*HP HDX 9000 DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 2*

I remember who it was that recommended them to me! It was 2.0.

Three of us now.

[L]

 

A+ for rocketfish. been busy, chaps.must post more often.

 

true it did. nice halloweeen face. i need to update mine too....

 

Yeah, most of the mods are sporting a Halloween get up. Even our user names are orange.

 

I guess it'd be too cheap a shot to make a comment that your picture looks like a halloween face? Trick or Treat!!!!

Anyways, a good external 2.5" eSATA enclosure that can actually use the power-over-esata in one cable is here . They go out of stock quickly, so set an alert to be notified, but they DO come back in stock. They're cheap, relatively nice build (not as nice as Rocketfish), but the best things is power and eSATA in ONE cable (included with case, even!).

EDIT: It's been a long time since I had my HDX 9000...but, does it have a combo eSATA or just normal eSATA? If the latter, then forget this post!

 

i doubt it supports power over esata. it was not very detailed in how it does this.

what's worse is that it only supports up to 500gb drives. no one is going to have that so it's old school. nice try though.

 

I bet you it does support eSATA: I heard of a few devices that do it. They manage to achieve that by using those plugs that are both eSATA and USB, they basically manage to combine the two.

 

So how many people have tried 25x.xx series and higher nvidia drivers? Every one I've tried locks up my machine...usually while browsing. Doesn't matter which browser I use. A select few have locked up/crashed doing other things as well. ANY IDEAS what could be the root cause of this? Some of them actually seem pretty nice until they fail.

 

Not sure why they spec that. I have 640GB drives in them now, and I suppose that 750GB would work, too. Anything, larger, though, would not because a 12.5mm drive probably is too thick.

It could possibly be the power requirements of the larger drives may be too large for some computers combo ports to supply adequate power. That, of course, depends on the particular model drive. My Samsung 640GB 5400RPM works fine.

I'm not familiar with any limitations where an esata chipset only supports up to 500GB, so my guess is it's because of power. But, like I said, a 640GB is working fine.

 

HDX doesn't have the esata/usb combo port. That started on Montevina platform notebooks like the DV5/5/7 and HDX 16/18.

On Rocketfish enclosures and 500 GB limit printed on the box/literature... that was simply because that was the highest capacity available at the time. There is no capacity limit with the chipset. Only a compatibility limit of SATA I/II. Nor is there an electrical limit because HDDS are made to conform to an electrical requirement of the SATA interface which is lower than the output of the USB 500ma max.

 

Nope, stuck with the 197.45 you recommended back when.

 

Except that there are plenty of 2.5" HDD's and/or notebook USB ports that definitely DO NOT have enough current to power the drive, requiring a second cable to another USB port in order to supply enough power. Typical symptoms are where the drive doesn't actually spin up...instead, it powers on, but just either clicks, or starts to spin up, then stops, and repeats that cycle. Adding a power cable from a 2nd USB port to supplant the 1st supplies enough current and powers the drive.

Because a combo USB/eSATA cable draws it's power from a single USB port, I concluded the same power problem with the bigger/greater spindle drives could have a problem with single USB port power draw.

What do I know, though...I try to leave the engineering to the high-paid professionals!

 

Yeah a number of notebooks, especially newer ones, only have one fully powered USB port. And they don't label which one unfortunately. I know Dell has been notorious for this for years. Even my old Inspiron 8100/8200 had this problem with only the bottom USB port was fully powered.

 

Hello all..... Long time since I last asked a question so here goes again...

I have a dragon with the following:
1920 x 1280 resolution screen.
extreme 7900 processor
8GB Gskill ram
and the rest is the std fare.

I just bought a Kingston 128GB SSD drive to replace one of my 120GB drives. I have windows 7 but never felt as if I got all the drivers right as my finger print reader and blu-ray don't work.... Sooooo, My question becomes, is it easier to just put the new SSD drive in and do a fresh install or should I clone? the drive and reload all the drivers....? I would like to start from scratch as I really have no significant data or programs on the computer that I can't easily replace.
Thanks for any help and if anyone lives near plainfield,IL and wants to make a few bucks doing all the work, even better!!!!
Thanks for any advice/help.....

Tony................

 

I'd recommend starting from scratch for at least two reasons--first, is that SSD partitions need to be aligned, and the easiest way to do that is automatically with a Windows 7 installation. It can be done during a cloning process, but it's not as straightforward as just doing a clean Windows install. Second reason is, who knows what "baggage" you have in your current installation. "Spring cleaning" is always a good thing to do...it weeds out unused software and allows you to install using the latest drivers, etc.

Yes, it's more work, but in the end, a new install will reward you with a fast, stable Windows 7 machine!

Good luck!

 

Exactly what I wanted to hear...
Now if anybody near Plainfield is available, even better....
Tony............

 

Wait a minute.... I was just about to get started but I pulled out my W7 disk and its the upgrade from Vista version... I guess I have to reinstall Vista first then upgrade with my w7 disk... Or go buy a fresh w7 version...
Anyone else do this?

Tony..........

 

You can use that disk. Simply install it twice.

See tutorial here: Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version - Windows 7 Forums

 

You guys are great... I'll let ya know how it turns out...
Tony......

 

So Far, SO Good.....
Install went smooth and starting to update drivers.
Tony.........

 

Thank you for the update.

 

Ditto on that.

 

Hello! New member 2 year owner of an HDX9494nr. If anyone can assist me in keeping my dragon going it would be appreciated. Recently I have been having some issues, first the cpu fan has stopped working and is a cause for some performance issues I've had. I acquired an x7800 on the cheap and plan to put it in when I replace the fan, but hp wants $60 shipped and taxed to my house for he fan, any cheaper ones out there anyone knows of? I see references about the x7900 and x9000 being overclocked with throttlestop, I assume the x7800 works with that too? Also, the battery stopped charging, I bought a replacement battery and that doesn't work either. Works fine off the AC. Anyone had similar issues? I read a couple hundred pages but didn't see the answers I seek.

 

Your battery probably didn't need to be replaced, but the good news is that you have a spare. You need to calibrate it, and you should do this every 6 months. Go to your power settings and on battery mode, set EVERYTHING to never turn off. Charge your rig up to 100%, and then unplug the AC cord. It will probably say that it is zero% pretty quickly, but strangely the PC will keep running. It's because the battery and the monitoring software get out of synch. If you hadn't reset the power config, it would have gone into standby, and you would have thought the battery was discharged. Run it until the unit actually shuts off, and then plug it back in, and charge the battery back up to 100% again. You're good to go. As for the CPU fan, they show up on ebay from time to time, or you could Google the part number to get to aftermarket sellers.

 

Doesn't work at all, soon as AC is unplugged it goes off, doesn't turn on without AC plugged in either.

 

What are your power saver settings for battery operation?

 

High performance, never sleep, never turn screen off. Low and critical battery action is do nothing.

 

X7800 can be overclocked with throttlestop.

HP parts is the best place to get the fan. Comes with 90 day warranty.

As for your battery issue, the new battery is likely dead.

 

Update on my computer GPU: I finally got the new GPU and found Arctic silver in Rome! Took me 10 hours but I did it. I installed the new GPU and now everything works perfectly!

Thanks everyone for the help (it was indeed the GPU).
I'll try to bake the old one, one day, but I actually think it's already roasted.

PS. Strange enough the old GPU would in fact work as long as it didn't have to engage into 3D applications or HD videos. But when I looked at it, the top left component that has a paper sticker on it, smells like it was burnt.

Another thing that I didn't expect was to find some sort of semi solid squares made of a white paste on the top of each one of the chips surrounding the GPU on the video card. I didn't have fresh ones so I reused the old ones (don't even know what they are called). But of course I changed both CPU and GPU thermal paste using arctic silver 5.

Any opinions on that?

 

They are called thermal pads and you can reuse them.

Congrats on the fix!

 

Thanks, with hp express shipping I already received it.

I will try for an exchange on the battery. Its just odd that with either battery installed windows does not even see one as connected.

 

@2.0

or here in a nutshell ...

Meanwhile, more than a year ago. A solution was never found, but is not really necessary.
I just decided to drink beer with you.

I'm from 2010/11/14 to 2010/11/19 in your city and pay for the flight itself.
Please learn the German language until then, because I do not speak english.
The beer goes for it on my bill.

If you have time and interest please contact me.
Otherwise, at some time in Berlin ...

And so this is not completely off topic ...
Both HDX and thus three OS running perfectly.

 

Good news and bad news. The second "bake" appears to have fixed my fritzy ATI card in Tanto. I bumped the temperature up about 10 degrees F, and baked it for 15 minutes. I've had it running/rebooting for like an hour and a half, and no blink outs/messages. Now, for the bad news. When I brought the system back up, I noticed that the temperature handling was not what it should be. I went into setup, and noticed that it was still running F.06. I flashed the BIOS, and the temps are much cooler, but suddenly my touchpad doesn't work. Did the BIOS flash do something to the MoBo that requires a new driver for the touchpad? Under Device manager, I have three items under Other Devices: the AverTV card, and two iterations of Base System Device. I'm running Win7U64.

 

OK, after a shut down overnight, the touchpad is now mysteriously working

Temperatures look good. I'm going to continue to monitor the video. The baseline GPU temp for my ATI under F.40, when warmed up appears to be about 45-46 degrees C. I ran some full screen Youtube videos at it last night, driving the temps up into the low 60s, and it didn't even flicker. I'm going to re-insert the Optical Drive, replace the hinge cover and battery, and call Project Tanto complete.

Project Shoto begins today. When I bought my '464' mbo, I didn't have a heat sink to test it with the nVidia card that came with it, so I used the ATI card from my dead mobo that originally came with Tanto, and it powered up and went into BIOS. When I did get my heat sink, and swapped boards for the nVidia, the mobo showed power when plugged in, but it wouldn't power up. I knew it needed to be re-flashed for the nVidia, but it wouldn't even do that. I removed the kbd, and checked all of the connections underneath, and they appear to be good. Has anyone had a video card that was so bad, it prevented the system power on button from working?

 

OK, latest and greatest. I took off the top cover and front cover, and re-did the small plug and ZIF connections. It now powers up, and accepts a flash. After the BIOS flash, the screen powers up, but remains "dark", no cursor, and no logo splash. I get a beep every so often. Does that sound like it's an incompatible nVidia 8800 card? I know that the one for the Dragon is specifically for the Dragon. I have no idea what the history of this one is.

 

-A Word of Warning about Core Temp and the HDX920x models

I use the otherwise excellent All CPU Meter v3.3 by AddGadget.com to monitor CPU and memory utilization on all of my Windows 7 PCs (except my Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which is too underpowered to burden with active sidebar gadgets like this one). Recently, I noticed that my HDX9203W would no longer shut down successfully: it kept hanging during the "Shutting Down" phase (post Log-out) of the Shutdown process. Turns out that the CoreTemp utility that runs with All CPU Meter to report on CPU temps causes the shutdown process to hang on this machine.

Took me a while to figure this out, so I wanted to share this with the community to help avoid other potential sources of aggravation (grrrr! ;-).

--Ed--

 

Hello all,

Ok, got an ssd(OCZ Vertex2) and more ram, saved data etc. from current HDDs. I have skimmed over the Windows 7 guide which looks a bit longer than what I remember for regular reformat. I reformatted twice a short time after getting my Dragon in 2008 so thinking that would be fine... If I do regular recovery, update all the drivers, then before installing individual software, upgrade to W7, is that not as good as W7 clean insatll? or at least close.... Anyway I can be convinced by the experts on here as I have been following this wonderful forum since about 3 weeks after first thread started. Next up if all goes well will be X9000. BTW is the lady Ebay seller from China with Q174 Es versions ok to but from? She has them for $388.00, a bit less than all the rest. If so, then grand total for major upgrades to add new life and way more speed will be $650.00. CPU, Ram, SSD.

Thanks all for responses,
Brad
9494
T8100
320-7200-16MB
320-5400-8MB
4GB memory
W Vista prem

soon to be OCZ vertex2 60GB
320-7200-16MB
8GB geil skill
X9000
W7 Ult

 

If I may interject with my 2 cents worth...Considering the X9000 has minimal overclocking capability in the Dragon, would it be wiser to get the much cheaper 2.60Ghz T9500 CPU instead? It's only 200Mhz slower, and there is one on ebay for $220, shipped from USA, and it's not an ES or from China.

Same Cache, same cores, etc. I just figure since you cannot really do much overclocking, and it's the same cores, I doubt 200Mhz is even noticeable.

Ebay link for T9500

Also, the T9500 is lower wattage (cooler) and supports idle states, whereas the X9000 does not (idle states saves battery and runs cooler).

 

"If I may interject with my 2 cents worth...Considering the X9000 has minimal overclocking capability in the Dragon, would it be wiser to get the much cheaper 2.60Ghz T9500 CPU instead? It's only 200Mhz slower, and there is one on ebay for $220, shipped from USA, and it's not an ES or from China.


"I have been watching T9300, T9500, X7900, X9000. Just wondering about what folks here may know about any sellers. Yes saving $200 not bad if I can get T955 for that price Lan. Previously I had searched for new not used, but I could be convinced either way.

Brad

 

Sellers feedback rating is a good indication of whether they are legit or not. Obviously, no one knows much about any seller, personally, so you just have to read the auction carefully. Also, I'd trust a seller in the US over a seller in China or Asia. Lastly, Paypal and ebay offer protection in case you get something other that what is advertised.

The link I posted shows a trusted seller, and a 5 day DOA warranty, so if you do get it, don't waste any time getting it installed and tested.

In general, CPU's either work or are DOA. If they work, they'll generally give you a long life, so get the best price you can!! (Plus, I'd also take OEM over QS or ES from China any day!!!)

Good luck.

 

Always like to hard stop machines after I either replace or upgrade hardware or software.

On desktops I have dealt with.

 

Congrats; Toolbox has been available since the last week of October - it makes firmware updates easier and secure erase possible from our beast, if you don't have it you should dl it.

You know the story about "close" and "cigars", right (only counts with handgrenades, horseshoes and nuclear weapons - X 2 when invading Iraq, ask George)?

 

No disrespect intended Mr. Lancorp, postings I remember indicate people (you are included here I believe) are clocking very stable and running @ 3.4 GHz and higher even - that's alot more than 200 over a T9500 (I understand that you are probably discussing box stock and discounting the OC capability). Heat doesn't seem to be a huge factor, and power issues aside (this beast is most useful as a portable DTR as opposed to a battery powered laptop), for < an extra $200?

 

Has anyone tried this cooler with the Dragon yet? After my GPU got roasted I am seriously considering this. But the problem is whether it fits. In the past the Zalman 2000 was considered the best cooler for the Dragon... Any opinions about the 3000?

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=568&Itemid=66

The single 22cm fan and the 40cm wide cooler seem really interesting!

 

Ya, I run mine @ 3.8 all the time now.

 

Hi i may or may not have a problem here just me and the wife have a 9120ea each my wife just get her's from ebay anyway my cpu temp is running at 45c where her's is running at 65c thats just sitting there doing nothing

I even installed the same firmware as mine still the same its just my fans never run unless im gaming but my wifes fans never stop

I have taken the top cover of and cleaned the two fans but it still the same

Am i worrying about nothing or should i re-grease the cpu?

 

Is there a way to reduce the GPU fan speed other than reboot after playing games and temp goes back to normal? Anyone else experience this? Doesn't seem like I always had this problem, but I've had a lot of beers in 3 years, so who knows.

 

I run HW monitor full time. That solves that problem.

You'll need HW monitor and HWMonTray so it will run as a tray app.

HWMontray: http://www.sfkilla.com/gads/HwMonTray.zip
HWMonitor: CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

Put both files in your root directory.

Make a shortcut to hwmontray and drag into into the startup folder on the startmenu so it runs at boot.

 

You may have different CPUs. Hers could be a Merom (65nm) and yours a Penryn(45nm). Post what CPUs are in each. Not just the mhz but the model of the CPU like T9300 or some such.

 

Not sure you need a cooler. Most of us haven't used one and have been fine without it considering the HDX's cooling is fine. Just keep the fans clear and clean. And monitor your temps.