*HP Envy 15 (11XX / 12XX series) Owners Lounge!*

Do a clean install; Then:

Try some of these tweaks: My Computer and Windows 7 Optimization Guide: Reduce Windows 7 Boot Time and Shut Down Specifically the 'b' 'c' and 'f' items. Also get rid of any additional services that you don't need.

Try these commands that will overide the critical battery level actions to 'do nothing' which will gain the last 7% of battery life. Note if you disable hibernate (which I recommend with SSD's) then you can lose your unsaved data if the computer shuts down from low battery. http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/453084-envy-15-2nd-gen-benchmarks-47.html#post5943846

Read this guide for tips about clean install and crapware that you don't need: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-hp-laptop-out-box-guide-2-0-windows-7-a.html

Additional tips:

Use IE8 while on battery it's the most energy efficient browser.

Use task manager 'processes' tab to see what is running in backround, your CPU should return to 0% immediately after any task and it should idle at 0% with occasional flicker up to 1 to 3% otherwise you have backround items running and wasting power

Get rid of ALL HP crapware; wireless assistant, Norton, support assistant, all HP media apps, and disable bluetooth if you don't use it etc.

Don't use any gadgets or 'sidebar' apps when on battery.

Install Battery Bar to monitor discharge rates (note it takes several cycles to read accurately). This also let's you easily set what power plan kicks in when unplugged and plugged back in.

Adjust power plan settings for max savings in 'power saver' plan, especially wifi to max savings (unless you have a weak signal). And make sure the ATI display is set for maximum savings on battery.... Note you can also create a custom power plan for different needs, I made a custom plan (from the base power saver one I normally use) that just has the wifi set to max performance for when I am travelling and need better reception, it's easier to just select the custom plan than digging into the advanced power plan settings to just change the one item...

 

Awesome. Thanks for the detailed reply. I think I'll do a clean install next weekend, as I won't have the time to do so until then.

 

By the way, my wireless suddenly disconnected again, and I can only get it back on by restarting. Actually I think it said it couldn't find the wireless adapter or something, I don't remember. This had been happening a week ago, but hasn't happened since then, until now. I haven't done a clean install yet.

 

I had a similar issue.... It has to do with the driver...Either install a newer driver or revert to a older one and it should fix the issue...for me it was the latest lan driver...I would suddenly disconnect from both until a reboot, I reverted the lan driver back one and both were working great again

 

Yeah it has to do with the drivers. I was in this conundrum for a while before I fiddled with the drivers.

Also, this is indeed a sad month for the Envy 15. HP officially confirmed that the Envy 15 is discontinued. No more ATI Radeon 5830's in the wild.

 

It just now means we are an elite core of awesome people

 

Well that sucks. Now if I can't fix my graphics problem I can't just return and reorder... And I don't trust HP's repair people.

 

it just sounds like you have a corrupted driver/software issue eight35pm..... It should be fixed with a reinstall

 

I hope so. I just have to find the time to do a clean install.

 

Hi moviemarketing,

Thanks for the reply. I've run cristaldiskmark and got about 11.500 on 4K read/write. I guess tkat's ok. Uninstaled Norton, also. Played with performance management and power management too. Still, no change in Illustrator performance. I get couple of seconds delay after any action in illustrator. Refresh is horrible. If I maximise illustrator from destop, it takes time to refresh and display tools and everything. But, I guess I'll have to clean install windows.. Btw, gaming is fine.

Howewer another problem with keyboard appeared. When I type at normal speed, letters are displayed as typed backwards. ekil siht (like this) Apart from caps lock key acts on its own, everything else works fine. Please if anyone have this problem, advise.

Thanks moviemarketing and everybody.

 

15.6 inch B156HW01 V.4 is the best you can get online. This type of screen is in fact the optional screen configuration for W510/T510 and it can cover 95% NTSC with LED RG-ph.( Not WLED)

 

I wonder if that makes this piece of hardware more valuable...

 

Is this "free" norton antivirus worth keeping? Or should I purge it and do my usual avast+comodo+malwarebytes suite?

 

its a trial of Norton..... yes I would purge it and install what ever you want except for McAfee....

 

I have a 2nd gen Envy 15 with an Q 720 processor 6 GB of ram the 5830 Graphics card and the 1080 bright screen display. I also have the 3 year accident protection plan with the computer. I'm thinking about downgrading and getting a computer with a little more mobility.

I was just wondering if anyone could give me an estimate of what they think is a fair price for this computer. Thanks

Edit: 500 GB hard drive

 

Which hard drive option do you have?

 

It's a 1 year subscription they charged me $1 for (no option to say "no")

 

Well If your going to be using the free version of avast you might as well keep Norton on their. Norton is one of the better paid anti-viruses

 

Have we written off the Gen3 15 as a future offering?

 

someone should make this a sticky , or put it on the first post

Customizing the HP Envy Quick Launch keys - simonsarris.com

just a suggestion. ive been looking how to fix this anoying buttons for awhile

 

the gen 3's have been a rumor and theres really no hard evidence aside from the ati 5730 being mentioned in a new repair manual

 

If any of you need the slice battery, you can get it for $43 plus tax straight from HP.

Use SVMB39487 to get $25 off of 150 (It counts the before sale price. I tried it out on a Envy 13 battery and it took it down to $35 plus tax lol)

The bad thing is that its out of stock right now, so just keep checking back. 50ish shipped for the slice battery seems like a steal.

Heres a link for it.

Sorry if this is old.

 

So I got L4D2 thanks to the great deal on Steam. I started playing it and I got 30-35 fps on max (2x AA). 50 fps if nothing was going on. Does that sound right?

However, when I had sound on the opening cutscene movie thing, but no sound during the game. I proceeded to check TF2 and have no audio on that either. I have sound on everything outside of games, like on YouTube (although I haven't tried playing a DVD).

I still got 15 fps in TF2, by the way. I also downloaded the MoH beta to see what fps I could get, and I get 25-30 on the default settings, which I believe are all medium.

I'm going to try and do a clean install Friday.

 

make sure you do not have the game muted in the volume panel.... I freaked out on time till I realized I had chrome muted and you-tube wasn't playing audio

 

What do you mean by volume panel? I don't see anywhere where I can mute specific things.

As I was looking around, I noticed that in my Beats audio control panel, there is no "equalization" option under more (where I went to do JJBs tweaks).

Edit: I went to "change system sounds" and two pop-ups appeared say IDT audio enhancements were causing problems. I disabled both and now I have sound when gaming again.

 

well if you double click on the volume icon in the task bar you will bring up a list of master volume and apps that are running that produce sound...from there you can mute specific apps... but hey at least your sounds are working again

 

Aww man it's out of stock!

 

What resolution? Maybe I'll check tonight. I did dl tf2 but forgot to ever play it... Wait a minute... No i won't check tonight (really busy night), maybe I'll check tomorrow though. I can tell you that I get about 25 to 30 fps in mirror's edge max settings and native resolution (too low for my eyes, apparently, so when actually playing I drop down to 1600x900)

 

It doesn't matter what settings and resolution I use in TF2, I get the same fps. Which is odd.

 

But in l4d and l4d2 what native resolution and settings?

I'll check out tf2 as well, but not until at least tomorrow, possibly saturday

 

Oh, 1080p and default settings. Or maybe default was 4x AA. If that was the case I changed it to 2x AA, but the rest was default. The default was mainly high settings I believe.

 

Here is a new and weird issue I have been having... After a hibernation or 2 when I go to play a game i get amazingly low fps in any game.... I have been always fixing doing a reboot... then when it happens like the 10th time i derided maybe my gpu is getting locked at a lower clock rate...I install amd clock tool and press "set default clocks" low and behold it works again....I am just tying to figure out if this is a software (driver) or a hardware issue that is causing my randomly locked clocks on my gpu

 

I had a similar error the other day where after a hibernate (or was it a sleep?) it got locked on full brightness... But I've never reproduced it, and I'm fairly certain it had to do with my computer getting confused about power plans (though the brightness buttons didn't work) because I unplugged either right before it finished sleeping/hibernating or during sleep/hibernate...

 

Just add to the big thread.

Do NOT buy Corsair ram for Envy 15, it will not work. I bought Corsair DDR3 1333 4G CMSO4GX3M1A1333C9 about a week ago. The system boot up just fine, and it even let you re-install Windows 7 without problem. But it will random crash and blue screen after a while.

I end up bought the Samsung ram and it solve the problem.

 

Might have just been a bad stick... You should have memtested it and told us the results...

 

Ran memtest86+ for 1 day and no problem....It just happen it crash in Windows 7 with random blue screen and random blue screen error. Any device driver to memory handling error could happen. I installed the Windows twice and even fresh install Windows 7 give me the same result.

I finally replace it with a Samsung and the notebook magically become very stable.

 

Which Samsung sticks did you get and from what retailer?

 

Search by this code M471B5273BH1-CH9 on google, which is the same ram come with Envy 15 that use 4G ram stick.

 

Try eWiz, I have had very good experience with them and they almost always have the best pricing. They are division of 'Super Talent'.

Also there is no reason to go with 1333 speeds as you have an i5 CPU which will run at max memory speed of 1066 no matter what speed sticks you use, that's the limit of the onboard memory controller (i7's can run at 1333). I have the same sticks mentioned above (1333 x 4GB) and they run at 1066, I only ordered them because they were ~$25 cheaper than 1066 at the time.

Here is a link to the eWiz / SuperBiz samsung 1066 sticks: W1066SB4GS Super Talent DDR3-1066 SODIMM 4GB Samsung Chip Notebook Memory - DDR3 SODIMM 200 Pin - SuperBiiz.com

PS: that is for the 'super talent' stick with the Samsung chips, they are idententical to the Samsung sticks but about $10 cheaper. They also offer the Samsung branded parts, I have one of each stick in the 1333 speed version and they are identical except for the packaging it came in, both have the Samsung labels and P/N on the stcks. Not sure if this is always the case.

 

Your performance sounds about right. Turn off the AA and it'll be a fair bit faster, especially in the fire/smoke areas. A GPU overclock also really helps smooth out L4D2 performance at high resolution. Best thing to do is get the memory as high as possible, as that's what the bottleneck is. The chip clock isn't usually limiting. Most people can hit 1GHz for the RAM pretty easily, and that's an extra 20% memory bandwidth.

 

So that's weird. My performance for L4D2 is fine, but for TF2 is way below average? Could something have gone wrong when installing TF2? BFBC2 has the same problem as TF2. I got L4D2 a couple weeks after those two.

 

I am actually able to get 550/1190 stable. I think this is pretty uncommon though.

EDIT: Well I just tried 545/1200 and that seemed stable aswell. I dont think there would be a noticeable difference between these clocks and the ones I mentioned above, though.

 

Ok I have to say, I didn't think it would be a big deal, but I absolutely HATE not having a backlit keyboard.

 

I actually don't mind at all.

 

Well I just ran FurMark like 4 or 5 times, and with my gpu OCd to 545/1200 I got 1626 the first time, and I think like 20 points more the second time. I then ran a couple stability tests with FurMark, and on the last one the gpu reached an alarming max temp of about 105 celsius after around 10 min, at which point I stopped the program. With the fan running at max speed, however, the gpu dropped 20 degrees literally 5 seconds after I closed FurMark.

 

ok that is weird.. I mean well furmark will run your gpu more stressful then any other app out there it shouldn't get that hot...

 

I ran furmark at standard clocks, 500/800 and got 1146 or something, then I ran it at 550/1000 and got 1375. 3dMark06 at 550/1000 got me about 9176. My maxed out at high 60s.

Edit: And I have the 520m, by the way.

 

Well i dont think the temps were wrong, since they were the same from furmark and gpu-z. I also had a window fan running on high facing the bottom of the laptop, while them laptop was resting on the lid of the screen. Gpu-z also reported that my fan was running at max speed, so idk why i got such high temperatures.

Also, eight35pm, have you tried reaching the clocks I was able to get with my 5830? I dont see why one 5830 wouldnt be able to reach 545/1200 if another one can.

 

I want to use the sound coming out of my Envy as the audio input source for Skype calls and for streaming media over the Internet; kind of like a "What U Hear" feature from Creative X-Fi cards. And I don't really want put a microphone right next to the speakers coz that's kinda ghetto.

I've read that the Stereo Mix in the Recording Devices Properties should be able to do this in Windows 7. However, it shows up as "Currently unavailable" and it's practically useless. I'm not able to get it to receive the sound that I am outputting.



As you can see, I'm using the latest IDT audio drivers from the Envy 15 Driver's thread.

When I set Stereo Mix as the Default Device, nothing happens. No sound gets inputted at all.

How do you make the Stereo Mix available? Is there another way I can input the audio that the sound card is outputting?

 

Just want to know if the fan is defaulted as always on in Envy 15? If not, can somebody advice me how to make it as always on thru BIOS? (pls start from how to get into BIOS)
Many thanks~