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

So I just dropped my Crucial C300 in. 1st thing to do is update the firmware...BUT...I can only update firmware in IDE or legacy mode. Does not work in AHCI. How do I force that stupid thing into IDE mode. Anybody any idea?

 

Yeap! All works. Its as good as HP driver.

 

Excellent! I am looking forward to hearing from others who upgrade in the same manner as you.

KJ

 

I'm assuming you're saying that your brightness keys work on your Envy 14. I haven't heard from anyone (including myself) of them working on the Envy 17 3D SB with the new 11.4 drivers.

 

I did some research on this. You may not like the answer. I want to do the same with my Intel...but can't hooked up to the Envy as is.

1. Put the SSD in another machine...hooked up properly and flash that way

2. Put the SSD in a USB 2.0 or eSATA enclosure and let the firmware flasher detect it in there...flash and then install in the Envy. That is why I haven't updated the firmware on my Intel.

You are doing a clean install...it might be worth the trouble at that point. You don't have any data to risk

 

Coz I just post the link like few minutes ago...no one tried yet on their E17 SB. I did tried it on my E14, if it works on E14, MOST LIKELY it works on E17 SB, same kind of concept. Different silicon and transistor count.

 

These are the exact same drivers I posted from guru3d.com last week. They did break my brightness hot button...but they do install well...on my system they wouldn't install Catalyst Contol Center...so I use the one from the HP drivers. Did a custom and chose everything but CCC...they work fine. Some people claim that they regained brightness hotkey by installing the new HP Software framework...didn't do anything for me...

Good drivers, nonetheless

 

As best I can tell that executable only sets the coolsense level, if you were to delete or rename it I'd make a bet that coolsense is still active -- or at least will remain in the same state/setting as it was before you whacked it.

Probably that executable is touching something in BIOS/ACPI or changing some parameters used by the kernel mode thermal controls.

While not very comprehensive a quick process explorer search for "thermal" and "coolsense" yields nothing. If that executable or it's sister DLL were running on the system or otherwise loaded into memory, process explorer would have certainly revealed it.

Those of you having throttling issues might want to check in the kernel-power\kernel-thermal section of your event logs. Mine is pretty much empty, however when I switch to "coolest" mode I get an informational message that the system has switched to passive cooling, and when I switch to "performance" I get a message that the system has disengaged passive cooling.

If you have a bunch of warnings or errors in there, or if you don't get the informational message when you switch modes, it could mean something is wrong and help get this figured out.

The more I look at this the more I think the software side of coolsense is nothing other than a toggle switch for built in Win7/Intel/ACPI cooling functionality that HP gave a fancy name to. Just a working theory though so far

 

Yeap, seems that once again HP is screwing with us.
I don't have another Sata computer at home, so the firmware update will have to wait till I can plug it into the desktop at work. Really no time for that right now, so I'll stick with the current firmware and see how it runs for now.
Really want to get this baby to work

 

I'm the one who made that claim and then I later edited my post to say that I was wrong but maybe I didn't say I was wrong in the right way

HP support assistant reverted my graphics driver to the old version when it decided to re-install the HP software framework. I was never prompted about this or selected it as an option, it just happened. I rebooted and banged on my hotkeys which worked, yay! Then I did some more investigation and saw that I was running stock drivers. Why HP support assistant decided I needed to update framework in the first place is a mystery because I was already on the latest version

So sorry about that confusion I wasn't even drinking that night. Maybe just tired and stupid.

 

Not a problem. I am pretty surprised that your HP software did that to your drivers. Didn't do that to me...Hmmm!

 

I believe this question has been asked before, and I have an answer to it now.
Question: Can I simply install a SSD and install from recovery disk?
Answer: No. Just got a nice error message that recovery was not able to install HP image to disk. Kind'a expected it. My HDD is 1TB and the SSD is 256GB. Obviously it's tough to get that image on there. I guess I'll have to go for the real clean install

 

Actually a whole bunch of us have tried 11.4 on E17 SB in the past week or so.

I'm running it right now and have been for days. There have been dozens of posts about this, I even gave a tutorial to hack back in hot-keys right in this very thread.

 

So it actually refused to run the recovery? I thought you would load the discs and get a mbr error. How far did you get before you got the error? What would happen if you used the method in my guide where you remove the disk? Would you get a C: prompt? Then do the mbr fix and see if you can continue the recovery. This reminds me of when you go from a larger disk with Acronis to a smaller one.

I thought that if I updgrade to a larger SSD...that I would just recover the mbr and recovery partition from my current SSD with Acronis and then do an F11. In theory it should work...

 

when you do the clean install...don't install HP Software Framework...then you won't get Coolsense

 

I remember that very clearly. I really don't use the brightness hotkey. I like the monitor on 6 while on battery and 7 plugged in. Rarely have a reason to change that. I do use the volume hotkeys a lot.

BTW...have any of you upgraded your TriDef software. The latest version installs the TriDef media player. I installed the audio plugin and watched a DVD in 3D last night. Some titles, based on their copy protection, will play back in 3D...I am an avid baseball fan...watched "61" in 3D....pretty cool stuff!

rep+1

 

Did not even go beyond recovery disk 1. I guess it checks the size of the drive before it really starts anything.
Recovery option 1 (out of box state). Error: Can't write factory image to drive. No more explanation given here.
Recovery option 2 (factory reset). Error: the selected drive is not large enough for the factory image.

I am actually trying the minimal recovery option now. It supposedly only installs a clean windows and no software or drivers (sound just like any clean install). At least it started to format the drive. Hoping it is the SDD that is being formated, since the original HDD is in bay 2 . If not, I have 1 hour to RMA my envy
Funny. The estimated time for the process is increasing from second to second. Started with 12 minutes, is up to 29 minutes now (I am on recovery disk 2).

EDIT. still on disk 2....envy is getting close to burning hot on the left palm rest (SDD location)

Well, after my last recovery I did not have any trouble with coolsence, but I might try without (have to really monitor temps).
28%.....31 minutes

 

Yeah the only way to do a recovery is to do the full recovery to factory settings. There's a few other options available but those are for the same size hard drive.

 

Interesting. It is the master boot record causing this. I wonder if it gets written off disk 1....then create the error to get to C: I can't believe the message that the SSD isn't big enough for the image...that is a similar error that you get from Acronis when you go from large to smaller disk...The Master boot record was created on the 1 TB disk. The entire disk image from HP (my size now with Office and some other things installed...52 GB). Let's see what the minimal gives you.

 

For the blinking cursor delay at bootup post from me earlier and a day or two ago, one respnose below:

Thanks Fiver5, for link provided. Have spent some time with event viewer and has not led to uncovering any answers before or again tonight when I gave it another shot. Measure twice, cut once....I did snag the white paper (thanks for link, where I also further created custom event log views from tips included in your link).

From white paper review I can further say the exact time of issues is during boot transition: OSloader phase. This phase begins approximately when the BIOS splash and diagnostic screens are cleared and ends approximately when the “Loading Windows” splash screen appears. Exactly when the black screen and blinking curor appear.

I think another 1 or 2 posters provided some suggestions in subsequent posts I'll respond to and try and likley identified same timeframe eluded to here. I'll chase those leads next. I have gotten odd intermittent success thru disabling prefetch and booting from power down. But maybe one in 5 times it boots "normally after putzing with that and I can't link success to any specific amount of time leaving device powered off either. Really strange and likely 100% coincidental. Thought prefetch wasn't relevant till after windows start anyway.

For me so far, Event viewer is a dead end. Thanks very much for link. Next batter.

 

Envy....have you upgrade your bios to f.08?

 

Thanks for your response and a few new things I can try that I have not done already. Read your post and Windows white paper and can now describe more accurately the timeframe of the extended delay resulting in solid black screen with blinking cursor appears during boot transition: OSloader phase. This happens after the BIOS / HP logo splash (that I do see) and diagnostic screens (which I do not see) are cleared, before the “Loading Windows” splash screen appears.

Question 1: What kind of live Cd of some kind do you suggest? I will disconnect both drives and boot up.

Question 2: Are you suggesting combination of disconnecting drives and booting from live Cd or live CD option 1, independent boot disconnecting drives without incorporating live CD in the mix for option 2?

I may disconnect WIFI as suggested. Did disable DVD drive thru interrupting boot with escape key and drilling through confirming boot sequence is hard drive first, other items next. Confirmed DVD was not first in sequence and also disabled. Should this not achieve same result as disconnecting and reduce need for teardown and putting humpty back together again?

 

Just another thought...could you have a corrupted boot sector? I wonder if getting to a C: prompt and typing "Fdisk /mbr" might fix that. One would think a Windows installation would fix that...but sometimes not...

 

So what times are you getting for OSLoaderDuration in your event log?

Looks like I am normally around the low 700's and a few times it's popped up to 1400. However you'd want to compare numbers to someone with a similarly configured Envy.

 

Regarding black screen and blinking cursor at bootup:

Latent. Thx again for respnose. See my post above, please. Still have questions there but I just did disconnect SSD, HDD, power up and after HP splash screen immediately get error message saying:

"No bootable device - Insert Boot disk and press any key".

There was no delay between splash screen and error message (with 1 second anyway). This tell us anything or need a Live Cd to know more and I'm back to question of suggestion if you have one for CD.

Thanks. Time for sleep and up for work in a few short hours.

 

Gives me a corrupted boot sector .
On to fixing it. So why did I nor just simply load from my WIN 7 dvd in the first place
Oh well. At least I have a couple shows to catch up on my DVR.


WOWOWOW. This is not cool. Recover as Home BASIC!!!!

 

Home basic? Ugh...I would just break out the Win7 disk and do it clean. Make sure that during the clean install...format the drive...that should clean your cells

 

I love that no one sleeps here. Thanks BobMitch! Tried the following without apparent succes at some point in the 30+ hours I've danced with this devil.

Bootrec.exe/FixMbr
Bootrec.exe /FixBoot
Bootrec.exe / RebuildBcd

and yet........No love.... no change. Not feeling it there I guess.

Some macforum users seemed to have the most identical situation to what I'm experiencing resolved though the above command line actions for their Win7 loads. Some posters eluded to their problem possibly being related to pirate copies of Windows. Whether that was some or all of cause of their situation I did not investigate. Just stole some ideas from their forums and ran....to try on my unit. We have legal Windows install on our machines from HP. Nonetheless. I may try again. I think I hit the above 3 command line commands twice since last Thursday. May still try again...

Other thoughts........??????

 

I haven't installed it at all, and the fans are running strong during load and are quiet when idle, just the same as with coolsense. But since it doesn't throttle back anymore, it runs a bit hotter overall.

The same thing that happened to me, only it would throttle back when I started any game or program. It's totally gone after I reinstalled windows and didn't install any HP programs at all (especially not HP support assistant which seems to take control of your computer). Could have been anything though, but atleast I know it's working for me now.

 

I actually decided to let it run. It is pulling some HP software (curious which) and adding it to the system now. Maybe it will upgrade to premium during this process. If not, I call it a day for now and put the HDD back in bay onw and do the firmware upgrade plus a clean erase sometime later this week.
Have a big hearing on Thursday and really not much more time to mess with this.

 

Thanks Latent. I am in unique position of having two identically configured units within family ordered same day and shipped and received same day. It's late or I'm functionally retarded (rhetorical).... but I don't see OSLoaderDuration specifically in event log.

I can say that as you indicated, assuming we're talking 700-1400milliseconds, only when restarting THIS unit or either cold starting or restarting on the OTHER unit it's about one second as well.

The OSLoader Duration on the unit I'm trying to root cause and remedy is appx 25-30 seconds added to startup for SSD equipped unit. Yep, it's only a 1/2 a minute and not 1/2 an hour but 1) it's just annoying to not be able to remove this unnecesary delay not present on other unit or prior unit returned for another reason and 2)can't be sure it isn't a permanent intermediate step that will never increase in duration or taht could degrade and increase over time for any of a number unknown reasons over useful life of notebook.

Anyone want a laugh...? Probably spent more time (probably easily 30 hours searching, experimenting...) trying to find a solution to remove this added delay on every cold boot than the sum total of additive time I'll sit and look at a delayed boot blinking screen over the life of ownership of the device. Now I have to find a solution. Wanna say I won't be defeated....but looking grim. Will go down fighting and not fall on own sword.

And now for much needed sleep/nap before work....

Other ideas or thoughts related to the above or live disk suggestions for boot referenced in earlier post??????

 

Well the exercise in the article was to look at the timings to see what is taking so long.



You can see the OSLoaderDuration time right there in the middle.


Actually it looks like it doesn't matter because for whatever reason Win7 doesn't seem to be dropping event 100's on cold boots, just reboots. And cold boots are your problem. I'll look tomorrow to see if they are doing something else funky, otherwise this is a trouble ticket to Microsoft.

 

Ok, so during the initla boot it actually upgraded itself back to Premium.
Funny as is, it is called min install, but still has everything but fences or TriDef (they left off the good stuff).
Ran As SSD Benchmark, and it can't identify my crucial c300?!?! Something is wrong.
Test also produces error on access time test. Reads are around 310 and writes at 290. Seems crazy fast on the writes. Anyhow, does not really belong into this thread.
Just wanted to give an update for those who have been waiting.
Windows boot does not seem much faster by the way. Guess I have to time it. Too late for today.

 

Please keep me/us updated. I just wanted to order a C300 do put it into my Ency 17 as system drive. The HDD will be used as data space.

 

I agree with you - my thought upon going to bed last night after testing is that HP is sick of people overclocking their CPUs and making HP replace them and so they are making darn sure at least the cooling piece of it isn't going to let you repeatedly overheat the system.

Another thought is just that the cooling system (possibly shared as someone said) between the CPU and GPU is just plain old insufficient and this is a way software wise to compensate for it (and ding us at the same time). I'm betting the next rev of this system will probably not have this problem. They fixed the system getting too hot in rev 1 - they have this issue on rev 2 - probably fixing it now as we type.

I only ran my test on the Raedon - can't remember if anyone has run it on the Intel GPU yet - may do that this morning if I have a chance. Also thinking about disabling everything possible in msconfig and trying again just for grins and seeing what happens.

I know we are now thinking this probably won't affect most people real world - but if you are a heavy gamer - won't it? And if you are Slotti and rendering - won't it? Anything causing you to heavily use the GPU seems like it would trigger this scenario and make you unhappy with the system. Thoughts?

 

Yes, I realize that...but I believe a lot of people tried the wrong version, I did tried regular version before and it doesn't work and figured out peoples in E14 forum have been using different version which work fine. I tried on mine, work like a charm...brightness buttons still works, not sure if because I did clean install on mine or anything else. I thought I share that information here.

 

The version you posted is the same version we have all been trying. It is the regular version just simply from the FTP of the AMD site.

 

I figured so, but why would it not affect the glass theme to my laptop. Im starting to think my laptop is defective. Little nitches here and there is getting me annoyed.

 

I remember when I got my first Envy...there was something to do with running the HP Theme? At the time I clicked YES and same thing happened. On this Envy, I clicked NO and then for Envy theme...I just enabled the desktop theme HP.

Right click on desktop and choose personalize. Then it brings up different themes. Under Aero themes choose Whatever one you prefer. If you are happy with the chosen Theme backgrounds...good. If not, at the bottom of the page, choose Desktop Background and choose what you want...

Then choose Window Color...Under the pallette, there is a check button "Enable Transparency" make sure it IS checked

That should give you the full Aero effect. Also...you might want to reinstall your ATI graphics drivers...perhaps there is something corrupt in them. They are Direct X 11 drivers...so Aero should be an afterthought...

 

I just ran selective startup and tried to uncheck everything - but "load system services" kept placing a square back in the checkbox, so it was controlling something there. I rebooted - reran Prime95 - noticed that it didn't ramp up the CPUs quite as much, kept them more in the 2.2Ghz range and the temps were staying mainly in the low 80s versus going to the low 90s. When I started Furmark - it immediately throttled back to 798. Stopped Furmark and I'm back to 2.2ish.

I changed back to the normal startup - changed to the Intel GPU and ran Prime 95 again. This time when I started Furmark - the CPU stayed at a steady 1996 on all cores and the temps were in the 70s. Of course the furry donut wasn't nearly as pretty as it is on the other GPU

So throttling appears to only happen on the Radeon GPU.....maybe this was a given to you guys, IDK.

Ok - I'm done testing that. If I notice a real slow down then I'll worry about it - but this thing has been super sweet so far for me.

 

Rendering actually does not trigger any GPU loads. My rendering times are the same on the dedicated AMD GPU as they are on the on the intel chip.
It's only cpu power.
Now, if I want to maneuver in real time trhough my projects, that is a whole different puppy. Will have to try this later. Have to get my SSD issues sorted out first. Just realized that my write speed report about 60 MB/s over what the factory specs are, so there is definately something off.

 

Can any of you Envy 17 SB owners discribe any noticeable difference in going from Arrandale to Sandy Bridge, especially as it relates to battery life?

 

Battery life nearly jumped 250%.

I originally had an i7-720QM Envy 17, and I got it replaced with a Sandy bridge model and an i7-2630QM.

Battery life on my previous Envy 17 was around 2~ hours with brightness set down to like 40% using the 9 cell battery.
Battery life on my Envy 17 SB is around 5 to 5 1/2 hours using the Intel HD graphics and 40% brightness.

It also does better in most games due to the higher clocked quad core processor.

 

This is more of an Intel thing than HP. The Intel SATA chipset is probably forcing AHCI and the BIOS has no option to change it. Then again, on a low level it might be possible for HP to write a bios that toggles AHCI mode. Of course, Intel could just write a firmware update program that works in AHCI mode since it will most likely become the defacto standard within a years' time.

The MBR doesn't contain the size of the disk so as long as there is enough room for the data in the image, the SSD should just work. The MBR and Bootsector work together to tell the hardware where to find (and load) the OS loader/kernel after the bios initialization is complete.

 

Well, update from 0006 to 0007 will work in AHCI mode. Dumb that mine came with 0002 . Will drop into my desktop later and upgrade to 0006 and we will see from there.
No in regards to the intel controller. What version are you guys running. My 'minimalizes' recovery only installed some drivers and I was wondering if my controller needs an updated driver?

 

The latest is here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...torage+Technology&OSVersion=Windows+Vista*+32
Dec 2010 release...

 

I have a C300 installed and it works fine. Runs fine and detected with no problems.

 

WOW!! Has that been consistent for others who have made a similar switch?

 

Can you run AS SSD Benchmark and let me know what it shows? Also, did you do clean installe from win7 DVD or a recovery.
Which firmware are you running?
Thanks

 

Well depends if they were using the Intel i7 quad cores or the i5 dual cores for the Arrandale or Clarksfield.

But yes if they were using the quad core Clarksfield then yes the battery life increases should be very similar for others who also set power saving settings+intel HD graphics@ 40% brightness.

If they were using the Arrandale dual cores I am unsure.