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

You know what...you reminded me. Windows 7 is also supposed to disable Pre-fetch. When I got my machine...it was enabled. I had a checklist of things to look over and found prefetch and turned it off...

 

I really think that some of the HP reps believe it easier for them to do a return than solve a problem. I have been told that they are bonused on how quickly they can solve an issue...you tell me...what takes shorter time???

Long run...HP is gonna lose a bunch of money...I think they do the Envy a big dis-service...PLUS...with all the new "fixed orders" from the returns...they are clogging up the system and causing the delays we have all experienced...thus the junky Quality Control of late

 

Any HP reps reading this thread at level 3 help desk or above, or techs actually on the Envy product team are more than welcome to PM me and trade contact info, they might be surprised by the email address I use to write them back with

And I honestly could provide assistance with some of this broken stuff they are shipping. Probably wouldn't even have to sign an NDA.

 

Hi guys, I just received my HP Envy 17 non 3D model last week.
So far everything has been ok, I guess I may have been lucky as I can't find any cosmetic problems with the laptop.
Anyway, using HWinfo, I see that my CPU temps are around 54C while just browsing the internet and doing some light tasks, I guess this is the normal temps right ? Have you guys also tried checking the temps of your laptop ?

 

Looks reasonably normal. I am sitting in a room with ambient temp of about 76 (we have been having much cooler weather for this time of year)...and my CPU is reading 50C

 

Bobmitch,thanks for the quick reply, also, the left palmrest gets warm, I guess that's where the hard drive is correct ?

 

Actually I think that is where the processor and amd gpu are. Intel gpu in the processor. Look under the machine...the large door is for HDD. Smaller one...wireless and RAM.

 

fiver5, a little mystery there, eh? Now I'm dying to know, but dare I ask? I'm guessing a real high tech level....maybe owner of a major tech company?

KJ

 

Ok, thanks for the correction. I was thinking of getting a laptop cooler for this baby, do you think its a great idea ? Right now I'm using the 9 cell battery so as the bottom would be lifted up a little bit so that some air could pass thru.

 

When you are facing the machine...underneath to the left is the air intake. Your battery keeps the airflow underneath circulating well. I have the six cell and actually work with the Envy in my lap at times. I just make sure to keep the vent clear for air...and the machine never gets that warm for me. I can tell you that my old Dell Inspiron used to make me sweat...this thing never feels more than warm. Laptop cooler could only help...but not sure how much with the machine's tilt with the 9 cell. Any other people using laptop coolers???

 

But the average user isn't doing that....

The average user isn't paying $250 for a "cheaper" 120GB SSD, along with buying Windows 7 for $100 to put on an old crappy computer. They are most likely buying a new computer (with Windows 7 pre-installed) that has a larger, cheaper HDD already installed.

Again, the average user has no clue as to what TRIM...or RAID...or AHCI....or what stripe...is....and want nothing to do with messing with their BIOS.

The average user knows nothing of swapping primary drives. If the HDD for an average user gets full....they just buy an external and call it a day....until they buy a new computer with a bigger HDD.....or another external...with is now probably twice as large, and cost half as much...as the first one they purchased.

I'm not trying to knock SSD's or anyone that has one......because I'm sure I will have one eventually.

But just keep in mind....most of you on this forum are far more advanced than the average user.

 

It just gets better and better, but he ain't talkin'. He's locked up tighter than Fort Knox.... I'm repping you Fiver...I'm realizing I didn't do that like 20 great information posts ago....

 

Experiencing delayed bootup time with I72820 SSD +HDD. I get a black screen with blinking cursor top left after HP logo/post screen and BEFORE windows starting and login screens are displayed. I've tried about 15 things from restore, bios updated, regedit, event viewer, remove CMOS battery, hard reset, Fixmbr type commands, diagnostics, checkdisk, memory and hard drive checks, swap hard drive from diff unit with identical config... and more.

The blinking cursor, black screen occurs any time booting from power up or hibernation (which I don't use) but NEVER I have never experienced a delayed start with black screen and blinking cursor when RESTARTING the machine. I only experience this at "cold boot" even if powering down after hours of use and booting up fresh again with the machine "warm". None of the function keys work to break boot sequence for diags, etc (esc, f2, f8, f11, etc) from a boot from complete power down. These only work when breaking boot sequence during a restart action


Anyone ideas? Seems a motherboard would work or not. I doubt MOBO issue. Read countless forums an posts all over the web in general. Can't figure it out. Already have elevated case manager inquiry but no solution found yet. Curious situation not present on other envy 17's ( mine also a 3d, sb)

Anyone???

 

I use a Zalman NC3000U and it works like a charm. Max temps reach about 75 degrees Celsius when playing Starcraft 2 for a couple hours.

So the GPU and CPU are seated right under the palm rest? I always figured it was the hard drive for some reason. The GPU and CPU are the two most heat producing components of a laptop and HP puts it under the palm rest? Not the best design choice IMO...

 

If you turn the machine over...the Hard drive compartment is in the front / center of the machine, right under the touchpad. Right above that compartment is the compartment for Wireless and Memory modules

Facing the screen...touchpad right in front of you...to the left side is the fan intake and output. That fan sucks in cool air to cool the CPU and GPU from underneath and blows out to the left. The diagram in the service manual shows the CPU and GPU are under the left side of your keyboard...

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02160120.pdf

 

I would guess drivers again..... did you install Windows Update Video drivers? Do not install the video drivers from Windows Update....did you roll back your wifi 6200N card drivers?

KJ

 

Thanks KJ. Did not install windows update drivers. Maybe somewhere in cycle if experimentation I allowed it inadvertently. But this occurs even after recovery from partitiom or recovery discs with no window updates and no Chang to wifi drivers from out of box state. Assuming if delay is before windows starting screen many if the services, startup items, even driver type items come into play after windows starting logo pops. Agree?

Other thoughts. About ready to convert this to a cash prize competition for provider if final solution. Slotti, Bobmitch, crimsoned, (KJ above) and newcomers or lurkers. Dig deep power players and power users!!!. I'm spent on this.

 

Someone already posted on this exact issue - I've been digging but can't find it - seems like it was maybe 30 or so pages back. Can't remember if it was a BIOS update or what - will post when I find it - I'm on a mission now!!!

 

Use Windows 7 Event Viewer to track down issues that cause slower boot times | TechRepublic

 

It sounds to me like its happening before bios finishes POST so that would suggest something wrong in bios or hardware and not windows. This should be easy to isolate. You can try booting off a live CD of some kind and see if the pause still happens. But to be 100% sure i would pop open the hard drive bay and remove all drives form the machine and then boot it up. It should come up with no boot device etc but if it still pauses the same then it is hardware or something in bios. When a computer first boots it does a complete bios Power on self test and checks all the hardware in the machine. At this point lots of bits of hardware get a chance to run thier own init code and check themselves. If any one of these devices has a fault then it can cause bios to hang. It might be some hardware waiting for something and eventually giving up on a timeout. One option if you are really game is to remove some of the user servicable parts to isolate them out of the equation. The wifi card can be unpluged very easily and you can also try unplugging the blu-ray/dvd drive but this requires much disasembly. Any one of these devices may be the cause. Otherwise the only thing you have left in the equation is the motherboard which must have the fault on it. I don't think it would be the CPU but it could be the GPU or any other chip on the motherboard or something bad installed in bios.

Also note that when the machine is restarted (instead of powered on) the bios will not re init all the core hardware of the laptop or test it properly. It will only do a quick test for things like new boot devices etc. This will be why the pause doesn't happen then.

 

Meh...that was a fun look back, apparently I missed a few posts, some of them pretty funneh....

It was YOU (Envy173D) that I was remembering that posted the issue on post 3523, but I mixed the fix up with another issue (wifi lock up). Hopefully one of the posts above will be a fix for you.

 

Little mistery??? Big time. Since Fiver5 has had some really useful post on here, I thought I go for the short cut and just list all her/his post.
Board won't let you list her posts. It returns with 0 post matching.
Here is my thought. The email Fiver5 was refering to will probably link back to either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (who really wants a PC as we all know) . Steve, you can give up your identity now.

@Envy173d User1
as latent mentioned, it would seem to be some BIOS or hardware malfunction if it only happens on a cold start.

@all
as for HP tech support expertise. Remember my post way back when I had problems with my glasses. The tech guy wanted me to uninstall all graphics drivers and reinstall them fresh. At some point he even mentioned I shall unsinstall the 3D software (he did not even know it was TriDef). Great advice. I would have ended up without the license for it.

 

Sounds intriguing... I'll tell if you tell

I use my Envy 17 3D with a cooler and the 9-cell works but is a bit much... the 6-cell would probably yield a more comfortable angle but I only use my cooler when I am sitting on the couch. On a flat surface, the lift from the 9-cell battery is good enough.

 

Sorry, that wasn't intentionally targeted to you as a person, I was just trying to say that if a person doesn't want to better themselves, then they have to pay others to do it for them. My apologies.

I believe Fiver addressed this. Show the general user a boot sequence of a laptop using an SSD and they'll probably want to buy a laptop with one (or have somebody install one for them). Either way, TRIM would not be an issue unless they tried to do it themselves and didn't RTFM.

Wow, that's a little harsh. Oh well, I guess I can't please everybody.

I generally agree. If you value stability, you don't want to be on the bleeding edge; but once something is proven, you might as well get your money's worth, jump on that bandwagon and take the ride for as long as you can before you have to get off. As for the switchable graphics fiasco, I think that garners more problems for the average user than making sure they are properly configured for their SSD.

Then if they like the bootup speed and response time of a laptop with an SSD and they don't feel comfortable installing one themselves, then there are plenty of services aimed at helping people (for a fee). Then again, there are two types of "average" users; those willing to spend for performance and those who are not. The former get exactly what they pay for, the latter are forced to take what they can get.

 

Sorry its been a rough day for me...and frankly you're not the one I'm concerned about when it comes to be rude and pretty much an around here.

So I apologize to you. You've been very helpful in the past to me and others without the smart a$$ remarks and unnecessary insults.

 

So I ran Prime95 to test how high the temps would go on my Envy, sure enough it reached 85C and pretty much stayed there. Then while Prime95 was running, I ran Furmark to test the GPU, that's when I noticed the the CPU speed dropped or I guess you could say "throttled" to around 800Mhz.

Do you guys think I'm also experiencing the "throttling" issue ? I'm using HWInfo to measure the temps and CPU speed.

By the way, when I stopped Furmark, the CPU speeds went up to the max speed that it would go ...

 

I've given up on the Envy. I thought long and hard today about giving a 3rd system a try and I decided against it (I think it was harder to say goodbye to the discounts I squeezed out of them then the actual laptop ). I loved its looks but I couldn't stand all the little aesthetic issues that both my systems had then with the throttling issue I just didn't feel like trying again.

I'm going to give the new Dell Precision M6600 a shot, its not half as pretty as the Envy, but it packs a nice AMD 6970M (Firepro 8900), has ports in the back of the system (am I the only one who hates where the ports/power supply are on the Envy?), and has a few expansion advantages plus it isnt ugly as sin like the Alienwares or Sagers.

Good luck to all of you here with the Envy. Waiting for our systems was much more enjoyable because of you all.

 

Sorry it didn't work out for you SoartanJet....

Good luck with the Dell. I hope it meets all your needs.

 

SpartanJet....haaaa, the Good Ol' Days....

Listen, do stick around though. It won't be the same without you. Don't forget to update us regarding your Dell Precision M6600. Hope you love it completely.

KJ

 

I was having some throttling lately as well. Strangely it would run all games at 800Mhz, with the occasional throttle up to 3400Mhz. (like 5 seconds every 30 seconds)
I even tested the powersettings in windows, setting the minimum state to 100%, which made the CPU run at 3200Mhz when idle, but as soon as I loaded a game, it would throttle back to 800Mhz.

Reinstalled windows now, and I'm not installing any HP software like coolsense at all this time, and so far the PC is behaving exactly like it should. 800Mhz at idle, and constant 3000Mhz+ when I load a game.
Temps are suffering though, pushing 85c constantly when full load, but I'll gladly trade that for normal performance.

 

Well, I wonder if HP was quick to push the Coolsense to the masses before properly tweaking it and preventing these throttle issues..... Also, wonder if patches/drivers will fix this in the end since Coolsense is a "software" cooling thing...similar to Beats being a "sound" thing.

KJ

 

Hmmm, interesting, I might try that as well. Does coolsense really help with the laptops cooling ?

 

No harm no foul.

 

I'm wondering if the coolsense throttles based on temperature or is it load based. i know turbo boost throttles or goes faster based on an internal calculation based on how long its been going at high speed. when it is running slow it counts up thermal points it can spend by going faster. It only uses the temperature as a hard throttle at high temperatures to protect it from overheating.

Coolsense may be doing something similar by recording the clockrate of the CPU and GPU and keeping what it thinks is a running total of the wattage being used by both and when it gets above what it thinks the termal design of the heat sink is it reduces the clock rates or increases the fan speed.

This might explain why it sometimes throttles when the temp is not that high if it is basically ignoring temp and mostly using estimated wattage based on clock rates.

 

So, I'm a little perplexed. I ran Prime95 and I get about 2.5Ghz more or less across all four cores and it keeps them right around 90 degrees. Never drops below about 2.2 - primarily stays at 2.5. As soon as I turn on Furmark it instantly throttles to 798 on all four cores - the core temps drop into the 60s - but they stay at 798 like they are pegged. I stop Furmark and everything behaves as before - hovering around 2.5 and close to or at 90 degrees.

Are you guys interpreting this as the "bad" kind of throttling? I can see if I was a gamer how this would cause me to drop frames or possibly have a bad gaming experience - I don't know if it really effects what I do on a day to day basis though (business apps plus photoshop CS5). I haven't tried to watch a full 3D movie yet to see if it behaves like this...would you anticipate that it would?

 

Someone should find out if coolsense is the cause of this behaviour. There must be some way to disable it completely. Best if there is some way to just turn it off and on at will. You can check and see if there are any windows services that have been added by the HP install that can be stopped manually when needed. If its not an extra service then it might be a startup application that can be disabled with MSConfig. If it is in neither of these then it will be a hardware driver which I would guess would be hard to disable short of hacking it out of the registry and rebooting.

 

IDK....looked at all of my services running and nothing "coolsense" jumps out at me, cursory glance at msconfig - nothing (well, a bunch of crap actually - I still need to clean this thing up!). Bleh..not sure what to make of it but it's late and I'm heading to bed, so will contemplate more tomorrow.

 

Thought someone here did try disabling it for a while....but the question is, if we disable it, will the fan still work properly?

KJ

 

Am I the only one who cannot use the Aero glassy transparency for their Envy's? It's weird because my laptop says my system reached it requirement so why can I not get it?

 

That's exactly the same thing that is happening to me too (I actually posted it couple of hours ago ) and I'm also wondering if this is the throttling issue that some others are talking about ...

 

Alrighty! I am done with some real world testing.
2 hours of gaming (boy sure feels good to get a hard work's day in XD)
and 20 minutes of video rendering I can safely say whatever happened with furmark/prime95 may be strange, however throttling does NOT seem to affect this Envy 17 SB 3D I received much.

There is some slight throttling, however it is very slight.

So I am glad finally I got a serviceable laptop, it will likely go to the market at a decent price. 2 years warranty+accidental protection to boot!

 

If you somehow get the screen calibrated, please share the ICC profile. Fiver post her ICC profile, however I didnt see any changes after applying it.

This machine have more power then you might think to run windows aero. Google it how to enable aero, try right click your desktop, personalize.

I'm having HP to cross ship another E17 3D, they charged my credit card again for the replacement but did offer $50 credit for the inconvenience. We'll see how it goes. They neglect they have 1600mhz RAM option.

 

So basically what is happening is that throttling seems to happen when you push the GPU, not the CPU. Perhaps it is heat related to the video card. When Coolsense senses temps on both the CPU and GPU increasing...Could this be what is causing the throttling????

 

So I did it the other way around (ran Furmark then Prime), same thing happened, when only Furmark was running, CPU was at full speed then once I started Prime, the throttling started right away ...

 

OK...you want Coolsense...find it here:

C:\Program Files (X86)\Hewlett Packard\Support Framework\Resources\HP Thermal Assistant\HPThermalAssistant.exe

Figure out how to shut it off and you will be less prone to throttling

There are tons of mentions of it in the system registry. One main way to get rid of it is to uninstall Support framework. OR...what if you change the name of the executable????

 

I think it's the combination of both that creates heat from CPU and GPU. When I ran prime and the CPU reached 88 / 89...the GPU was still in the 60's. Then you add the Futuremark on top...and you get both HOT...Coolsense is there to control things and keep thermals within a range...no matter what...

 

I think you are right, besides, the way that I am using my Envy right now I don't see the effect of the throttling I just noticed it when I ran Prime and Furmark. Maybe in real world use the throttling won't affect the Envy that much ?

 

for all those who have issue installing 11.4 Catalyst, download it over here

http://www2.ati.com/DRIVERS/mobile/11-4_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_ocl.exe

Its the mobility version, installed fine one my E14.

 

Funny, I was just about to post that myself. I wrote more to this, but just decided to delete....I think you've said it all. Real world users who surf, IM, chat, video, play games, and so forth, not all at the same time....I don't forsee any major issues. Now, of course if it throttles with those basic tasks, then yes, there is a problem. Otherwise....life goes on, and those who use the Envy in such regards shall be rewarded with one crazy nice laptop.

Alienware who?

KJ

 

Cool. Are all your special function keys still working properly? Such as brightness, etc...

KJ