*HP HDX 9000 DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 2*

WOW .. how fortuitous; I don't just believe in Karma - I have black & white proof.

 

Thank you 2.0! $275 is gonna be steep though... do you think the reheating of the GPU might do the trick? (the trick that revives those nVidia 6200s?)

I did not overclock my card. I used everything as stock with no tweaks.

While it still has signs of life, I am hoping that the reheating would solve it. I won't be putting it to any heavy duty work after that I guess.

(My Toshiba Tecra M4 had the nVidia chip that was reheated.. it worked for a month but after my kid played games on it for over an hour.. it conked out again)

 

Newbies: Read CompTrekkie notes before installing Win 7. Driver load sequence and other items are of critical importance. The items are well documented via the links on page one of this forum. If you don't read those notes, you will not have total Win 7 success. For example, the fingerprint reader that just about drove me nuts will not work unless you read those load instructions.

In my home personal printed notes, I see that when loading a clean copy of Win 7 64 bit , I load the chipset software first, reboot, then I load the TV Tuner (SP38987) second using compatibilty Vista SP1. Then I load ALL the other drivers in a definite sequence. I definitely do not try and fire up the win media player to see if the TV tuner is working until I have all other drivers loaded and have let windows update all the outdated drivers. The windows update has to run about three times to get everything updated.

I will also say that I load a purchased copy of PowerDVD9 to get my HD blu ray movies to play and that I use Win Media player to fire up PowerDVD, not the quicktouch keys. I don't load the quicktouch driver. Per Dominic, you need 8GB of RAM for the on screen display functions to operate properly.

The trick to keeping the eject button working is to not let Windows load the optional Quicklaunch update. There is a security risk associated with not loading the update, so you must decide if it's worth the risk to have the eject button functionality.

I've had no tuner or eject problems with Intel and Vertex SSD's using the above notes.

 

Reheat may or may not work and will likely have the issue your Tecra had (work for a while and then fail). Someone in the old thread tried the reheat and it didn't work. Though I don't recall the exact method they used.

In any event, nothing beats a failure like a try.

 

Gonna cross my fingers for this... if the reheat fails.. I'm $30 poorer for nothing. But $275 is just out of my budget for now..... or else... it's goodbye DSi XL for my kid.

 

Awesome, thanks 2.0.

 

mike t

Out of curiosity, if you do an in place upgrade of Vista to 7 does this eliminate the need for worrying about the sequence of driver installs?

Almost bought a copy of Win 7 Ultimate on ebay, then got cold feet. Apparently seller ratings can be inflated or falsified.

Expensive software, Windows 7 Ultimate.

MobileArtist

 

No it won't matter if you do an in place upgrade. In fact, if you do, the installer will tell you to uninstall a few incompatible drivers/software before proceeding. I don't recall exactly which drivers it was though. I think iTunes might come up in the incompatible or needs to be uninstalled list.

 

I originally upgraded from Vista to 7 and all worked smoothly and flawlessly. There was no need to reinstall any of the drivers. I did not notice any issues. The only difference was once I did a fresh install of Win 7 I noticed the computer was a bit more responsive and booted faster. But all-in-all it was the only Windows upgrade that I would recommend.

 

Thanks, guys.

There are a few on the forum who did an in place upgrade, and apparently on a clean system the differences between doing so and a fresh install seem minimal or non-existent. The advantage seems to be that everything works with the exception of Quickplay, which needs to be run in Vista Compatibility mode.

The reason I need Ultimate rather than Professional is that for an in place upgrade to work you need to go from Vista Ultimate to 7 Ultimate. Still...an expensive piece of software.

They should have a Vista Amnesty Program.

MA

 

off topic i know, but, it sucks that HP killed this unique laptop. with todays new processors and the upcoming integrated GPUs on a chip programs, you would think this niche market would come back. i would love to see another 20in HP laptop just like this, but with a backlit keyboard, and maybe a touchscreen. but those options would probably eclipse the prices the HDX Dragon had in its prime. oh well, can dream, cant i?

 

You are right, the sound, the sound is amazingggggg!!!

 

I NEED HELP PLEASE!!! GPU maybe dying

Hi everybody, I am having a very bad problem, right now I am writing on a small display attached to my dragon because I cannot have any image on the dragon display. This is what happened: I was playing a game, the image went corruptes: froze, blue screen that said "wait memory dump..." I waited, everything seemed fine.
The HDX. Didn't feel overheated so I started playing again. After a while same thing happened. restarted the PC and everything "sounded" fine, but I had no image. I connected this externl monitor and by pressing "fn/F4" I managed to get an image on this one but very corrupted. So I went to openNvidia control center but would not open a message appeared: "you are not currently using a display attached to an nvidia gpu". I did a system restore but the situation did not change the image I can only get is a corrupted one on an external monitor. I even reinstalled an older nvidia driver, but nothing. Same thing. Device manager reports a yellow triangle next to the garphic card that says "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)". My guess is that the video card is gone. (I am now writing on this small corrupted screen, but the sound is there and everything else seems to work)

But why can't I have any image on the laptop screen?.

Underneath, on the sticker, it says it's a HDX9200

At the moment I am in Italy. What should I do?

1) It can't be software right?

2) So where do I get a gpu that is shipped over here?

3) On page 1 our friend 2.0 says I have to reflash the BIOS after I am done, never done that, how is that done?

4) IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN TRY BEFORE I THROW THIS GPU IN THE GARBAGE?

5) I can only get yhis corrupted image on an external screen, is that normal, does it mean the screen has a problem too?

 

Unfortunately, your video card is dead. The only thing you can do is to replace it. Give HP a call and see if they can ship one to Italy.

Part number is: 454311-001

To reflash the BIOS, you simply run BIOS file which you download from HP.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...0&product=3695156&sw_lang=&key=null&site=null

 

Just finished tearing open my 'A' machine, cleaning the fans and swapping out the X7900 for an X9000 (no, it's not available. It's going in the 'B' machine). Man, the fan for the CPU heat sink looked like a dryer lint catcher!! I would recommend that anyone buying one clean it immediately. It's running much quieter now.

Next weekend, I finally get to the 'B' machine. I'm going to swap in the x7900 after a thorough cleaning, bake the ATI video card, and put fresh OCZ freeze on everything. I noticed that the GPU was running very hot when I was using this machine today, as in, I could feel warmth when typing. Maybe the HP heat sink paste is degrading, and that could be what makes the GPU cards fail. Maybe they just burn up, or the solder is overstressed.

BK - Sorry, it does sound like your GPU fried. I have no idea how to get one to Italy. You might try to get in touch with HP.

 

Thanks I'll do that, hopefully there are no other problems, I was not planning to spend that kind of meney like that right now The screen should be fine right? Even if I can only use an external one?

 

Yes. That you have a fuzzy picture on external shows that it's just the video card that's the problem.

And I think Kohai is right about the HP thermal paste deteriorates over time and leads to these cards dying, Therefore, I would recommend using a better thermal paste like Arctic Silver, Arctic Ceramique or IC diamond.

 

I reinstalled windows 7 ultimate 64 bit and the driver version for the Marvell Yukon Gigabit controller 88e8055 is 11.22.3.9....If you log on to the Marvel site the latest version is 11.28.6.3. Has any one downloaded this driver version. To install the latest driver, uninstall the current version reboot and install the new version?

Best Jesse

 

I supposed those are all versions of the same driver and the one above is the right one (sorry I can't read the screen too well right now) ... Funny that I have to use a cheesy external monitor: The Dragon screen REFUSES to put out an image like this. He's on strike until after surgery.

Out of curiosity how the hack am I going to run a bios flash if I don't see poop on the monitor? Oh, well I guess I'll see something...

Thanks again

 

Cant seem to find the 2 base system device drivers for windows 7 64 bit..Model number HDX9000T.

Best Jesse

 

No using the default win 7 driver, 11.22.3.9. No issues with it. But to install the new driver, just install over the old. You won't need to uninstall first. If you uninstalled it and rebooted, it will simply put it back. If you want to uninstall it, you have to do it from device manager and make sure you check the delete driver check box.

To find out what they are, go into device manager, right click them, hit properties. Then hit the details tab. Then in the drop down box, select hardware ID. Post what it says.

You'll be able to see when you install a new video card. That's when you will reflash.

 

Also don't forget that you cannot mix code architectures; you can't upgrade from V (any version) 32 bit to 7 (any version) 64 bit, nor can you use a 7 (any version) 32 bit upgrade from V 64 bit (any version).

That was prior to SSD upgrade, correct?

 

Right. I know, but thanks for pointing it out.

Need to go from Vista Ultimate 64 to Win 7 Ultimate 64.

MA

 

hey 2.0, thanks for the help so far. Under device manager they show up under "other devices". The first base system device's hardware I.D is PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_0592&SUBSYS_30D4103C&REV_12

The second base system device's I.D is PCI\VEN_1180&DEV_0843&SUBSYS_30D4103C&REV_12

The reason for updating my Marvell controller is to improve jitter and or ping.

best Jesse

 

Ricoh SD card driver. Win7 should be able to find the driver by clicking update driver in device manager. Otherwise it's SP45112. You can find a link to HP's SoftPaq FTP catalog in page 1 of this thread.

 

Thank you..did the trick

Up 120 ticks today, just another day at the office..

Best Jesse

 

Nicely done.

 

It has become apparent that my question was far too general in nature.

Whether the controller is JMicron, Samsung, Intel, Indilinx (Sanitary Erase) or SandForce (Secure Erase) is the priority - my focus was on the latest OCZ drives w/SandForce.

The only possibilities involve workarounds.

OCZ SSD Cleanse

 

I have decided to take my stab at the GTX 280m. I am at a fork in the road with My HDX. It is a great and fast beast but the GPU (even OC’d) is just not keeping up with the new games as well anymore. The OC’d CPU really helps to carry some of the burden. I have tested some of my games without the OC and they fall to unplayable conditions (without cutting back on the graphics settings considerably). I either have to get a new GPU or get a new Lappy. The GTX 280m is about $600 but that is still much cheaper than what it would cost me to get a new rig that compares to the my Dragon with a new GPU (around $4000) and none with a 20.1” screen. Of course for $4000 I would have a much more powerful system but no 20.1” screen. Eventually this will have to happen but for now $600 for at least 2 more years of gaming is good for me. If I can get the GTX 280m to work then I can see at least 2 more good years with the dragon.

I have struck a deal with Kris over at MXM-upgrade.com. I will send him a 50% deposit now to see if it works and write up a good review for his site (and of course here as well). If all goes well I send him the rest of the cash and I am sure a few new customers. If not I send it back and he gives me a refund. A good deal for all involved. I am hoping because these are Clevo based I will not run into the issue 2.0 did. This is based on the success of zipek_dg having used a pull from a Celvo. Of course I do not know for certain that his info is accurate but it is worth a try considering the awesome deal that Kris has offered. I am hoping the only issue with zipek_dg’s setup was cooling, because I can easily modify the heat spreader to properly contact the GPU.

I will keep everyone here posted as this process moves along. Hopefully this will answer once and for all if it is possible. If it can be done I will figure it out, if not then c'est la vie.

 

The local store only has a "Revoltec" silver based paste
a Spire paste
and a Deko paste
know anything about these brabds? Otherwise I'll just go downtown

 

Space... the Final Frontier.

These are the voyages of the starship DRAGON

Its TWO-year mission: ...

... to explore strange new worlds; ...

... to seek out new life ...

... and new civilizations; ...

... to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Cue music; show graphic of laptop zooming across screen with continents passing beneath.

My work here is done - BRAVO Live long and prosper Captain CompTrekkie!

 

Only know of the Revoltec Thermal Freeze. Can't recommend it because it flows too easily and isn't very good thermally.

If you need another name, see if you can find Tuniq TX-2 or TX-3.

Vaya con Dios, mi hermano. Vaya con Dios.

*Solemn bow*

 

I believe the Borg have also done the upgrade, but it's hard to get reliable information out of them.

Bravo!

MobileArtist

 

Thanks, guess I'll drive to Rome downtown then (want a colosseo hashtray for that big cigar?)

 

Today I did a triple surgical operation on my laptops I started with heart-transplant by putting X9000 (bought on an auction for around $250, not an ES) into my beloved Dragon 9494NR (T8100 stays as a spare). Then I have exchanged RAM with my aging HP 8510p to have 8GB in Dragon.
At the same time I was upgrading my just-acquired HP ENVY 17" to 8GB of RAM and exchanging the 2nd drive to WD10TPVT: 1TB, 12.5mm drive (yes, this drive fits ENVY). After finishing Dragon's processor upgrade I decided to check for you, if there is any chance of fitting 12.5mm drive in the Dragon. Result was easy to predict: there is ABSOLUTELY NO chance to fit it without modding the case. The bay is just not deep enough. The connectors on the drive are too high to match the mainboard SATA ports.
There is possibility of cutting a hole in the bottom part of the bay but I would not recommend it: 2 plate hard drives are already reaching 750GB and the possible side effects (less sturdy bottom of the laptop and risk of exposing of the mainboard and possible shorting of some circuits on it) make this not so interesting solution.

PS: Keeping my fingers crossed for CompTrekkie's trip to the Unknown Grounds, Mordor, Twilight Zone, Sector Gamma... you name it

 

Captain the strangest thing happened!!

Now the dragon is apparently working again.

How is that possible? What shold I do? Well I ordered from HP another graphic card, which maybe I'll be able to sell if I see that I don't need it anymore... But what about this one? Two days ago it was dead, yesterday again it was dead, and only gave a distorted image on an external monitor, today I turn it on after having done nothing at all... The only possible cause is the heat? But as I said when it "broke" the PC didn't feel particularly warm... But in fact it broke while playing a game.
The only change I can think of from yestardey to today is the external temp, the other day was kind of warm dry, today a little rain...

Any suggestions\ideas?

Anything I could do to prevent future troubles? Any opinions?

Should I go for a torture test or just wait...?

The graphic card right not is at 45° while I am just running windows and firefox it jumps to 52° if I start skype too (normal?) didn't dare trying games...

 

Sounds like an internal 'short'---a motherboard problem---because if the card were dead, it would almost definitely stay dead. But best not to make a diagnosis at this point unless you or other professional can do all the fun tests.

YOU ARE AWESOME !!

You are absolutely right about the gaming situation because I've tried several 2009-2010 sorts on an HDX18 w/9600m @1080p and they run very well (dao, sc2). The world economy has influenced the rate of upgrades demand....so you will probably be well ahead of it with a 280m/x9000/8GB/SSD/Dragon hypercraft. (enter Plasma Breather!!)

and I am very jealous I have not been able to do this!

 

ehm...What about making a diagnosis BEFORE the patient dies? Anything I can do then?

 

You're experiencing first/early stage of video card death. It's good that you got another card.

 

Alright, in fact I wasn't planning about canceling the transaction with HP... But about the test? In fact he short theory is not that absurd, since today I did notice that the power supply here is not properly grounded and kind of defective since at one point made a small sparkle with no apparent reason (the plug was correctly inserted).

1) What are these tests I can make?

2) If it doesn't die (any time soon) shoud I go on with the surgery, and put anyway the arctic silver? (which I have ordered as well)

Thanks

 

You're right! Preventative care is best, so if you could borrow another's gpu to deduce that is not the issue. But now you have a fresh card, so that'll do as well.

Though your computer works now, I assume, the two symptoms were very serious. If you don't know how to test your card or motherboard away from each other, then I'd find someone who can.

2.0 trusts the new card will do the trick, and to your benefit I hope the same since obviously something is not quite right even if it is now working.

 

Thanks, you guys are always very kind, I wonder if there is a test I can make right now that everything seems fine to figure out if one of the two has a problem or if unfortunately I have to wait until the dragon is agonizing again. If I go on and open the machine could I find any clue by just looking at things?

 

Are their settings in the Marvel gigabit controller to optimize your ping?

 

I highly doubt it except for if the cable isn't quite connected or you can see metallic particles lying around on the circuit board. Analyzing the microcircuitry with a meter would probably just give you a headache, and even then replacing whatever is fidgety is dangerous to the entire board. Motherboard problems equal replacement probably 99.9+% of the time.

Did you recently open up and or vacuum your dragon's interior? This could have created the disturbance

2.0, I'm curious as to why you think output to external display is any different from internal display. The gpu must still be commanded by the mobo via an orchestration from the components (cpu, etc). An output port is just a manipulation of the original signal.

 

I fixed an HDX with this issue last year. Thought it was the backlight so I shone a torch on the screen at a 45 degree angle. Ordinarily you can faintly see if the display is on using this method. Plugged it into external via VGA and the display was fuzzy. HDMI had blocks and odd jumbling of graphics.

Broke the rig down to see if the RAM had proper heat sinking. There's no way to monitor the RAM temps on these boards since there's no sensor. Turns out two of the RAM chips didn't have proper contact with the sponge-like heat transfer material. Put it back together and it worked... for a bit. Then randomly would have issues from failed boots, to lockups, to driver crashes, to black screens, to fuzzy external. Then one day (2weeks later, that is), it just died altogether.

Fix: new video card.

 

It's really an impressive beast when it comes to data crunching (4 cores and 4 extra hyperthreading cores) and GPU (ATI/AMD 5850). Full metal construction makes is as strong as MacBook Pro 17". But the size (17,3") and weight (around 4kg) makes it a "perfect" composition of all the worst from the smaller laptops and our beloved Dragon:
- It's not so mobile (like Dragon)
- It has this awful shiny screen (I really prefer matte screens for my work, like I have in 8510p)
- It is loud compared to Dragon (sometimes as loud as 8510p) and also gets warm. All due to just one, small vent.
- It has slightly awkward keyboard layout (f-keys and direction keys)
- Odd trackpad, where buttons are also covered with active part for moving the mouse cursor - leads to some manipulation problems, you have to get used to it
- Screen is only 1920x1080 (those extra 120 pixels really make difference for me compared with Dragon)
- Only 2h on standard battery (like Dragon - my 8510p with 2 batteries give me 8h, MPB 17" can also reach 8h).
And last but not least: It's hard to find a good backpack for it

But all this is not so important, when you take into account CPU, GPU, backlit keyboard with numpad and the metal construction.

So far it seems I'm switching to Envy as my main workhorse, 8510p goes back to HP service for some repairs (broken power supply, broken keyboard, broken USB port, problems with overheating - geez, what happened with this HP quality... I liked my old nc6000 so much...). But Dragon, my diamond in the crown stays where it was: as main multimedia station and video-editing hardware. Now with x9000

 

I cleaned the fans back in June, because it was overheating. At the time it just turned itself off every once in a while. That was also the reason I tended to believe it was the graphic card which had suffered from that. But you are right the MOBO could heve been the cause of this. Although I am not sure whether a defective wall plug could manage to shock a laptot through the power brick and all... Or maybe there is some loose part inside that is creating problems.

Anyway now everything looks fine, I guess I'll keep the spare graphic card just to make sure, an maybe sell it next year if I get no problems anymore.

What's the matter with the Nvidia people? We are not supported anymore? The Nvidia site only offers an old 179.48 (beta!) for 8800M GTS cards? What's the best driver so far? (due to my trouble I need to reinstall drivers)

*Sorry I just noticed 2.0 mentions 197.45 in the opening post

FAILED TO INSTALL THE DRIVERS ON PAGE 1

Windows Vista and Windows 7 x64 (64-bit) - http://download.windowsupdate.com/ms...387a79bd62.cab

Once I downloaded and unrar I deleted the file nv_disp.inf (there is no nvdisp.inf !!), then by starting setup.exe I got the message:
"Nvidia cannot locate any drivers compatible with your hardware"

I just wanted to point that out. Guess I am going back to an older one.

 

Delete the nv_disp.cat file also. There's no reason it shouldn't install unless there's someihing wrong with the gpu.

 

I'm trying to fit a 1TB drive (WD Scorpio) into my Dragon. It would fit if one could find a SATA to SATA cable to allow it to plug in properly.

Any ideas ?