*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

The Bulletin IS referring to the AC Adapter and not the Battery. Essentially what happens is under a certain power scheme, the capacitors start resonating at an audible frequency. To check and see if that's the problem, change your Power Plan to a different one or have one for Home use that has everything running at 100% when connected to your adapter. Change the settings to see if you find one that stops it. If it doesn't, then I'd call HP and get them to replace it. I don't know of anyone here who has had a problem getting it replaced for that issue.

 

A picture is worth (in this case) two words...

 

Anyone notice the GLUT of refurbished HDX Dragons on ebay lately? Holy moley...more HDX Dragons than the newer HDX16's and 18's!!!

Mine just took a considerable resale hit.

 

LOL. Nicely done.

 

Probably bricked after the F.40 BIOS update....

 

Lancorp,

Can you check out the "Carrying Case for HDX 18t" thread? I noticed you found a case that fits and was hoping you could answer a couple of questions for me. I'll be getting the laptop in a few days, so time is sort of of the essence (that's why I'm bugging you on this thread).

Sorry to anyone who took offense to me posting on this thread, but I'm in a time rut.

Thanks Lancorp, and I look forward to hearing your response.


- Bob

 

Anyone have the video card comparison between 8800GTS and ATI HD 4870 X2 in a notebook?

 

Check here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

4870 X2 appears to be king of the hill and almost doubles our 8800. Alas, barely a year since ours was king

 

4870 x2:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4870-X2-Crossfire.14406.0.html

8800M GTS:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8800M-GTS.6934.0.html


EDIT: Hov beat me to it.

 

Hi 2.0, ok I'm up to the second command line part where I type Bcdedit -set {ntldr} device partition=F and it doesn't work..It says:

An error has occurred setting the element data.
The request is not supported.


The drive for XP in the second hard drive is F instead of E so I ut F in place of where you said to put in E. What do I do now?

 

I'm looking into buying one once the 8800M arrives and to ask your opinion. Anyone care to recommend something?

 

My bad... the "-" before commands should be "/"

Bcdedit /create {ntldr} –d “Windows XP”
Bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=F:
Bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
Bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} –addlast

 

See the "case thread"....

 

Unclear on what you are asking. The 8800M is in the Dragon.

 

The first one worked without the /...did I mess something up now?

 

NO. But did the second line work?

 

I tried the second line with the original way you told me to put it in and it didnt work..only the first line you originally gave me with the - instead of / worked...should I do something to undo the first command line with the - or just start doing the command lines as you corrected them all with the / instead of -, starting with the first one (or is the first one already done even though it has the - instead of the /)?

 

Yeah, you can redo the first. It's probably not necessary.

I was wondering if you had already tried to do the 2nd line with the correction yet.

 

Nah I was scared to I'll do the first then the rest in the order you told me and we'll see how it goes

 

Still doesn't work, the first one says I already did it before so I didn't need to do it again, but the second one won't work with the / either. What I beez doin now yos?

EDIT: Ok the second one works, didn't see the : for some reason.. Wow..ok it all went through with the second series of command lines you gave me...lets see what happens


UPDATE: By the power of GREYSKULL! It WORKS! Woohoo! Thanks man! You were saying something about being able to default it to a specific OS after a certain amount of time..how do you do this please? YAY it works! Thanks so much man! EDIT: Oh I see it in msconfig in Vista but its greyed out..hmm..Never mind I got it! The set up is EXACTLY what I was looking for! This rules! Thanks again 2.0!!!

 

Glad that worked out for you.

As for your question; Start menu search box, type msconfig. Click boot tab. You'll see a box with timeout and seconds. Change it to whatever you like. You can also change boot order by click the os you want first and set it as default. Be sure to check the make setting permanent box.

 

Like you, I was wondering the same thing. GSkill still shows the 4GB module available on their web site (so far) but no one I've found has any in stock - and Newegg shows it as a discontinued item.

 

Because they are very expensive and useless in most cases. It's recession now. 4GB (2x2GB) is plenty and more than enough for >90% of applications and uses, and is also much cheaper. 8GB will not increase the overall speed and responsiveness of Windows compared to 4GB. If you have money to spend, get yourself a pen touch screen if you want a nice mod for your HDX that also does not involve opening the machine .

 

I can't speak for others but for my purposes, I'd like to be able to run Virtual Server on my Dragon and have several guest OS's. That requires additional memory.

 

That is exactly what I was going to say. I run 3 different VMware workstations. Win XP pro 32 bit, Ubuntu UE, and old Win 95 setup. They all serve and important purpose. If I have 8 GB Ram I will be able to run them simultaneously. ATM I can barley run one due to the fact that part of what I do when running them requires me to use multiple tabs in IE and Firefox, Adobe Pro, Word, and Excel. That all adds up to a lot of memory.

 

Thank you. The 4870 x2 looks to be very impressive. ASUS is offering this setup on one of their notebooks inaddition to DDR3 RaM. Maybe one day HP will follow. Looking at HD18T, HP beefed up to 1GB Video but kept the 9600.

 

Yeah, for MOST general Windows applications. You forget however, why most of us have Dragons to begin with, and that's to run high-end applications that are RAM intensive that the average Joe computer schmuck doesn't use or can't afford. Most of us are professionals in the computer, entertainment, engineering, or design fields and other similar areas where our systems are being used to run the kind of programs on our Dragons that previously only desktop power could deal with. With the advent of 64 bit systems and RAM prices dropping considerably, the ability to have increased RAM capability for RAM intensive programs (for example, HD video) is well worth it - if we can find the modules.

As far as the DUO pen, Touchscreen technology has been around for over 30 years, and it has never been a big seller with the public because it's just too slow. If it was most systems would be touchscreen capable. As far as a tablet and Pen system, Wacom tablets and Pens have been around for many years, and can do a lot more than this gadget can. Yeah, it's cheaper, but you get what you pay for.

So, no offense, but I'd rather spend money on something my HDX can actually benefit from, and right now that's another 4gb's of RAM for HD Video Production. Whoever finds the G-Skill or a similar module set let me know.

 

Thank you once again, 2.0 - I'll check it out

 

I'm no expert but here are some things I KNOW I can do WITH 8GBs of memory that I could NOT do before with only 4GBs of memory:

Have 40-70 tabs in Firefox with no problems (use a memory cleaning addon)

Use QuickTouch Volume box setting USED to lag forever, now with 8GBs of memory it actually works EVEN WITH using the Windows Sidebar

NEVER used to use Windows Sidebar because everything would lag, now it works without a real problem

Can use MANY if not ALL of the addons in Firefox that I want to, before it would lag everything to add more than 3 intensive ones like Weather tabs

Now I'm going to try to max out stuff and weigh it down to see what it can and can't handle..so far its been able to handle everything pretty well.

BTW this all WORKS GREAT on my 2 new 500GB Seagate 7200.4 hard drives..some if not many of those things above wouldn't work or wouldn't work AS well with my 2x 120GB 7200 Hitachis that the HDX came with.

 

BTW for anyone interested in getting the 8GB GSkill memory:

I've had several people ask me if my friend in Australia would be willing to get them 8GBs of memory since they can't find it anywhere, and now that he's back from vacation he let know that he would. So if you're interested just PM me and you will be next in line to get them. He only found 2 in stock so far BUT the store by him (who only deals with customers locally) is asking how many he wants them to order to see if its worth it to them, so let me know as soon as possible and he can give them a number of how many to order.

 

Looks like I'll shortly be a member of the HP HDX DRAGON club. Just pulled the trigger on this Big Boy over on the Bay :

http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-HDX-C2D-2-4G...286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66:2|65:13|39:1|240:1318

Would have liked a CPU with more speed and/or cache and a 7200rpm HDD but it has my minimum "must have" items consisting of the 8800M GTS GPU, WUXGA Display and BluRay player. Will likely upgrade later by installing dual 320GB 7200rpm HD's. Pretty good price I think.....hopefully this puppy arrives with no issues. Never bought a factory refurbished unit before. Seller has an excellent feedback rating and it's covered by an HP 90 day warranty.

 

My bad, you're right. I misstated which one I used from NVIDIAs site which was in fact .28. When I used 48 it was super cool using it under XP, I could tell from just hot warm it was on my lap but since it was XP I don't know if that means anything really. The only problems I saw were lags in IE browsing when loading pages or scrolling sometimes. I haven't tested any games at all though. So is 32 everyones favorite?

 

Ah I may have spoken too soon..it allowed me to boot into XP once but now it won't let me back it..it flashes some error really quick and then backs out back into the OS boot options between Vista and XP...I says something about BOOT error INF or something..Should I do the command lines again or something? Ah..did them and it doesn't fix it..:/

 

Congrats grinder! This notebook rules!

 

I’m going to do a clean install of vista.
Have you already tried this?
What applications originally preinstall are worth keeping?

 

Drive letter for XP probably changed. The second drive should actually be E: and not F:. It's F if you have some other media device plugged in the system.

You need to force it to E:

With no device plugged into USB, Esata, firewire, or the card reader on the left side do the following: (First make sure you stop those devices before unplugging them. there's a USB icon in tray, find it then left click it.)

Control Panel/administrative tools/computer management/disc management

right click your second HDD in the list and choose "change drive letter and path" Select "F:" even if it is there already.

reboot.

If it still doesn't work, then you'll have to change the line in the boot loader where you assigned XP to F and make it E. And then you can't boot with any external drive devices plugged in.

 

Save your swsetup folder before you do. It has all drivers and preinstalled software.

HP wireless assistant is worth keeping. Quickplay if you like it is also.

 

It lists the hard drive for XP as F, the Blu-Ray drive as E, the Vista hard drive as C and the recover for Vista as D. I don't have anything plugged in. I tried doing disk management it lists E-Blu-Ray, then F-XP, D-the HP Recovery (Vista), then C for Vista. Should I change the Vista one to F or do something else?

 

Ah, yes...that unit on ebay was an excellent deal! Congratulations! Very nice unit (but you're right, the CPU can use upgrading).

Enjoy!

 

I see. Didn't realize you had a partition for recovery on C.

In pre-boot environment, it probably doesn't see the partition as a distinct drive. So it probably is allocating 1st drive as C, 2nd as E, and Blu-ray as D.

Just change the bootloader's XP entry to drive E.

To find out for sure which is allocated to which;
Reboot and as soon as the BIOS screen goes away hit F8 a few times. When a selection screen comes up, choose command prompt.

Type in "dir e:" (omit quoatation marks) to see what's allocated to E. The do the same for c, d and f.

 

It wont even give me the option to do so because the Blu-Ray already has that letter..When I do F8 it gives me the options to repair..would that help? I think its only for Vista but yea..

 

Change the bootloader entry to E: using the bcdedit command line you did a few pages back.

Also, make sure than when you use the command prompt that you run it as administrator.

 

Oh one time I booted up I had a SATA enclosure, the one you recommended, plugged in, but did that screw it up or something?

 

I tried the command lines with E and it wont let it happen..

 

Did you run the command prompt as administrator?

 

Yea I did. I'll try it again though. Do I do all the letters as E?

I tried Bcdedit /create {ntldr} -d "Windows XP Pro" and it says it already exists

If I try it with an e instead of the d it doesnt work.. If I try:

Bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=E it doesnt work

What I do yos? Should I change all the drive letters via computer management/disk management or something?

 

I have no idea what you mean.

This is what I mean:

Bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=E:

 

Did you forget the ":" after E?

 

Yea did that and it says An error has occurred setting the element data. The request is not supported.

No I remembered the : too and it still says that. Unless there are no spaces between Bcdedit and /set and {ntldr} and device and partition I dont know what else to do.

 

Don't know without seeing it. Somehow, bootloader is corrupted. Never seen this specific problem before.

Fullscreen the command prompt, type bcdedit, hit enter, then snapshot it, then email it to me.

I'll out for a few hours though so I won't be able to look at it until later on.