweaks they make a really big difference in the max volume

 

I plan on ordering the Envy 14 with just the 320gig drive, and updating to SSD later on.

I looked up the 160gig SSD that comes with the Envy and noticed spec wise it doesn't seem that great compared to other drives.

X25-M G2:
Read (up to): 250Mb/s
Write (up to): 100Mb/s

A lot of the other SSDs I noticed at least had a write speed of (up to) 190Mb/s. Others I found had write speeds around 250Mb/s.

How do you guys like the Intel 160gig? Worth throwing down the $315 vs throwing that $300 down on another SSD with faster read/writes?

 

It's a much cheaper to upgrade later.

The X-25M G2 may have lower write/read bandwidth rates than say a new sandforce based Vertex 2 or Corsair Force, but it's still signifcantly faster because small 4k random reads and writes are very good on the G2 (those are the small OS files and page files) compared to samsung drives, and other jmicron and indilix controlled drives. The sandforce and Crucial C300 SSD's are the only 2 drives that actualy faster for general use.

My advice is stick with the stock drive and put in a 120GB sandforce drive (they're around 275) which has awesome random/read write speeds and high bandwidth (around 280-290 read and writes).

 

The reason I got the 160GB SSD X25 G2 is because of Bing cash back. It was a great deal that I cant passed, this is my first system with SSD and I tell you...I'm impressed! It was MUCH2 faster then regular drive. Virus scan...6 minutes, boot up 30-40 sec, I havent tried HP Quickweb yet, but I think I didnt miss anything.

 

I'm just getting acquainted with my new ENVY 14. So far I'm pleased with it -- except for the touchpad. I've tried applying the settings mentioned on the first page of this forum and installing the latest driver, but the cursor still jumps around more than I'm used to. One time it does this is when I'm moving my thumb onto the click-button areas. Just before I press to click it seems like the cursor moves slightly as I'm putting my thumb on the click area.

One thing that might help this is to disable the cursor motion in the click-button areas and only allow those areas of the touchpad to be used for pressing (clicking). Does anyone know if/how this can be done?

 

No one's gotten Dead Zones yet as far as I know. The solution that I works for me right now is to use Two Finger Scroll to do everything and never have to hit the physical buttons.

 

Some advice guys: 500gb Seagate Momentus XT or 160gb Intel G2 SSD? Some points about both why one over the other (cost isn't an issue)

 

Finally pulled the trigger!

I went with the 520, 160 SSD, Radiance Display and 8GB of RAM. Now I'm shopping for two 24" or 25" monitors.

Do any of you know if I get two monitors such as the HP ZR24W (with a DisplayPort + DVI, but no HDMI) I woulf be able to connect the ENvy 14 through a miniDP and a HDMI to DVI?

 

If I understand you correctly, that should work.

 

Go for the 160GB Intel G2 if you want pure speed and go for the 500GB Momentus XT if you want a balance between speed and storage capacity. Also, there are a lot of benefits for an SSD in a laptop if you want to consider that. (Benefits such as no noise, less heat, possibly less power consumption, a little less weight, or the ability to take a good amount of shock when dropped.)

 

Hi everyone,

I just got my ENVY 14 (i450M - 6gb RAM). At first, I did a clean install for everything (reformat hard drive, install Win7 Prof. install drivers from HP website). After that, I installed WoW and played for like an hour. Then all of sudden, the screen went blank (or just black), and the sound repeated itself. Everything was frozen, so I had to do the hard reset.

I've been looking over the internet. There are a lot of people have this problem but on the ENVY 15, not the ENVY 14. So I really need help .

Thanks in advance.

p/s: english isn't my first language.

 

Just use the 2 GB SSD they gave you for the manual as the USB mount point for the bitlocker key. Works great.

Anyone used a SandForce SF-1222 based SSD drive in their Envy, yet? Looks to be very nicely spec'd.

 

Happened to me twice while playing MW2, but then I lowered the screen resolution for it and it never happened again. Could it be overheating issues? I'm not sure.

 

Thank you! IT seems like 1920x1200 monitors are going away....I just cant work on 1920x1080....

 

I thought about it too. I had the GPU-Z running w/ saved log while playing Mass Effect 2. It happened, I had to do the hard reset. I checked the log, it stopped at 57 C degrees. So it's messed up at 57C degrees ? really ?

One more thing, the GPU-Z doesn't show the RPM of the FAN SPEED. It's that normal ?

 

there's no detector for the fan.


and/or well there's no fan for the gpu itself. there are two fans for the computer that are settled above the gpu and the cpu but the gpu fan isn't classified as a gpu fan since the gpu isn't a separate card but is a chip soldered onto the motherboard

 

oh thanks for the explanation

But anyways, has anyone have my problem ( the blank screen while playing games or something else ) ? Have u been able to solve such problem ?

 

never really got that.

some people have gotten it and I think someone narrowed it down to a screwed up video card that decides to ramp up the frequency mid games from 450/800 to "whoamg to high gonna crash" 'cause powerplay broke somewhere (but even with it off, it doesn't fix things).


you could use something like msi afterburner and set it at a lower than stock speed (like 440/790) and it might stop. 'course this is kinda BS since it means you have a bad video card.

maybe. No one really knows for sure and it hasn't happened all that often.

 

does anyone know which targues slim portable charger or w.e its called adapter tip works with the envy? cant find it anywhere

 

Not sure, not really interested in a better one.

 

So I've recently noticed that the sound from the left speaker on my E14 is significantly different (read: worse) than the sound from the right speaker. Is this just a "feature" of the Beats audio setup or do I just have a bad speaker? The volume is about half that of the right speaker and it is fairly distorted; it sounds like it may simply be blown, but there's no way it is of my doing because I very rarely use the speakers...the only time they ever see action is the rare times when my office is empty and I can listen to some soft music.

 

I've found myself wondering this same thing, my speaker sounds blown sometimes, but sometimes when listening to music it sounds fine. I really don't know what it is but I've wondered if maybe a part near it was vibrating from the sounds it produces. Same speaker for me too.

 

I know some people have had one of their speakers die altogether.

think a bad batch might have gone out.


barring that I dunno, some weird volume setting mess up on one of the speakers.

 

Yeah, you're right about volume settings. I tweaked a few sound settings and got rid of the vibration thing The 5th and 6th slider on the EQ can't be put too high for the built in speakers. I've got them at about 0db and it got rid of that "blown sound". I also disabled all of the enhancements. I left 24 bit 96000 hz from the audio tweak, I have bass at -4 and treble at 0, in Beats I have +5, +3, +7, +7, 0, 0, +5, +5, +5, +7. (I also like rock)

 

zman, I see you have a custom desktop. Can I ask how much it cost you? I'm thinking of building a good gaming desktop for myself.

 

Does anyone know what happened to my sound? I used to have HEAPS of bass when listening to music using my headphones but a few days ago I noticed that there is hardly any bass using the same headphones listening to the same music. I'm pretty sure I didn't change any settings apart from using the TVs speakers when connected to it with a HDMI cable.

 

Did you hit the beats audio button? fn + b

 

Quick questions

After everyone made there Recovery Discs and did a Minimised Image Recovery or Clean Install, what did you all do with the RECOVERY (D: ) and HP_TOOLS (E: ) partitions? Are they worth keeping at the expense of 15GB?

 

That's really up to you. If I were you I would leave it there because you have a 500GB HDD in your Envy, so 15GB is nothing.

 

I was thinking that but then I was also thinking, I have the Recovery Discs so why do I need the information on my hard drive.

Spose' there is no harm in having a backup...of my backup

 

if i were you i'd just wipe it. those 15 gb could come in handy and you wouldn't want to do another format later... when you have to back up more stuff.

 

Does anyone know when a screen protector will be coming out except for the viewguard one? they keep saying 5 weeks...

 

It was around $2,000 when I built it, retail Windows included. The monitor was practically free because I got an easily fixed Vizio 32". It now serves as the main TV.

 

is it me or is the envy in general especially keyboard and screen, one massive lint/dust magnet?? ridiculous how many times i wipe the screen and keyboard now to try and keep it clean

 

Hey guys! I noticed that the newest envy 14 owners haven't complained about the CPU whine. Does that mean HP has taken care of this issue?

Also, AMD is getting rid of the ATI brand at the end of this year. If I buy ATI graphics now, will they be providing support and driver updates in the future?

 

I'd keep it, and if you're doing backups only when you want to format, you're doing it wrong.

ALWAYS keep an updated backup. Update it as frequently as possible. Don't get caught pants-down because you've been lazy.

If you make frequent backups, each additional (incremental) backup will only take a few minutes.

And 15gb is nothing, in my opinion. If you need the space that much, uninstall one game and you'll get back 20gb nowadays...

They might be phasing out the name (and where did you get that?), but the cards will still be under warranty.