HP Envy 14 - CPU WHINE POLL

no, it is similar to the noise you might hear from an old CRT tv. it is a high-pitch, low volume electrical circuit noise caused by a low-power state causing unstable power fluctuation on the mainboard.

if you keep the cpu busy (game, infinite loop batch file, etc.) it disappears. but comes back on idle.

i suggest you call that person i mentioned a few posts above and complain. it is likely fixable via bios update, and hp's had this problem in the past with a previous line of laptops, to which they issued a bios fix to take care of it:

High Pitched Noise Emanating from the Notebook PC HP Pavilion dv6313tx Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

this is not a bios for the envy, so pls don't try to install this on your machines...

 

i doubt they replaced the mainboard if they could not reproduce the sound. first time i sent my 1010NR, i got it back with nothing checked off on the repaired/replaced notes. but i was told by 3 different reps that i asked, 3 different things were replaced. in the end the only thing that was replaced was the power brick.
second time i sent it in for this issue, they said they couldn't reproduce the noise, and they replaced an HDD because they said they found a fault in it.

honest, whether i have this issue again with my 1011NR, i will not send this in to HP because i like my laptop clean and free of scratches. HP will more than likely mishandle your notebook because the techs are not educated to the fact that this laptop is all metal, and they don't have plastic phone tools to use in cases where you want to avoid scratching while disassembly.

i took apart this laptop 4 times so far, each time i used plastic pry tools, otherwise it would be all scratched up.

 

okay then I dont have the cpu whine

 

I am so fed up of HP, and will never buy another product from them again!

Heres my story:

-Sent laptop in for repair August 5th
- Supposed to get it back August 10th
-Delay #1 (More like # 3 because of the 2 production delays, but lets not go there right now)
-ETA is now on or before August 17th
-Delay #2
-ETA is now on or before August 24th
-Delay#3
-ETA is now on or before August 31st
-Delay#4

It is now August 31st, and after spending 2 hours on the phone with HP and probably 10 different reps, HP pretty much says too bad. They have given me 2 options:

1. Keep the laptop at the repair center until it gets fixed (they have no idea when it will be fixed)
2.Get it returned, unfixed and get it repaired AFTER the school year

Are you kidding me? I need my laptop for next week because I start College, which is why I sent it in the first week of August to be safe.

I have been asking for my laptop to be returned to me, then have a repair man sent to my house on HP's expense because of these reasons:

-2 Factory delays
-4 repair delays
-Me constantly being lied to about when my laptop would be shipped. I have been promised and assured that my laptop would arrive on each date given to me, which is why I kept it there for so long.

I am so fed up. HP will not give me home repair because I have not paid for it. I SHOULD NOT have to spend 1 more penny on this $1600 laptop that has a factory defect (CPU whine).

I have been told so many things from my ET delivery date, to me having to pay $50 for an in home repair to a Case manager saying they will not offer me in home repair for some reason.

I have had my laptop for 3 days, and after 6 delays (and still counting) I DO NOT have my laptop back yet. After spending $1600 on HP's top of the line laptop, I would expect some CS.

I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER HP PRODUCT EVER AGAIN. This has been the worst experience I have ever had buying a product. HP has done nothing on their part to help me. I have been constantly lied to and have been treated like crap.

I need someone else higher up in the company to talk to. I have plans of getting my local paper (Toronto Sun) involved in this story because they print stuff like this all the time and they always get it resolved.

I am recommending anyone considering an HP product to stay away. I had pretty decent CS from Toshiba.

 

They definitely replaced it-- I had to reactivate windows because "too many components have changed since you first activated your windows license."

 

I decided to go to my local future shop (Canadian best buy basically) and take a look at this computer, as I had heard the Canadian model has the high res screen. Oddly enough, the envy 14 not only had a $150 off sale, but also included a free xbox 360. So I bought one. Take it home, reformat, and notice this irritating high pitched sound coming from the upper right area of the keyboard. Try to block it out, but ya........... not going to work. My wife even asked me what was making the high pitched sound when she came into my office. Looks like a return trip to future shop is in my near future....yay.

I return to the store the next day and talk to the same guy I had originally purchased the laptop from. Explain the issue, do an exchange for the same model. Take it home, turn it on..... oh hi annoying sound! So I do a bit of research and come across this thread. Really makes me a bit sad, because I love everything else about this computer, and hoped I was just extremely unlucky.

I begin my third journey to future shop, and stupidly give this computer another chance. But ya, same sound when I get to the desktop in windows. The third one was actually the worst of the three. Just returned it for a refund this time. I'm pretty sure I just cleaned out future shop's stock of these in my city, but I am SO tempted to try again, lol.

Edit: Has anyone who had the "whine" returned their laptop, and received one that didn't make the noise? I'm thinking it may be like this on all of them, but not everyone is able to hear it, as someone posted previously.

 

i've had 3 envy 17's so far.

the very first one did not make this noise, but there were dead pixels and a faulty optical drive. exchanged.

the second one did have this noise. after 2 service orders with HP, they could not find the problem nor identified this sound. maybe these morons set up shop right on the shoulder of a highway or something, can't afford to make a silent room ... anyway, first service call got the machine back with a new power brick and some marks in the metal bottom covers (scratches, marker, etc). second service call to address same problem AND scratches resulted in them finding something wrong with the hard drives (again, no resolution to the primary complaints).

both 1st and 2nd were the same config (i5).

the third one also has this issue, and it's an i7. this time i am not sending it in to HP, because it is mechanically perfect, no other issues.

i think the customer service department of this company is in for an awakening given this problem and the volume of ppl returning their machines. i've said it before a few times, HP's Q/A just sucks. and you have to go thru 2-3 tiers of support escalation to get attention from someone on this continent.

i posted a phone number here that may be useful to you ...

in addition, i wrote a nastygram email to this representative about my issues and canceled a 3rd service order request. i cc'd the executive HP team (using the email addresses i got from a reply from the acting CEO when i initially contacted about this misery).

essentially, this issue can be fixed via bios update. but they have yet to even realize there is an issue. from my conversations with the accounts manager, if HP sees only a few complaints about it here and there, they will do nothing about it.

 

same config or different ? ...

it looks like windows is also keeping tabs on individual serial numbers if hardware components, not just model #'s. quite disturbing.

still experiencing the noise ?

 

I only get whine when i plug in a USB nano for the mouse. Anything else is silent for example Flash drives = no whine. However, I get the Morse code noise on my 520m. I've already made an RMA but I don't know if I should send it in. Planning to exchange it for a 450m. My last 450m had no Morse code noise but I RMAed it due to poor keyboard.

I did the turning off mic "fix" and the Morse code noise is still there.

Anyone else have this Morse code noise ? I only hear it when i put my ear next to the keyboard, near the Enter key.

 

i tried the mic thing too ... no dice. there is this funky phenomenon where if u pull the array volume all the way to zero (dont mute) ... that had the array picking up my external mouse clicks and echoing the sound thru the speakers. i just mute the array too since i dont use them

as for your wireless mouse, i have a logitech m705 with a compact usb reciever, the reciever lives in the 3.0 port and the mouse is on the right side of the laptop. i wonder if there may be some interference with the wireless module but i doubt because they arent supposed to cross eachothers band of operating freq.

it doesnt disappear either when i pull the reciever and use the trackpad.

as far as i can tell ... the laptop does this straight out of the box as i listened carefully on the last new one i bought. my ssd and mouse arent causing the problem.

 

Hi all,

I also got a new Envy 14. I like the look and build and the spec is great.

However the machine whined like many others. It would do this whenever the CPU was idle.

I'm very touchy about this kind of thing since I'm a professional musician/sound engineer. I took it back to the shop.

I'm glad to tell you that my replacement unit doesn't whine. The sound it makes is pure fan turbulence and some hard drive rattle. If I put my ear right up to the keyboard I can hear some electronic noise inside, but I guess this is normal. Even 10cm away it is masked under the idle fan noise. The previous machine had a high pitched whine that you could clearly hear across a quiet room.

I believe this particular issue is tied to a power saving state of the cpu. The amount of noise the motherboard makes is up to your luck in the great taiwanese lottery for component quality.

I suggest you keep returning your laptops until you get one that's quiet enough for you. This is your right (and duty!) as a customer and sends the kind of a signal that a big company understands. I like this laptop really much but if I hadn't been able to get the whine to go away, it would have been a deal breaker for me.

Both the original and replacement units were i7 on f.06.

Regards,
Vesa

 

Well I just got my laptop back from being in repair for a month. I didn't get it fixed, but Im happy to say the repair people didn't do any more damage to the laptop.

 

my ears are sensetive also, thats why i complain about it because its the kind of sound that lingers even after it stops. i had this on both i5 and i7 envy 17s.

i agree there is a power fluctuation state that some inductor or resistor isnt happy with. i suspect that a bios update will fix, but there may be a hit in some other aspect either battery draw or performance by some small amount. most recent bios release i skipped for mine, until hp specifically addresses this.

maybe your unit has an updated mainboard. i would really really haTe to think that the only way to fix would be to replace the mainboard because hp doesnt handle customers laptops with care.

 

Good news Everyone!


You can fix the whine yourself (maybe).

People over in the hardware forum on have been finding ways to stop the c1state from idling because when it idles SSD performance drops a lot on the hm55/pm55 chipset (envy 14 has hm55)

Might take a bit more work on there parts but they think what they've done to fix the SSD issue might stop the cpu whine as well. Battery life may drop a little bit, but not by too much (JJB's i5 540m still idles at about the same Watts, maybe .2 or so higher after the fixes)

edit: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...can-not-take-full-advantage-fast-ssds-11.html

just so you know. It's not guaranteed to fix it, and it's not been fully checked out yet so I'd wait for 'em to finish it up and JJB to write a fuller guide and stuff.

 

interesting, i happen to stumble upon that thread earlier today and was reading it ...

so what kind of performance degredation with this chipset and ssd's warrants coming up with a fix ? it's obviously not a lot because if it was, either a bios update or firmware update by intel would have resolved ...

 

*shrugs* 4K read and writes were dropping by about 50% or something.

 

My whine was awful. Trying all of the suggestions on the board only made the whine decrease in volume, not go away. I RMA'd it today, within the 21 days. I liked the machine so much that I exchanged it for a new one with identical specs. It won't be shipped till Sept. 20. I'm hoping it will be better, but I insisted on a new 21 day return period just in case.

 

Wait so what does it do exactly? I don't have an SSD, but do I just download the program and test it out?

 

it's not a program.

you're editing your registry and then you're messing with all the unlocked cpu advanced power options to disable one of the cstates (idle states) while still holding on to most of the idle power of your cpu. ...and ya know, also getting rid of the SSD throttling that's happening because of that one/two/whatever cstates that were screwing up SSD speeds.


If you want you can try it out. It may work (or your whine may be from something else on the motherboard altogether)

 

also before you do things bacchus.

backup your registry.

read through the topic starting at page 7ish (well 7 if you go 30 posts a page)

note that later on someone figured out how to create new powerplan entries in windows. follow those instructions so you don't screw up your basic balanced/ hp recommended power plan (and instead make a new fourth/fifth/whatever one)

also also: it's unknown territory and could shorten the life of your laptop maybe (nobody really knows, uncharted territory, yay)

 

oh is this what you are talking about (from your link)?

Guide SSD Tweak Utility

It looks like a program, but if this is not it, could youpost a direct link to the correct post?

Thanks!

I've looked around the 210th post, but could not find anything about editing the registry

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...ts-can-not-take-full-advantage-fast-ssds.html

this thread. Start at like post 299 to 300ish.


301 has jjb part 1.

farther along has jjb part 2.

300 has part of jjb part 2 from someone else.

other stuff was talked about in there including some other method that uninstalls your cpu drivers ('course this is probably SSD stuff only and won't affect the whine)

etc and so forth.

 

No dice for me, whine is still there.. as well as louder fan noise

 

then undo it.

it was just a crapshoot to see if messing with some of that stuff could kill the whine.


oh well.

 

I did get my whine off, but immediately the fan ramped up and after a few minutes it was higher than it'd ever been before.

The only adjustment that did anything was to entirely disable power saving states, which unfortunately causes a ton of heat, would probably reduce battery life in half or more and causes the fan to rev up to intolerable strength.

Still no dice

 

i have an envy 17, but same noise issue. for about 2 weeks now the machine's been sailing without making this noise except for an occassional appearance (regardless of power plan and usage) ... not sure if the latest envy 17 bios could have addressed this, but still waiting for a bios update to specifically address this.

 

huh.

I know one of the options disables all the idle states. But there should be a way to only disable stuff slightly without sucking up too much more power.


take a look at it again in a week or two after they have more info. Also post in the topic and ask for help or something.

 

The serviceguy told me they found the issue regarding my laptops whine... It's in the powerunit he said.

 

can you be more specific ? the power brick ? if so, that won't fix anything because mine's been replaced. i noticed that the sound makes an appearance when i plug something into usb ... could anyone confirm by plugging something in to usb to check ? i mostly use the usb ports on the left.

 

Its because they didn't give you a fixed one.

 

Some people have been saying that in the owner's thread for a long time and also saying the whine occurs with bluetooth on. However, my CPU whines regardless of anything plugged into USB or bluetooth on/off.

 

hopefully, people are hammering the phone number i posted a while back, with enough ppl complaining about it, they can issue a fix.

 

uhm. so what can i do as a pseudo fix for my cpu whine when i plug in my usb mouse?

and should i worry about my power brick whining? cause it does...

 

post # 11 is your pseudo-fix ...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...blem-high-pitch-sound-source-confirmed-2.html

 

thanks, i will try that in a bit!

 

This fix is not a definitive one. Do you know if HP will release a solution eventually ? I'm RMAing my Envy 14...

 

dont do that ... they might scratch your machine as they did mine. they will also claim they cannot find the problem. so you will be without your computer for a week.

i recommend you call the number i posted and ask a manager if hp will address this. i can post some executive email addresses in the case you wish to write a nastygram to them about it. at some point executives will get pissed they have to deal with a product problem ... in which case something may come out of it that will resolve ....

 

I have a Envy 14, bought it at Futureshop 23 days ago and just today the hissing sound started. It'S quite loud, you can hear it standing 10 feets from the laptop! What you guys recommend I should do? Return it to Futureshop, RMA to HP ? or just wait for a fix ?

Thanks!

 

return and get a different one assuming futureshop will let you do that.

 

I am posting here to say CPU whine is not unique to your laptops. I get it on my N61JQ in my sig, although not all the time. I have done a lot of research in to this and found out the issue mainly appears when web browsing in safari, firefox and google chrome. It also appears in powerdvd and specifically iTunes.

Now what I did find was that the programs in windows are not such a big issue as they are for playing media. However the one that really bugged me was web browsing, which I do a lot! I found out that it is to do with flash, and only flash. Basically the above mentioned browsers run flash in a seperate process in order to prevent crashing. What this is doing is forcing the cpu in to a low power state and thus causing the annoying cpu whine.

With Safari and Google Chrome, it is impossible to prevent flash running in a seperate process as the is no way to access the config files due to their primarily closed nature. However firefox is very much open source and thus there is a solution! All you need to do is the following:

In the firefox address bar type about:config and press enter
Then paste dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll
Double click it so it says false.
On restart you will no longer have any more cpu while browsing in firefox.

Note, IE does not suffer this issue but then it is a very basic browser and very unsafe for surfing the net due to its tight intergration with the OS

If anyone can figure a way to stop this problem in google chrome, then let me know! All I can say is the biggest issue is flash.

 

how did you find that it's flash causing this ? how about itunes, it uses quicktime ...
i am browsing right now with firefox and a usb receiver for my mouse and the sound is not there. it tends to make arbitrary appearances here and there, but mostly when i plug something else into a usb port.

have you experienced this issue with browsers shut down and something plugged into usb ?

 

I figured it was flash as when I close firefox / google chrome / safari the noise is gone and it only appears when I run flash ( youtube etc )

 

yea, i still feel it's a candidate for bios fix ... but it seems despite my best efforts hp has been slow to pick up on the matter.

hopefully a fix will come out for your laptop as well ...

 

have a 520 - and I have the whine. However, it's much fainter now that I've used the Firefox tweak in this thread and that ssd performance tweak in the other thread. I have to get my head within inches of the right fan in order for it to bother me.

 

yea, i still feel it's a candidate for bios fix ... but it seems despite my best efforts hp has been slow to pick up on the matter.

hopefully a fix will come out for your laptop as well ...

 

Some progress with regards the cpu whine. I have found a registry tweak that enables a hidden feature in the power options. I think it actually prevents the cpu from entering C4 state by the description. You will use more battery power with this enable, and considering I get just over 2 hours max on mine I have decided not to use it. However for people with higher capcity batteries this may be ok for you. I checked the drain in Everest and with it enabled I went from 22000 MW to 30000MW with this tweak.

Anyway to enable it navigate to this key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\447235c7-6a8d-4cc0-8e24-9eaf70b96e2b

Then in the right hand box on attributes set it to 0

Now navigated back to power options and processor. Look for the new parked cores option and it should say no preference. From here choose the lightest state option. It won't get rid of the noise totally but it will lower it considerably at the cost of a little battery life.

I will do some testing over the next few days, as I feel one of these options is the key to stopping the cpu whine without costing battery life. Watch this space!

 

interesting find ... has your fan spooled up faster/more often ?
different laptops do have different hardware, hopefully this reg edit will unlock the same modes you've seen on your machine ....

i'll try it out and see what happens. if it doesnt work out, i'll change the value back.

EDIT: i've made the change and it doesn't seem to make a difference when i have something plugged in via usb. since there is an additional power state to choose from now, i'll probably mess with it a bit, but what performance effects does this have on the CPU ?

 

this registry change increases cpu load, the fan runs a little harder and more often. i went back to the original '0' setting ... things cooled down a little.

 

blah, nevermind!

 

POSSIBLE FIX FOR CPU WHINE

I have come up with a tweak that improves the poor SSD (4K) read write speeds in most new notebooks. As a byproduct of this tweak it appears that it also resovles the CPU whine issue in most cases with little to no impact on temps or battery life.

Here is a link to the thread with the tweaks: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-intel-series-4-5-965-chipsets-jjb-tweak.html

Hope it helps, I would have posted sooner but was unaware of this thread until it came up today on the envy 14 owners lounge.....