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

Has anyone tried installing an SSD in the Mini-Pci-E slot (where the WWAN card would go, if one were installed)? This would seem like a good place to stick a small boot drive for the OS and installed programs, while keeping a big spindle drive in the main drive bay for media storage.

Something like this should work, I would think, but I wonder if anyone's tried it yet?

 

Wouldn't know. But speaking of SSDs, I'd totally jump aboard the bandwagon and get a speed-zinger if my notebook failure resulted from a bad HDD. Too bad the HDD was working fine when I temporarily transferred it to my enclosure to back up some stuff.

 

i really like that idea! should be possible


WOAH! off topic.... but i accidentally used 2 fingers on the touchpad of my tx2500 and it scrolled up and down! i never knew i had a multi-touch touchpad! :O also works great!

 

Not possible since that port is whitelisted.

 

thats too bad.. is there a work around possible?

 

Perhaps, but it's not a worthwhile adventure (requires BIOS modification/cracking). Better to use the optical bay mod and a normal SATA SSD.

See link on page 1.

 

thanks, but could u elaborate? my synaptics apps doesnt have any of these options am confused lol. but thanks!!

 

Also when in skype the incoming video freezes

 

Hi guys,

Loving the envy but my video card chokes out every 15 minutes (estimate) and my fps goes down from 100 fps to ~20 fps for approx. 5 seconds before going back up to 100 fps. Whats going on? Defect in the video card? Can someone post me their ATI settings? I'm trying to find out a way to fix it without sending it in and getting shafted with their terrible time estimates since I need it for school next week. The gpu works great but only sucks during those 5 seconds for every 15 minute interval while playing games.

 

whats the plastic band in the middle of the speakers??? (inbetween) w t f is that...?

 

Yeah. I have already read the parts of the thread about replacing the optical spindle with an SSD or additional hard disk. It's not a bad idea but not very inventive either. Furthermore, I suspect that like me, a lot more people find their optical drive useful than an empty mini pcie slot.

HP are schmucks, truly, for using a whitelist system for minipcie cards. I fail to see the point of it at all. I'd be inclined to try to petition them to open the slot up if I thought there was any point to that, but they've been using card whitelists for years apparently.

What this comes down to is that they should have had an expresscard slot on this machine if they were going to block the minipcie slot. There's no excuse for leaving expresscard out, especially since the mainboard has the PCIe bus anyway, and there's plenty of room in there.

So: bios hacking. Here's an introduction to bios hacking the HP minipcie whitelists from a couple of years back. Calls for a floppy drive, of all things!

 

You have the various communication authorities worldwide to thank for the whitelisting. Instead of HP making region specific models with hardwired comms devices that conform to the local communication codes of the target countries, HP uses the BIOS for compliance and modular comms modules. Some wifi cards are illegal in the US like those that use 802,11b/g above channels 11.

 

Im going to find the Vaio Z hacking thread, I think they use the InsydeBIOS as HP do. It should be possible to unlock the advanced menu and add items to the whitelist.

 

maybe turn off powerplay. it could be screwing up in a weird way (I know on some of the ati drivers I've used it dropped to 300/300 clock speeds whenever I went to battery and back (or swapped to the intel and back) it wouldn't clock back up to full speed (450/800)

 

Would that mean we wouldn't even have to reflash the bios, I guess; would certainly be easier than hand coding a new bios whitelist in a hex editor, which is what I was thinking about.

 

It's for bluetooth.

 

Hey man thanks for the response,

Could you tell me where to turn off powerplay?

 

Right click your desktop and click "Graphics Properties", then when that comes up, click on "Graphics" on the upper left corner, scroll down to "PowerPlay".

 

Now THAT would sure be handy. Here's a link to a discussion of the InsydeBIOS hacking to enable other cards... Looks like BIOS hacking is still necessary though, maybe.

 

If its similar to the Vaio BIOS then you flash directly over your old BIOS using a bootable USB drive.

 

Not maybe, definitely. The section that deals with the PCI slot in question may be encrypted. So that's another hurdle.

Before even attempting, make sure you have a method of recovery. Otherwise, in your attempt you may brick your machine as some have.

Good luck.

 

To enable the options, open Device manager from the control panel, double click mouse and other pointing devices, click on synaptics PS/2 port compatible touchpad, go to driver tab, select update driver, select browse my computer for driver, select choose from a list of devices on my computer, there should be 3 synaptics trackpad drivers listed, select either the 2nd or the 3rd version, this should enable the touch zones feature. Hope this helps.

 

Sending my laptop in for repair of CPU Whine, FAN issue, and also DVD drive is messed up. Hopefully they fix everything

 

I just tried what you did, and it worked. But i'm experiencing some problems with the trackpad now. I can no longer disable the trackpad by double tapping in the top left corner where the orange light pops up. I can also no longer use 2 fingers with the trackpad. If I have a finger resting on the left click, and I try to move a finger on the larger area of the trackpad, the mouse freezes.

Is this how it's supposed to work? I got the touch-zones working but the functionality of the above features outweigh the touch-zones. I might switch back to what I had before unless someone can provide a fix.

 

your touchpad could move the mouse around with two fingers at all?


damn mine never could do that.

also you need to re-enable the taps and tap to disable in the synaptics settings most likely

 

any recommendations of a i7 720qm over the i5 520m?

i have the dv6tse, but i think i'm going to send it back and get the envy.

the i7 seemed to run hot on the dv6, causing my fan to run more than i thought it should...build quality feels a little cheap in some aspects.

hoping envy will ease that. what do you guys think?

 

Hey guys, do I need the HP_Tools partition to use the system recovery option?
If so how do I put it back?

 

As you already experienced the i7's run much warmer since they idle at 15.04 Watts, the i5's idle at 5.25Watts. So obviously your fans will run more (faster) with an i7 in either machine, and you can do the math as to how much lower battery life is with an i7.

 

Service manual link in the OP is broken. Anyone have a working one?

 

I just wanted to say HP customer support is pretty awesome. After going through all sorts of hoops to get them to send me a replacement 256GB SSD I opened the package to find 2 mounting brackets and no drive. Amazing.

 

Fixed.

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

 

My tap to disable feature got mucked up when I enabled the 2 touch zones at the top too. I don't really know what to do about it other than to disable the one on the left. It's kinda funky acting, I can't get the tap to disable feature to work once I have set a button in the left corner to do something. When I turn the button off, I still can't tap to disable, IDK what is wrong, must be some kind of synaptics voodoo.

 

i overclocked my envy 14 to 550, it crashed, so i downed it to 520, it also crashed after playing cs 1.6 for a couple minutes. The screen artifact'd and froze my whole computer. Now i completely removed all overclocking and my gpu is at 450/800 now, and it still artifacts and freezes. I use msi after burner. Is my gpu ruined?

ps. everything works fine. I'm able to use my computer. It only crashes and artifacts when i play cs 1.6. It only happened after the overclocks.

edit: fixed by turning ON powerplay. for some reason turning it off made it crash/artifact.

 

I haven't tried it yet, but I believe that if you perform a system recovery from the BIOS (assuming you haven't got rid of the recovery partition), or by booting from the recovery disks (if you no longer have the recovery partition), then the system should be put back to its original state, including all 4 partitions it came with (which would include HP_TOOLS, etc.) I don't believe you need HP_TOOLS to perform a system recovery, unless you're doing a BIOS recovery. Basically all HP_TOOLS seems to do is provide a more robust mechanism for performing BIOS updates, a means for doing a BIOS recovery, and pretty graphics used when you run system diagnostics from the BIOS menu. I created an HP_TOOLS partition on a USB flash drive and deleted the partition from my disk, along with the recovery partition after I created my recovery disks. That way I can still use all the functionality of HP_TOOLS if I need by inserting the USB drive. I did test that out. I was able to do BIOS updates, BIOS recovery and get the pretty diagnostics graphics using my USB HP_TOOLS partition without the partition on disk.

 

How do you update the BIOS with your usb stick after deleting the HP_Tools and Recovery partitions on a clean install? Can you do it without the hack method posted on page 1?

 

No need to use the hack method. That's the whole point of having an HP_TOOLS partition. With the USB stick plugged in, the BIOS sees it and accesses it in exactly the same way as if it were a partition on your hard drive. So, to update the BIOS, plug in the USB stick, download the appropriate SP file from the HP support web site, then run it. The installer sees the HP_TOOLS partition (assuming you've set it up correctly), copies the BIOS file to it then runs the BIOS updater from HP_TOOLS, which flashes the new BIOS, just like you were doing it from an HD partition.

The way I set up my HP_TOOLS partition on my USB stick after deleting HP_TOOLS from my disk was:
1. Plug in a new USB drive
2. Download and run the HP BIOS Update (UEFI) driver from the hp drivers web page (it's under Utility-Tools). When it runs, it asks you if you want to create a partition on the USB drive. If you select this option it creates the partition with the correct name (HP_TOOLS), type (FAT) and size, etc. then copies the BIOS installer to it.
3. Download and run the HP System Diagnostics (UEFI) driver, under Diagnostic on the hp drivers web page.
4. Download and run the BIOS update. This puts the BIOS in the right place on your USB drive and flashes it to your BIOS

 

How'd the phone convo to address this go?

 

I don't know if this is supposed to be this way or not, but if I boot my computer plugged in, the cpu defaults to 2 idle states, on power saver power plan and if unplugged, it remains in the 2 idle states mode. If I boot my computer on battery, the cpu defaults to 3 idle states on power saver mode and stays this way even if plugged in again. I would like for the computer to be on 3 idle states because temperatures are better. Is it supposed to be this way? The unplugged plugged difference in idle states? Or is the cpu supposed to default to 3 idle states when in power saver mode?

Edit: It appears as though HP has updated the webcam software for High Definition Webcams!

 

Anyone, Bueller?

 

HP's mediasmart webcam software now shoots at either 1280x720 or 1280x800. I have been waiting for this forever now. No more 3rd party webcam software just to shoot at our webcams native resolutions. yay

 

Can you post a link to the updated software please? Or is it on HP's support and drivers page?

 

Thanks Belltown! Have you tested this method on a clean install without the original partitions? That's how I intend to use it.

I hope restoring from the recovery USB stick works with a clean install too (no original partitions).

 

No, I haven't tested it yet from a clean install. I don't plan on trying a clean install for another week or two. I want more time to play around with the system as-is, so I can figure out how much of the hp stuff I want to reinstall.

 

Ok. I heard it didn't work on a clean install, but I'll try in a weak. I'm also going to try updating the x25-m ssd firmware. Some have said it's locked by hp and can't be updated. We'll see.

 

I have read it now works on the HP version of the intel SSD's, but you need to do it on another computer that has access to the needed BIOS options. I have not tried it yet due to lack of access to a compatible desktop computer...

Also have you tried the tweaks I came up with to improve the 4K R/W speeds?

 

what does the new intel SSD firmware improve?You mean like take out the SSD and put it on another laptop?Does updating SSD firmware wipe the data?

 

You need to have certain BIOS settings to update the firmware, I forget which options since none of my computers has them. As far as wiping the data I forget, it's been awhile since I looked into it.

Go to intels SSD site for all the details, there was a PDF with all the details....

 

It's on the support site under the multimedia stuff.

 

I am doing it. I have 1 LG monitor 24" on HDMI and a second LG 24" on mDP with a VGA adapter for my 2nd monitor. Then I use the Monitor FN key to select "extend" and in Catalysyt Control Center I choose which one I want as primary (in my case my LG monitor).

Only problem I encountered, is my monitor that is on my mDP port starts to flicker when I use graphic entensive apps...dunno if it happens to everyone using same setup as me or just me because of my mDP to VGA adapter....

 

They are making me wait until Monday to talk to the person who originally handled my case which is plain dumb...I'm sure they'll address this but after 2 weeks and countless hours to get to this point it is frustrating.