*HP HDX 9000 DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 2*

Yes the flames are flowing and HP is the target. This unit is OEM stock DUO T7500 2.2ghz with 4g mem 64bit both vsp1 & win7 hp. The no sound issue is a larger issue I realize this however HP did nothing to help me fix it with in the warranty period so they are a flaming target right now. The sta 9270 sound controller is no longer being made and is not supported for vsp1 or win 7. Have a Dell 9200 and AZrock systems that are 5 plus yrs that are still supported and work fine with win 7. So if there is a process that can be followed to reestablish the sound in vsp1 please share it as I have had no luck doing so.

 

My opinion, in 4GB and with no SSD it do you little benefit.
For the swap file it would be a little too small. (9XX MB)

But if you want here is my recommendation. Please trust 100% and follow my instructions exactly!
If you search the web for RAM disk, it will be a lot. Many things are associated with cost. This program does not.
And it works 100% as it should be. Do not worry, your system stays clean.

1. Please only download from here: GavotteRamDisk! (Other downloads in part, without "Reg File")
2. Extract ZIP to root! Find a place to root out this folder can lie.
3. Install "ram4g.reg! Info: release of the extended address space. It is produced only this Reg value:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RRamdisk\Parameters]
"UsePAE"=dword:00000001

4. HDX reboot! Important!
5. Start Ramdisk.exe "as an admin! Any security warning "ok".
6. In the program window "Install Ramdisk" Run.! (Program settings do not change!)
7. Now Program "OK" to leave!
8. Reboot
9. Done! You now have a new drive to FAT32. Please do not format!

Program settings in the program is "Fixed Media" can be. CHANGE not the size of the RAM disk! Gavotte automatically detects your unusable Ram (from 3070 MB to 4GB)
After each restart of this course is empty, but always present.
No startup precautions necessary.

Info for other users: Under this program does not run 64-bit system without further intervention!

 

Alright. OK, already Beavis ... shekels is probably more better (or am I Beavis?). LOL

 

Search Lounge 1 for sound problem resolution I understand that thorn was successfully pulled from paw (maybe one of our benevolent Elders can snap in a quicklink they have); I use mine nearly all day to stream XM feed and rarely encounter any difficulty (I emphathize with you on this one though). Dells not my favorite because of an A2420 that is pushing my buttons (it came out well after HDX and so close to 7RTM is wasn't even funny and they didn't\won't even make x64 drivers available - you have to cobble together customized bugfixes and patches it's trial and error and error and error ... but I digress. ABSOLUTELY LOVE MY DRAGONs.

 

If I had the expertise and trust in myself to do the 1st and/or 3rd I'd try it, but I don't. I wonder who will try any of these and/or get it working first..?

 

Huh huh he said Beavis.

 

D7 ... outa' bed yet?

 

2.0!! 2.0! 2.0!! 2.0! Go! Fight! Win!

 

This forum and all you together keep me away from selling this laptop.
thanks guys


BTW I was thinking of buying toshiba x505 so I asked for example if someone could paste screenshot from hwmonitor. I've done it twice. No answer.

 

LOL. Yeah, well, I passed the first stage which was to ground the Pin 57. Next stage which requires full disassembly is to jump CPU socket pins VID3 or 4 with VSS to up the voltage by .1 to .2 v, respectively. I'll get around to that as soon as time permits. That's a day's work.

 

The HDX9000 expresscard slot is port1 as confirmed by diag output here. The port layout is as follows:

port1=expresscard slot
port2=mPCIe socket (wifi, original bios had this as whitelisted)
port3=mPCIe socket (second unused slot)
port4=e-sata controller
port5=NIC
port6=??

ICH8M has 6 pci-e ports, so it looks like the bios designer left 6 enabled, even if it's unused.

What does this mean? Having the expresscard and mPCIe as port1+port2 means that you could do a x2 HD5770 or HD6850 desktop DIY ViDock setup. Doing so would mean relocating the wifi to the second mPCIe socket. Better yet, if happy to have a non-functional mPCIe wifi and e-sata while DIY ViDocking, could could run a x2E link. That setup will outperform a MXM 8800GT/FX3700M/GTX280M. Though would be to an external LCD unless someone hacks in a HDMI input to the 20" internal LCD.

Can see an example [email protected]+HD5770@x2E DIY ViDock benchmark results here. It runs faster than the 8800GTS option.

A X9000-3.6+9800GT@x1 HDX9000 DIY ViDock has been successfully implemented here.

Consider the price of a DIY ViDock setup:

- US$143-delivered PE4H x2 kit or US$125-delivered from HIT.
- US$100AR HD5770
- US$30 PSU to drive it

Total= US$255 (lowest). Cheaper if can salvage a PSU
+ external LCD to display to if don't already have one.

Running a HD5770/HD68xx at x2E would outperform the onboard 8800GTS, even a GTX280M in 3dmark06/3dmarkvantage. Can also be reused if you upgrade your system.

 

All in a days work you say ... (snicker).

 

I've just replaced my gpu and mobo and installed the nvidia drivers as told on first page. The gpu is over heating; 90C. Do I have to buy a new heatsink for this as well?

Update: I've run it for 10 minutes now and it stays at 41C. I'm not sure what happened, perhaps the fan did not start. DISREGARD. SOrry I've panicked

 

is this cards fit to dragon?

Wireless INTEL 5300 HALF Mini-PCI Card-N230K
Wireless INTEL 5300 HALF Mini-PCI vPro

 

What's that you say I'll have to hook up to my big screen ... my wife will be so happy to hear this ... what's your address? I can almost guarantee that she'll want to have a thank you gift delivered to you!

UDAMAN, oh wait I already pointed that out; wth UDAMAN!

 

I think you did smth wrong. Maybe didn't put thermal paste in right way.

 

As of now the 8800 is the max nothing else has been possible; see page 1.

 

No; somethins definitely not kosher (am I Jewish today or what) though.

 

Disregard my last message. I'll run tests before posting, sorry.

 

Yes, it works. You can get a bracket that converts the half height wifi cards to full length on ebay or elsewhere so you can screw it down.

 

As we can see I was thinkin about GPU; DOOH!

 

No worries <s>Homer</s> buddy.

 

I refer you to an earlier post.

 

There is a different heat sink that you should use with the nVidia. Since there are twice the ram chips, there is one chip that is completely uncovered, and another one covered by the bulky part of the sink that needs a thicker square of heat sink tape if you're using your ATI heat sink.

 

How do I restore bios from floppy? I,ve done all the steps but the floppy starts for a few seconds thenstops then nothing. My screen is black

 

What size floppy are you using? Use 1.44. Perhaps try it again on another floppy. Make sure you do not transfer any other files or system files to it. All the files must be on the root of the floppy. No directories.

 

Its great that no one has ever mentioned that. I've asked how to do it. What I should know. Talked to people who did it. I hope I did'nt brick the gpu. It doesn't start anymore. I've looked in the manual and there was no part number for the other heatsink. What's the part number? If I've bricked it. I guess it's time to sell this old heap of junk

 

It worked thanks. I'm using the modified bios on my brand new mobo.

 

Ok I hate my life,

Yesterday when I finally fixed the bios mod issue only after my checkdisk on bootup screwed up my system, I had some problems with my system however I dismissed them at the time for something minimal.

Anyways whatever happened during that boot error during checkdisk components on my system just stopped working. First off, probably the most important is my biometric fingerprint scanner doesn't work, I can get the program up and running but rolling my finger does nothing, almost as if it's dead. In addition my "windows updates" fails to load, like I click on it and nothign happens. Similar issue when I try to run services.msc, it won't run unless I have it on standard cuz when I tab the extended I get a script error. Other weird things when I try to right-mouse click "my computer" nothing happens there. running msinfo32.exe reveals that it can't access that information. Just weird things mostly, but that's the kind of stuff I'm dealing with.

So naturally I try to do a system restore but upon rebooting I get another error saying it failed along the lines of it saying error 0x80004321 or something like that I forgot to write it down. I've run a chkdsk again after i hot fixed it, but the cbs log says there were errors it was unable to fix, but since the log is like a thousand pages long, it's just way too complicated for me to fix.

Also, Iono if some of you are familiar with "microsoft fix it center" but since my problem yesterday, that fails to load as well. What I don't get is at least 80% of my computer functions normally, I can surf the web, play games, listen to music, run programs ie: photoshop, office products, everything pretty much functions fine but the biosensor issue really has me worried because I have dozens of pw's on the digital persona which I don't remember from memory, so I don't know how to back it up in the event I attempt to reformat. But I really don't want to do that because I have at least 3 years worth of personalized stuff on there that simply re-installing would actually hurt more than help.

TLDR attempted solutions I've tried.

ran sfc /scannow - no luck
ran chkdsk on boot - no luck
ran recovery disk on boot - some sort of hardware error so it did not initialize
system restore - failed to execute upon reboot (even on safe mode)
with windows 7 cd tried to restore but the disk I have says that it's not the right one, go figure.

What I can conclude at this point is this issue which I'm almost certain is registry related because trying to decipher my cbs log shows that there's a lot of problems regarding wow64 files missing, corrupt, or unable to fix, and all the issue's (minus the fingerprint read) are all windows related, and not with the third party stuff. So something must of happened to my registry where some or lots of registry files got deleted or corrupted beyond repair. Like I said, for the most part my computer runs fine, but these kinds of issues over time, or when school starts back up in January will become very annoying, so if you guys have any ideas, or would like to attempt to read my cbs log I'll be more than happy to upload it later on. Main thing is this though, I really need to gain access to my passwords from the fingerprint sensor software but I can't for the life of me remember the password which was like 3 years old when I first got my laptop, so if you guys know a solution to figuring out or simply just saving the files themselves in case I do have to reformat that would work to. In the meantime I'll be banging my head on this for the next 15 hours....

 

Good news. In other news, I honestly didn't know that the HDX had 2 different heatsinks. I did a swap for a friend who had a HDX 9200 with ATI and it was the same heatsink as the Nvidia one. So I'm thinking that the first run HDXs (HDX 9000) which were ATI only must have had the ATI only heatsink.

The newer Nvidia/ATI heatsink for HDX 9200 and up, is 448176-001.

Might be tricky to find in the UK.

Here is what the proper one looks like: (click image to enlarge - you can make out the part number of 448176)



In the next shot, you can compare it to the one you have now. It's the top one. Bottom one is CPU.

This shot shows with side that mates to the GPU's heatspreader.

 

Unfortunately I was one of the first to buy one in early 2007; therefore ATI sink.

You should put the part number on the first page in case another poor schmuck does what I just did.

 

When I replied "No" to a "new" heatsink I didn't think to verify you already had the "correct" heatsink; it seemed that you were asking was there something wrong with your present one (which if you were using the one for an ... older, as 2.0 has pointed out ... ATI card would be the case). Originally I read you were "replacing" your MB & GPU (didn't understand you meant "upgrading").

I also have the 2nd gen MB with ATI in DRAGONe and Nvidia in DRAGONy - so they didn't look any different to me. If at this stage 2.0 is still acquiring knowledge about these I won't hang myself for not knowing more than he.

 

SKI, I don't recall which version of Windows you are running. But be it Vista or Win7, you can do what is called an upgrade install of the OS. What this will do is reinstall the OS while keeping all of your programs, data, and most of your settings. I had to do this once when Firefox got borked by an experimental add on which in turned borked a number of OS components.

IF you don't have retail install media. let me know and I'll give you the links to D/L install media. It's perfectly legal and are from DigitalRiver.

I just used one of them for my sister's DV7 because she killed the OS doing some crazy optimizations a "friend" told her about.

 

531455-001 NEW HP HDX nVidia Heatsink (Thermal Module)

this is part 531455-001 and it looks different than mine. The adhesive is spread differently as well. Are you sure it's not this part number?

 

So you have a complete backup already, right? Got a second HD you can use to do a complete new install on? Then recover to it.

 

Indeed, added to front page.

Next time you go in, could you take a picture of the ATI heatsink and post it. I'd like to add a link that shows the difference between the two.

 

That's the correct one. Sometimes HP has multiple part numbers for the same part. Usually when they use a new ODM for the part.
That's a good price for it. Vivo tech is a good vendor. I've bought a lot of parts from them.

 

Yea 2.0, my OS is windows x64, so I'll definitely keep your method in mind, in fact I just might have to do that if this keeps up. If you don't mind however, elaborate further on what "retail install media" actually is, I think I know what you're talking about, but lets pretend I'm stupid for a sec and humor .

and dragone,

Yea I did have it backed up on my external but that was before 5 months ago when I parked my car in a rough neighborhood, and some bad men decided to have an early xmas and proceeded to relieve me of that very same hard drive along with my audio system and my car insurance, so in hindsight I haven't had a chance or was just lazy since to back it up :/. But now i know what to ask for xmas this year, thanks hehe....

 

By retail, I mean actual install media. The HP restore discs are not the proper type. Those just re-image your HDD with the original partition.

The retail version can be OEM, Upgrade, D/L'd ISO, or Retail Box version.

The upgrade install method will take about 30-45mins. You can download the retail ISO (which you will have to burn onto a DVD) from Digitalriver or from torrent mirrors.

BTW, is that Vista or Win7 you have there?

 

"The ability to understand and appreciate just how much a mistake has cost you."

Foresight:

"The smarts to prevent needng hindsight."

No truer words ever spoken by a father to his young son.

 

windows 7, sorry... but anyways, yea i get what you're saying now, thanks 2.0

 

OK cool. See towards the bottom of this link under the heading of ISO for the D/L links:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/5437866-post1.html

 

@2.0

What's your pups name?

 

That's the Grinch's old sidekick, Max.

 

Hello again!

Need help with my Dragon... I keep getting blue screens after login.

I browsed through some pages and saw that this has been discussed.. but I'm lost on how to fix it.

Here's what happened:
1. Boot -> Hard Disk activity seen -> click on something -> BSOD
2. Reboot -> HP Logo with white dot streaks -> Start Windows normally -> nothing but black thereafter
3. Reboot -> Safe Mode w/ networking -> things work just fine including internet
4. More tries and maybe the third -> Normal start worked. (as was mentioned by one of the posters here that third time will work)

I decided to reformat the system anyway after backing up my data.
(forgot to back up my Dragon Age saved games... grrrr)

Next was restore to original factory image.
1. Everything smooth - removed bloatware. Just like when it was new.
2. Windows update - reboot - yet another windows update...
3. On the last windows update -> BSOD after reboot. Seemed to b nVidia related.

Same symptoms with white dot streaks on HP logo back again. Back to old problem.

Next... I then decided to finally use my Windows 7 on it.
-> Reformatted and installed Win7 smoothly.
-> Installed nVidia driver (the recommended one in page one)
-> upon reboot, damage HP logo again and SAME problem again....

I'm lost... Do I just go back to factory image and NOT update anymore?

I hope its not due to some BIOS upgrade requirement. I am afraid of bricking or whatnot. My Dragon is the stock HDX9494nr (8800gts) without any mods.

Thanks for any help. I just didn't really get to see if this problem is solved with the other posts that were similar to this case.

Warmest regards!
Teletran

 

Just one more followup question 2.0.

In my previous experience of helping people with windows upgrades, especially windows 7, the program folder usually gets migrated into something called program files(86) old, depending if its x86 or x64, and people usually have to reinstall there programs along with the drivers. Since I would be upgrading over an original copy, will the same thing happen to me?

 

No. The upgrade/repair install method keeps all your files exactly where they are. You just lose some settings you may have customized in the OS.

Here's a very good guide that will walk you through the process:

Repair Install - Windows 7 Forums

Disregard that warning about using an older version of win7 with respect to updates. The only thing that would matter is if you were using a older win7 disc on a machine with win7SP1 (Which isn't out yet.)

 

The issue with the HP logo at boot is troublesome. Might be foretelling that the video card is on its way out.

What BIOS are you running?

 

How long ago did this start? Were there any Windows updates around\preceding the onset?

 

2.0

-> The HP logo.. yes... I originally thought that it may be the video again. But when I did the factory restore, the HP logo was normal. Could it be that the video driver is the one getting corrupted? (for both cases when I restored and when I installed the nVidia driver on the Win7 attempt)

-> BIOS - whichever BIOS it orignally came with.

DRAGONe
-> It was just two days ago. Got a blue screen all of a sudden, and then this happened. I leave my computer running for a good number of days before shutting down. This thing happened after I did shut it down and then booted cold.

It is all pristine good after I did the factory recovery from the recovery partition. Things just go awry after windows update (the third batch of windows update after reboot) and the second time was when I put in nVidia drivers after doing a fresh install of win7.