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

I get around 5 hours with 50% brightness and the power settings on balanced.

No idea why you only get 90 minutes.

 

envy 17 3d or non-3d?
the screen makes quite a difference.

 

So has there ever been an explanation for the dented USB from HP??? Does every unit (17 or otherwise?) they produce have this issue? Seems like some poor quality control for such a large company. Won't sway me from my purchase, but seems a bit annoying on such a high end device.

 

Exactly....for those of us who have full brightness and use the dedicated GPU 1005 of the time 1 houra nd 30 minutes was the norm with the last gen Envy.

Not sure how the 3000 series fares but if it gives 2 hours and 30 minutes thats great IMO.

 

Might be late on this but Notebookcheck review of 17 3D is up and looks pretty good.

Review: HP Envy 17 3D (Early 2012) - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Gary

 

Favor: Can someone post a pic of the PC end of the power plug for the Envy 17? I want to see if the 135 watt HP power adapter I have will work as a secondary power source.
Thanks.

 

Review says 18 fps on Skyrim 1080p ultra settings, but my fps never drops below 30 with ultra settings and at 1080p.

Just a note

 

So, I'm looking into getting a small SSD For my Envy 17 when it comes in... Do I need a cage of some sort if I were to try and put that in? Or is the cage only needed for a normal spinning drive? And, if nothing else, where can I get a cage for it?

Edit: Should specify, I'm talking about a 2.5'' SSD not the mSata one

 

I just sent mine back yesterday to hp for the dented USB and a burnt out backlit key. The customer service rep said it must have been damaged in shipping. My thought would be that they have a quality control issue in the plant in China. (Since I used to work on Sony TV motherboards for a college job in the summers... If you have a lot of screw ups, then it is a factory QC issue... Which working in the area that fixed them, you learn really fast the weakest links in your company's production line). So basically, I didn't buy the shipping damage crap, but since they agreed to fix it, it's on their dime...

 

Are you having it repaired then? If I were I'd return it and re order....or even wait for Ivy Bridge if that's feasible.

Its crazy how they blame shipping. Even IF thats the case why don't you guys package the laptops more securely!?!? Or I dunno hire a different company.

There's UPS and DHL to begin with....

 

if they (hp) choose the way it gets delivered to their customers and dont offer them a way to pick the products up by themselves, theyre always responsible for any damage caused until it gets delivered to the customer. so they have to repair it resp. send you a new product for free.

of course, if it gets damaged during delivery, hp can request the delivery company to pay it, but thats not the customers' business, since their business relationship is only between hp and them, not the delivery company.

 

I have one of the last 2nd generation Envy 17 3D's made. Four months after delivery, something was making it's way out of the machine via the small space left between the enclosure and the keyboard. Seems that while building the machine...they left some "knockouts" inside the machine. These were the slots where the keyboard slides into the enclosure and holds itself down. Sloppy work. I refused to send the machine in, since the repair facility do badly damaged my original Envy, so an "At Home" tech came to the house and replaced my keyboard. I hope they do right by you with your repair.

 

you can do that easily by yourself, i open up the whole box once in 2 months to clean it. just have to be careful while lifting the keyboard since it can get bended and even break.

dont know about the envy support, but for elitebooks - under warranty - in such cases you always can choose to have the replacement parts be sent to your home and repair it by yourself - no need to send it to hp's repair sites or call (and pay!) a technician.

 

I get that...but after the fiasco with my original Envy...I wanted a bit more attention paid to replacing my keyboard. The tech who replaced the keyboard actually took the time and showed me how to do it...can I??? Sure...but I paid for AT HOME warranty.

 

I may just go ahead and get the additional warranty coverage myself. I ended up needing it last time and regretted not having had it.

 

Hello guys and gals

My blu-ray drive quit working, it is not reading any media. When I load any dvd it tries to read it but eventually fails. Yesterday i called HP support, after about hour long call and bunch things (restart computer, take out battery, apply bios though it was already updated, question did you break any disk inside drive etc etc), it was determined I have to send it to HP service center for repair.
My only concern is I have kept my laptop spotless and scratch-less, I do not want it to get rough treatment during servicing. I hoping nothing dreadful will happen, and things go smooth.

What kind of experience you guys have with repair center.

(forget to mentioned it is 2XXX Envy 17 3D, and i did upgrade my memory form standard 6GB at the time of offering to 8GB)
Thanks

 

if you didnt take out your hard disk, you may lose all the data thats on it.

 

I do have backup of the HDD. Hopefully they do not go the route of formatting my perfectly fine HDD, its the Optical drive that need replacement.

My concern is the handling of the system during this surgical procedure. My past experience with repair center (few years back) was not very pleasant, with the laptop arrived beat up and scuffed.

I read mixed reviews here regarding repair experience. Some have wonderful experience and some with not so good one.

Well at this point, I should wait and see, and put my trust in HP. (Please please please handle my spotless Envy with care).


--------------------------------------
Envy 17 3D 2XXXX (2630 8GB 640GB 7200)

 

ok, thats really important, since no matter what they intend to repair, a hdd format and bios update is usually always something they do, even if the reason for a repair is absolutely obviously not related to the hdd, like a display replacement.

regarding the handling during the repair - since ive opened the envy 17 3d for the first time i know that one cannot guarantee that everything stays visually untouched after doing this...
first time trying to remove the keyboard took some 1 hour (excluding the 1min for unscrewing the screws and opening the 2 covers on the bottom of the box) after which i gave up and thought it was somehow fixed and not meant to be opened.
another try took again an hour and i finally managed to remove the keyboard using the smallest highest quality tools to loosen it from its place, while taking best care to minimize any scratching and still the keyboard got bended so it poked out on one corner afterwards when inserted back to its place, even after several tries to bend it back resp. in the other direction, and its edges and those of the compartment looked like they would after at least one year of usage and not much care (notebook was 2 weeks old at that time)..

so basically it may not really be possible to just open it (for the first time; now i can open it without any issues or scratching and bending) without damaging it

 

have you tried this fix-it?

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs

 

The Drive does appear on the windows, and device manager.

The problem started couple of weeks back, the drive started making funny sounds when i put any dvd in, sometime it reads it and other time error out, with multiple tries it reads it.

Couple of days back it quit working all together, it does appear in windows, but would not read a disk.

 

The lens of your drive is certainly dirty. You can purchase a special DVD that cleans the lens.

 

I understand, but did you try the fix-it? Happened on my another notebook, and for some reason the fix-it fixed it.

 

Hi

In germany is at the moment only the 3010eg model avaible with 2x 750gb hdd. can i replace the primary hdd with an 2,5 sata3 ssd and recover the system with recover dvd's built with the hdd system? and do i need adaptors or something else for this?

has anyone tried to do this change?

thanks a lot!! and big gretz to the forum!

 

afaik the new envy 17 only has sata 2.

but generally you definitely can, without the need of any adapters, except for the frames that hold the HDD inside the compartment, but since the notebook already comes with two HDDs, you can use the frame from the HDD you want to replace (otherwise you can get it for free from HP support; i did the same in austria with my envy 17 3d which only came with one HDD) and its not even necessary to recover the OS using the recovery dvds. i always do a fresh OS install and never have used the recovery dvds for that so far, since everything is available on the resp. HP support pages and in the HP Drivers and Software Forum.

 

Has anyone done the software raid on the new 17-3090nr 3D series.
How to Create a Software RAID Array in Windows 7 - How-To Geek
This would be for the 2 HDD's, leaving the OS alone on the mSATA.
I spoke the the HP Tecks and they said it wasn't possible.
Do you still need the hardware (chipset-hm67) to do the software setup?

 

@ necrophyte
Doesn't it go like this:

mSATA/SSD = SATA II
HDD BAY 1 = SATA III
HDD BAY 2 = SATA II

My thoughts were that its useless to do a SATA III RAID (software, bay 1+2) when the best speeds you will get are only SATA II speeds.
I'm going to try it with 2x 500GB 7200 RPM HDD's when my 3090nr 3D gets here.
Thats unless someone tells me its not possible.

 

hi necrophyte

do you use an standalone version of windows or is with the HP Envy an Windows DVD included?

 

Good morning guys, my new Envy 17 3D is fabulous so for, only issues I have is the often reported dent under the USB section. I also had an issue with the PowerDVD 10 not being able to load a DVD. It worked fine with Blu-Ray, but a DVD could not load. However, I believe this was due to an interruption during an update download from HP support. I lost internet connection and wasn't able to resume and I think it corrupted something in the software. It was fixed after an online chat with HP support (which is fabulous by the way). We wound up simply re-installing PowerDVD and it works fine now.
My only question is concerning the audio. I thought this unit had a sub built in. I don't hear any bass tones. Highs and mids sound nice, but I expected to hear some bass. I played around with the control panel but adjusting the EQ really didn't change much. I'm not expecting this thing to sound like my HSU home theater sub of course, but I did expect to hear some bass. Is there a setting somewhere that I can adjust, or are my expectations set a little too high?
Other than that I'm loving this laptop. Haven't loaded any games on it yet as I mostly have older games, but looking for something new to install and try out.

 

- Portal 1+2. This would be a good one to play in 3D.
- Alan Wake would be interesting, with all the game being the dream.
- Condemned, Criminal Origins. The only game that EVER gave me the shivers, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and made me jump out of my chair. The in game sound effects were AWESOME! (use good headphones)
- Duke Nukem 1or2?

 

Thanks for those suggestions AU4U, I took notice of Portal 2 on the Best Buy web site, and It got good reviews. I will try these games out. I'm not a huge gamer, most of the games I have are older ones, like the Medal of Honor series, and Call of Duty stuff like that. I also have Company of Heroes which I plan on installing soon.

 

i used my own copy of win 7 ultimate, but you get the win 7 home premium recovery disk, which is almost the same as an OEM win 7 home premium dvd, just with some additional hp softpaqs and a hp label.

PS: portal 2 is amazing in 3d! at least with my envy 17 3d 1195ea, which has a quite a bit stronger gpu than the 3000s. but the 7690m xt should handle it well, too, with 2x or no AA.

 

I'm definitely going to have to stop and pick that up then.

 

- Portal 2 would be a good one to play in 3D.
- Alan Wake would be interesting, with all the game being the dream.
- Condemned, Criminal Origins, The only game that EVER gave me the shivers, sound effects were AWESOME! (use good headphones)
- Duke Nukem 1or2?

 

and portal 2 is definitely my favorite game ever, together with tes 3,4,5 and hl 1,2, since theyre all so different that i dont wanna compare them.

 

My current bookbag is dead. Broke this morning.

Swissgear Ibex bookbag. It was a great bookbag and I'm tempted to rebuy it but does anyone know of any other great 17" laptop bookbags? Any website that sells a variety of bookbags from different companies....

 

Without playing Portal 1 you might not understand the back story when you play Portal 2.
IF you can, hook up to a 24"+ monitor, the sense of space and scale in Portal 2 is amazing, and gets better with the bigger monitors.

 

Yea, I plan to play on my 47" Toshiba. I ordered an extra HDMI cable a few days ago. I just checked out some video's on Portal 2 gameplay and it looks kinda weird, but I think I will give it a try. LOL

 

Anyone try this?

 

With Portal 2 there is no difficulty level adjust (easy/med/hard), it's a puzzle, and once you have done it you know how to solve it the 2nd time through.
It does have 6 extra levels in the 'Options' that are quite difficult and challenging.

 

I am. I don't believe the shipping excuse either. I have shipped a few Xboxes about 3 times wih no issues. I think it is a sloppy site in China.

Hopefully it comes back better. When I worked at Sony, our electronics were mostly better after we repaired them. They went through extensive QI...

 

Thanks. It is the third generation, but I haven't even looked into what that means versus 1st and 2nd...

I am fairly OCD, so hopefully the minor fixes are completed.

 

Don't know that I can directly address your questions here, but this was my experience:

I got my Envy 17 with just the 750GB Hybrid drive. I also purchased a 128GB mSATA card and a 256GB SATA III SSD. The plan (and this is working) is to boot from the mSATA, run "current" VMs and apps from the SSD, and use the 750GB Hybrid for unused VMs and less used crap (media and more media).

I originally tried to remove the shipped drive and do the restore to the mSATA - no go. It consistently failed to restore at the last step and the restore error boxes no longer have the red X to close and continue as they did in the past. I could have done a clean install but since HP doesn't provide all of the software in an easily accessible format, I really wanted the HP image. So, the next try was to clone the Hybrid drive to the mSATA. To do this I resized the partitions down to where I wanted them on the Hybrid drive, then cloned them to the mSATA. This is where a quirk in the BIOS reared it's head. Basically, you can boot from the mSATA or "notebook drive" which appears on my machine to mean only Bay 2 if the mSATA is installed (or Bay 1 if there is no mSATA). The result was putting the mSATA in and moving the Hybrid drive to Bay 2 and putting the SSD in Bay 1 before I could successfully clone the Hybrid drive to the mSATA and still be able to boot from the Hybrid until I had the mSATA where I wanted it.

This configuration does place the SATA III SSD in the Bay 1 position which is the SATA III bay (yay - I think I answered part of your question here!).

Due to the outrageous pricing HP has for memory and HDD, I would definitely recommend buying your own gear and upgrading yourself if possible. I searched around and got the Bulletproof mSATA drive (SATA II) and a Corsair Force 3 SSD (SATA III) for decent prices (the Momentus XT is a SATA III drive). And yes, before anyone points out "you suk and should have got MegaMan SuperSSD ZZZ! because it's faster" I was going for price/"real world performance", not synthetic benchmark scores.

Ports as identified by HDTune are: mSATA - SATA II, Bay 1 - SATA III, Bay 2, SATA II.

To answer your questions:
1) No idea
2) Yes
3) In my case, II. I think they ship with the Samsung part which is also II
4) No idea
5) I would go with III
6) It could be since in my case I couldn't boot from Bay 1 if I had the mSATA installed. Keep in mind that any SSD is going to be silly fast compared to a normal HDD. In my case, I decided that the cost & flexibility were worth it to get a dedicated 128GB SSD boot drive that, while slower than my main 256GB drive will still allow decent boot speeds. For me, the price jump up to 512GB SSDs was just too ridiculous to contemplate. I tried, but it drove me to drink as even good scotch is cheaper than that price increase.

 

Amazon.com: SwissGear SA9769 Computer Backpack (Black/Light Gray): Electronics

Anyone have this bookbag and use an Envy 17 with it? Just trying to determine if it would fit all the crap I need to put in there as well as the Envy 17....

 

ok. i use the recovery dvds first. install it on a ocz agility 3 120gb. whats about the ahci? i read in the forum in bios their are no possibility to enable them. whats yours drive speed without ahci.

 

HP has AHCI enabled by default...shouldn't be an issue. Once everything is installed, make sure that Intel Rapid Storage Manager is running and you are good to go.

 

ahci is recommended. if you have troubles getting the ssd over ahci, try installing the intel rapid storage technology drivers (the zipped version) using the f6 method with the win dvd after post.

 

So, I'm planning on buying this SSD when my ENVY 17 comes in the mail: Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Couple quick (but stupid) questions... First, I'm planning on sticking it into Drive bay 2..

To get my laptop to boot Windows 7 From that, would I just make the recovery discs and boot from the discs? Do I need to take any precautions as to grabbing any HP ENVY proprietary software (like drivers, beats drivers, etc) from the laptop itself? If so, how would I go about that?

 

30gb is too small for an OS, imo. i would recommend at least 60gb, better 80gb for an OS partition.
you would have to take your time and really relocate everything to other partitions, and even then the capacity would be probably too small.

you have to know that theres really lots of stuff being stored in the /users/<user>/appdata & my documents folders, as well as inside program files, program data and swsetup, and of course, the c:/windows, even if you install games and other apps on other partitions not located on the OS partition.
and this is very likely to reach a total of some 30-70+gb after some months of usage, depending on the number of software youre using.
but if you know the 30gb are enough, you can try it!

regarding your questions - the partition you install windows on will be the one it boots from, it doesnt matter whether its in the primary or secondary bay.
you have all the necessary software and drivers on the recovery disks, but you also should be able to get everything from your notebook's hp support page and/or the HP Drivers and Software Forum.

 

Thanks for the reply, I'm an avid PC user (have been since windows 95), but I've never really had to deal with the recovery side of things.. I know my way around Windows since, well, forever. And I wasn't really even thinking about the size I'd need for the OS.. Cause I was thinking the 17 gigs for the OS and that would be it, but yeah, I forgot all of the appdata stuff. And SSD's anyone would recommend? Something within the 90 dollar top price range? Because I normally have a decent amount of things installed.. While it will be my laptop (me still having a desktop), I plan on having basically everything on there..