*HP ENVY 17 & 17 3D (2XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Has anyone else enabled Hardware Virtualization in their BIOS? Does your laptop ever wake from sleep mode after that?

I'm running the F.15 BIOS (Envy 17 3D sandy bridge). I've heard of others successfully running hardware virtualization and having a working sleep mode with the F.08 BIOS but I'm unable to use that revision (Windows will blue screen and reboot on startup if I try the F.08 BIOS.. my laptop came shipped with F.15 pre-installed). The problem of not being able to resume from sleep mode only occurs if I enable hardware virtualization; and hibernate works perfectly fine, it's only sleep mode (S3 standby) that is unrecoverable.

 

Alright, I finally could update the firmware for my OCZ Agility 3 SSD (v2.11 now) using this:

Bootable Tools for OCZ Vertex2/3, Agility2/3, Solid3, Revo, and Ibis SSD's

Ran the benchmarks and.......... well it's pretty much the same as before :



I'm really disappointed now. I'll look on the OCZ forums if there is anything that can be done...

 

I too am sadly in the same position. A laptop that locks up and won,t wake up after sleep defeats a lot of the purpose of the laptop for me. Any more insight to this would be appreciated.

PS Doesn't the older bios have (more) throttling issues anyway?
Thanks

 

Hey guys, I just got an OCZ Vertez 3 120g for my new Envy. Anyone know where can I buy a second caddy cheap? I will be moving my primary 750gb drive to the second bay and then install the ssd in the primary and put windows and my applications on it. Anything else I should know or do to optimize everything? Thanks in advance!

 

What exactly is Hardware virtualization , if someone would like to explain been reading it here a couple of times now and just wondered

 

Where art thou, sleep button? I'm having an unusual problem getting Shut down (from the Start menu) to actually completely power off the Envy 17. Since the keyboard remains back lit and the case logo is still illuminated, I'm assuming that Shut down is actually going into a sleep mode. Holding down the Power button forces a power off. Also, I cannot Restart from the Start menu (also seems to put the Envy to sleep).

Being a software engineer (whose first PC was an IMSAI so I'm pretty experienced/ancient) I modified the power settings to be sure that Power button forces power off but don't see any other setting that would affect Shut down. The power setting also controls the behavior of a "sleep button" but I don't see any reference in the HP documentation to an actual button labeled as a sleep button.

 

Mire89: hardware visualization is a pretty complex thing to explain, but here I go. It basically is a way of allowing hardware to be emulated on a software level from physical hardware characteristics, software can also be visualized.

For example if you enabled this setting, you would be able to use a visualization application like Virtual Box or Vmware to install and run a separate OS within your current operating system. To do this, the separate OS is installed by way of creating a virtual machine, as if you had a virtual computer emulated with software to install let's say Linux on your Windows 7 OS.

So to do this in parallel with your current system and OS, the Bios has to open itself up, to allow your physical hardware to be emulated by the visualization program. That way you get better compatibility, speed, and allow cross talk to happen between tour virtual OS/machine, to the primary OS. For example, if you had Linux OS running on a virtual program while you ran win7, you would like to likely use Linux to web browse, or to have full CPU resource access do it doesn't run slow. In order for this to happen, the hardware needs to be given full access to the software to properly work in unison.

This is a great and cheap way to test patches, updates, software and operating systems without needing to build a new pc or to risk damaging your own computer or server.


Whew, hope that all makes sense. FYI. Win7 professional HP systems come with XP mode, which is basically old Virtual PC 4 installed with a preinstall XP build. I would try disabling hardware virtualization and give it a try with xp mode. I assume that was what you were running to get sleep issues

 

What OS or virtualization application were you running? I generally never run virtualization in Windows, never seemed practical or efficient to me. I generally use Linux to fi my virtualization for me.

 

Thank you so much for explaining it for me

 

There's no such button on any HP notebooks for sleep mode. All you have to do is lightly press the power button once and it should go into sleep. The power button has a dual function for sleep mode as well as power.

What bios are you using? The only thing I can think is your Bios is causing this, you have a defective motherboard or you have corrupt data. Try updating to F15 even if that's your current Bios. If that fails, consider running recovery to reinstall the OS. If you don't have the recovery discs, you can press F11 during boot up. From there you can do a recovery. If that fails, definitely give HP a call to replace your system.

 

Easiest way to explain is to first explain what Software virtualization is. Long before hardware virtualization, there were emulators. These were software apps that pretended to be an entire computer. In software, they had to pretend to be many things, the bios, the cpu, etc. That meant the software had to parse and understand every assembly instruction; if the program you were running in the emulator wanted to do x=2+2, the software would have to parse that instruction, decode it, and then ask the real cpu what 2+2 was, get 4, and assign that to x. All that overhead meant the software virtualization was no where near as fast as the real computer. Usually only 10% of the real speed of a physical computer. Along came hardware virtualization, where the emulator takes a backseat and lets the CPU do all that fetch, decode, compute work -- the work it anyways has to do and is great at doing. That meant emulating became 95%+ as efficient as a real physical computer. Of course, hardware virtualization only works for virtualizing the same kind of a processor. A x86 processor can hardware virtualize another x86 processor, but you'll still need software virtualization to emulate Playstation or Nintendo hardware.

In the Power Management section of Control Panel, you can control two "actions", lightly pressing power button, and closing the lid. You can have, for instance, power button = hibernate, and closing the lid = sleep. If you hold the power button for 3 seconds, it will shut off power forcibly (bad for windows, but necessary if windows is hung).

I've tried testing sleep mode both with and without actually running a virtualization application, but it makes no difference, the machine does not wake up from sleep so long as the BIOS option for Hardware Virtualization is enabled. I generally run VirtualBox, and have Ubuntu and Windows XP guests. Hibernate works fine, strangely, it's only sleep (S3 standby) that causes the issue. It's not a problem with Windows, either, because I tried an Ubuntu LiveCD and the same problem occurs; it cannot resume from sleep.

 

Thank you for the response. The Power Options control panel applet seems to be customized for HP and since it refers specifically to a "sleep button" (as well as a power button) you'd think they're referring to a different button. I have the latest BIOS (F15) and see no BIOS setting to affect Shutdown. Unless there is some advanced BIOS options one accesses through hitting a magic button combination on power up. I do regular True Image back ups and am not worried about anything than bricking this nice new laptop by hosing the BIOS.

 

Even if a laptop doesn't have a sleep button Windows still refers to one. So find the power button setting and set it to shut down. It should work. Go to control panel and search for "power" and you should see "change what the power buttons do".

 

Thank you. First thing I did and it doesn't.

 

Since when did HP remove SSD option?
I've been holding my order and now that I'm about to get it, the SSD option's gone.

 

quite a few weeks now. i suspect there is a supply problem with the conventional ssd's. interesting note that the envy 14 is offering msata ssd's. makes me wonder if the envy 17's next generation will do this

 

Consider it a blessing. If you wait for a good deal, you can usually find a better priced SSD than what HP will charge you, to add to your system later .

 

Not a supply issue. Remember...the SSD was an Intel 320 series drive and they were found to have faulty firmware that caused them to report being 8 mb at one point. You cannot even find the 320 drives in the retail channel. Intel is supposed to fix the firmware, then you will see the SSD resurface.

 

Was the battery supposed to be attached to the Envy 17 3D fresh out of the packaging? My dv6t the battery was separate, the envy 17 3d it was attached

 

I "recall" that my battery was wrapped in plastic and I had to open. My PSU cable, PSU and battery were all separately packed.

My son's DV7t QE battery was separate as well. Which battery did you receive? Mine is the six cell...

I imagine that it is the person who built your machine that put the battery in. Perhaps new to the process...not sure why it was done that way....

Other than that, how is your machine working out? Any anomolies?

 

Nothing so far - although I kind of miss the matte screen

 

Have you fired up the 6850M with anything in 3D yet? It is a beautiful experience...excellent colors and vibrant.

 

A quick question guys.

Is AMD's Switchable Graphics disabled/unusable if I get a 3D Envy, just as how Nvidia's Optimus disabled in any 3D notebooks?

 

No, not disabled. Because the video cards in the Envy 17 / Envy 17 3D are muxed, you can choose what card to run anytime. You can also selectively disable one card or another by bringing up the Switchable graphics configuration wizard and choose to disable cards at your choosing. I will post a photo from the Envy next, to show you what I am talking about...

OK...now on the Envy...here is the configuration screen. You can uncheck "Automatically select Power Saving GPU when on battery" and use the AMD 6850M exclusively. I have never tried to run just the Intel GPU the same way...but I imagine it will work simarlarly.

 

Ok so I've had a couple of hours to install stuff and play around with 3d.

at first I was like this sucks it aint 3d. then I found out I put the battery the wrong way into the glasses. and it's pretty nice, especially the kung fu panda sample, that looks really cool.

going to run some 3dmark benchmarks, windows experience, install itunes and all my software, etc. etc.

about the screen. the screen is brighter and more vibrant and more responsive than my dv6t, but if I could get a screen that looks as good in matte I would so get that. too bad HP doesn't offer such a screen.

 

I think that the screen on the Envy 17 3D is matte, it just sits within an enclosure of glass, which gives it the reflective quality. I actually really like the Envy 17 3D screen. It blows away my 23" LG HD monitor on my desktop. Colors look more realistic on the Envy

 

its not really a problem at all. now its later in the afternoon and the sun doesn't come into this room and it looks a lot better.

but its def glossy. i dont know why they would put a glass outer layer because it would not add anything and just add glare. you can't really increase contrast or anything. a matte screen is as far as i know an anti glare layer over a glossy screen.

 

just ran 3dmark 11 and got a score of P1859

AMD Radeon HD 6850M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2630QM Processor,Hewlett-Packard 159B score: P1859 3DMarks

which from what I can tell w/ posts in this thread is pretty much normal for default drivers. gonna upgrade my drivers to 11.8 and then see

 

and one more thing - is it possible to view Youtube 3D? do I need to get passive glasses to do that?

edit: touch pad works just fine. not sure what everyone is complaining about

 

you can get it right here Hard Drive Caddy & Cable for HP Envy 17 (also works with SSD) [HP-ENVY-17] - $38.55 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks
I have it in mine (admitted, they jacked up the price by 10 bucks in the last couple months), but their caddy is worth every penny.

 

Hello All,

I just ordered my new Envy 17 SB this weekend and should hopefully have it by Tuesdayor Wednesday. I originally purchased a 1st gen Envy last year and lovedeverything about it except for the small thermonuclear reaction that took placeunder the left palm rest. After reading all the posts here I feel pretty confident that HP has finally resolved their cooling issues with this generation (minus a couple lemons here and there).

Anyway, I wanted to get a gauge on how the battery life will be for this model. I'm a grad student and I have to remote into my department’s machines to do most of my school work. If anyone out there can give me an idea of how long they can run on battery (6-cell and 9-cell numbers if possible), with heavy wifi use it would be greatly appreciated.


Back in my brief first gen Envy 17 days, I lurked in these forums quite a bitand remember the Envy crowd to be a cool bunch. I look forward to getting involved with the community this time around and answering questions when Ican.

 

Using the Intel GPU on battery. Brightness on 6. Keyboard backlight still on, wifi on, blue tooth on and no USB power down 3 hours 30 minutes on six cell battery

 

My power brick makes a clicking noise. A google of this problem indicates others have had this problem but the brick seems to work normally...

 

It could be a couple of things depending on the type of noise. If its a mechanical type clicking than that most likely means the breaker in the power supply is being tripped (automatically resets itself when the overcurrent goes away). If it sounds more like a popping noise, than there's a short in the supply and I would stop using it immediately.

Since everything is working fine, my guess is that its the breaker. This means that your laptop is drawing more current than your power supply thinks it should. Your laptop should be fine, but I would still conisder calling HP support for a replacement power supply if you are under warranty.

 

Thanks for the response. Thats pretty good time, a lot better than I expected actually. I was lucky to get 1.5-1.75 hours on first gen.

 

So I called them up and they said they'll send me a new power brick.

gonna bump my question - How can I get Youtube 3D to work on this PC?

 

ya i'm tracking bobmitch. to me thats a supply issue, i.e. intel is unable to supply these puppies to hp

 

another problem - my brightness keys stopped working. maybe it has something to do with my recent installation of catalyst 11.8? how can I get it to work

edit: reading a couple pages back I read about the keys not working with new graphics drivers. What's the newest catalyst I can install without any problems? the HP official ones from June?

edit2: just loaded up crysis on hardcore settings (not the DX11 hi-res patch, yet) and it looks amazing on this 120 hz screen and completely fluid gameplay that is probably at least 50+ fps. the screen looks so much better than the one on the dv6t IMO. it's prob because of the brightness or something

 

The 6850M is quite a nice GPU. I guess you can call me an Nvidiot...I really like their GPU's and their drivers have always been better than ATI, now AMD. The 6850M has enough power to give you Crysis 2 in full 3D and still decent fps. Many other games, too!

 

Or anyone else, for that matter. I think most of the product is on hold until the firmware fix. Thought it would have come out last week...people are complaining and still waiting...

 

So despite so many reassuring words in this thread, I am still paranoid about heat emmenating from the left palm rest of this machine. Of course, I probably won't stop being paranoid until my machine comes in this week and I can try it out for myself (and even then I'll still probably be paranoid for the next two years, first gen envy really psychologically scared me ).

Anyway for those owners who were as worried as me, I want to know what test tools or games you used that finally let you put your palm rest fears to rest. Also, for anyone who is as paranoid about giving the new Envy a shot as I was, try running these two searches in google:

palm rest *HP ENVY 17 & 17 3D Sandy Bridge (2XXX series) Owners Lounge* site:forum.notebookreview.com

palm rest *HP ENVY 17 & 17 3D (1XXX series) Owners Lounge* site:forum.notebookreview.com

Its what finally convinced me to even try the 17 again. For anyone else who might want a stroll down memory lane, check out the first gen search string...kind of amazing/sad how many posters sigs don't have Envy 17s in them anymore.

 

A few immediate things to do when your Envy 17 arrives.

1. Check the bios version. If NOT f.15, update to f.15 as soon as you can. That was the bios fix that repaired the throttling issue
2. Make sure that Coolsense is set to "Performance" That will give your machine the ability to keep cool, without paying a performance penalty.

The heat issues of the first generation Envy are a thing of the past. When gaming, this puppy will get warm, don't misunderstand, but my i7 2630M in combination with the 6850M will be a lot cooler than what you remember.

 

It gets hot, but it's certainly tolerable. In fact in the winter time you could probably save on your heating bill

I ran 3dmark 11 once again with the updated 11.8 drivers and I got 1955

AMD Radeon HD 6850M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2630QM Processor,Hewlett-Packard 159B score: P1955 3DMarks

 

no kidding. hp must have single sourced the ssd and qualified only the intel 320s. I was hoping for 300 and 600 flavor. Additinally, perhaps they are re-tooling for a refresh and may bring in the mSATA flavor just like Envy14 does today. that would be cool as well

 

From what I recall, the SSD was the 300. They added, I believe, the 750 GB 7200 RPM HDD to it and you got just over a TB of space. I am sure that once Intel straightens out the firmware...the Envy will ship with the SSD once again...

 

Hi,

I've a 2001 machine, which for the most part I'm very happy with. Its a desktop replacement machine for me, so battery life not so important. I want to get rid of the HP versions of the ATI Graphic Drivers and just have the ATI ones (10.7 I believe is there most recent version). Im not bothered about switchable graphics.

Would the correct process be to:

1. Uninstall HP - ATI drivers.
2. Uninstall Switchable graphics program.
3. Get official ATI Mobile package install.

Do I need to bother uninstalling / installing the Intel Graphics drivers.

Just want to make sure I get this right.

Thanks in advance.

Tim

 

To maintain switchable graphics and have it work properly...don't uninstall the HP drivers. Install Catalyst 11.7 over the current HP drivers...do a custom install and choose everything except Catalyst Control Center. If you go to AMD and try to download...it is hit or miss as to whether or not the website will recognize your AMD card. Get 11.7 here:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=348459

As I stated...just run the installer...choose Custom and don't do CCC and you should get your drivers updated AND have switchable graphics still in play. A few caviats. 1. You might lose function of your brightness hotkey. 2. If you have the Envy 17 3D...you will have to remember to set the AMD refresh to 120 manually (even the latest HP drivers don't set the refresh automatically). Other than that...you should be good to go

 

Ah. OK, will give that a shot tonight. Thanks for your help.

Tim

 

I installed catalyst when I updated to 11.8. I didn't encounter any problems. Why shouldn't I install catalyst

 

I have always encountered errors when installing CCC. If I choose to install everything, I lose switchable graphics and CCC won't run. If I do an install, choose Custom...then keep everything checked except Catalyst Control Center...I maintain full functional CCC from the HP version and switchable graphics works fine. It is hit or miss with AMD. I just do the custom to avoid any issues. Catalyst Control Center is finicky at best and even people with AMD desktop cards have issues with CCC.

BTW...the 11.8 Catalyst Preview drivers from guru3d.com also include Mobility, and they are actually pretty nice. My 3DMark 11 score increased to 1963