*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

Update quickplay drivers (and read my page 100 post).

 

Thank you very much.
My buttons now work for the first time.
I haven't tried to play a BRD yet but suspect it will work.
I can't tell you how many times I've read that page. Probably if the type on that page was 5 times bigger, bold and bright red I still would have missed it.
Makes me wonder how much other info I've looked at and not soaked up. lol

Thanks again,

Ron

 

Been a while since I've stopped by and I am hoping you all can assist...

Loaded Win 7 on the HDX, even got the fingerprint reader to work...

What is not working is my function key plus f7 and f8 to brighten or darken the screen. I am trying to calibrate the screen, and I need to lower the luminance, but it seems my "FN" key is not controlling the f1 - f12 keys.

I hope this makes sense...

I searched the thread as best I could for Win 7 info but could not find it...

Thanks,

Scott

 

Interesting find and verified most do not work on mine as well. F3, 9, and 10 are the only ones that work for me. Worth looking into. Thanks.

 

Any idea if there is another way to adjust the brightness without f7 & f8? A utility or control panel?

 

Yep, right click on desktop and select Nvidia control panel, unless you have ATI GPU. Should have roughly the same ability though.

 

Hey guys! I'm in need of help!
I got my HDX Dragon a year ago and back then I had no problem with playing Blu-ray discs. My drive is an Optiarc BD ROM BC-5500A.
Recently it stopped reading blu-ray discs... it doesn't even recognize them. If I try to open them from the "Computer" window it ejects the disc tray and asks for me to "Insert a disc", even if it is already inside.
My OS is Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I have all Windows Updates up to today.
The software I use to try to play them is QuickPlay v3.7, the latest version as far as I know.
I've also tried to use Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 but the same problem happens. It says there's no disc in the drive, even if there is.
Device Manager says the driver for the Optiarc BD ROM BC-5500A ATA Device is up to date.

I don't have any problems with reading CDs or DVDs, only Blu-ray discs.

Any kind of help would be appreciated!

 

Try a CD cleaner, Bluray uses a different laser.

 

Perhaps I should clarify that the Blu-ray discs I'm trying to play are brand new, out of the box.
I'm starting to suspect the laser on the drive might be dirty, would you recommend some product I could use to clean it?

 

Clean your drive, not the discs. lol

You can get a kit at any tech store for $5. It will clean all of them.

 

You could hit Windows Key+X which bring up the Mobility Center and it has a slider for screen brightness.

 

Or, you can left click on power icon lower right corner and select, "adjust screen brightness."

 

I just put my dragon up for sale in the in the classifieds if anyone is looking to purchase a top end dragon.

 

I have a dragon already but am looking to purchase another one. What are the stats of the top end dragon you have for sale?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=405488

see here

 

Thanks....I appreciate it!!

 

Please contact me with selling price for your dragon and specs.

 

Please contact me with selling price for your dragon and specs.

 

A little OT.

I can't get may head around hand writing recognition. I have a HP Dragon as a DTR, which I think is fantastic.

But, my job involves moving to a new workplace (usually peeps homes) every day and interviewing folks for about 1.5 hours. I write into a pre-formatted paper form during that time, which is mainly sentences of text, not ticking boxes etc. Once completed I go back to office and use speech recognition (Vista) to enter the text in a word document. Once entered, I review and correct the various spelling mistakes etc with a keyboard.

I'd like to know if its feasible to use a tablet pc or "slate" (I'm not sure I know the difference here) to handwrite the info directly into a formatted word document. I know that the Dragon is not portable enuf to drag in and out of folks homes, however I have a basic Vista laptap which is a lot more portable, and could be used to capture the data.

Or do I go for a Tablet Laptop which has the input device and computer attached.

Any advice or comments?

Software?

Is there something out there which is considered to be the beez knees, and will fit my situation.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=405488

see here

 

Hi, does "FN" key works with F4 key to swich petween skreens quikc, on your win 7 HDX computer? Thanks

 

Any advice welcome: I'm trying to find a more elegant solution for the TV tuner antenna on my HDX9494NR. I have tried several antennas and have experienced different degrees of success, but hate the idea of having a long cord or bulky connection that might interfere with the portability of my rig (living room to bedroom travel mostly). So far, I've tried:
-tightly wrapping the cord to a smaller Avermedia antenna I have, still bulky but not as much as the pack in HP antenna.
-I ripped out the small folding antenna and connector assembly from an unused PCI wireless card and soldered the small connector to a female Coax connector, which I then screwed into the coax/ pseudorca plug in adapter that came with the HDX. This would work perfect since it is small and somewhat adjustable and doesn't protrude much, but it doesn't pick up all of the stations I want...a few less than the full blown antenna rig I think. I suppose I could try to find a longer antenna to screw into the mini connector to boost reception....but I don't want to spend any $ if I don't have to.
Finally, here's my question:
Has anyone played around with the AVermedia card and moved it into the open mini PCI-e slot? The slots aren't specific to devices are they, I noticed a little TV picture by the tuner card. I noticed that the Intel Wireless card has a triple array antenna and didn't find any documentation stating if the antennas serve different purposes/frequencies but it didn't seem like it. I was thinking that perhaps I could use one of the wireless antennas for the tuner card without robbing too much wifi signal strength? Any experience on this. Probably won't yield any better reception, but I'm dying to try just to know for sure. If it's just as good, that's one less device sticking out of the laptop

 

I decided to give it a try. I swapped the tuner card and put it in the empty socket next to the network card and connected the antenna lead 3 from my wifi card. Here's what I observed:
-My wifi didn't suffer any noticable decrease in function (although I didn't test range).
-For some reason the tuner card did not seem to be detected by the computer, I couldn't find it under device manager. Both Media Center and Quickplay stated that no tuner was installed. I spent a little time trying to search for and install new hardware and even went to HP's website and downloaded and installed the drivers for the card......no luck. It was getting late so I gave up. I'm wondering if BIOS settings would need to be changed? Probably won't go there if so.
So my dreams of a dual tuner, internal antenna laptop may not work out
-Because of the heat plate on the top of the tuner card, it is thicker than the wifi card and the top presses against the plastic cover causing it to stick up a bit on one side when screwed in (not sit flush with the rest of the bottom edge. I noticed that the cover is tapered along w/ the bottom of the laptop, so any mini PCI-e card would need to be pretty thin or you would have to switch the wifi card's position.

 

I haven't tried "FN" and F4... but really if you pres "Windows key" and "P" it's much faster and nicer in windows 7.

Good luck

 

Has anyone been able to use "Treble/Bass" on wndows 7?

or install the "HP Quick Launch Buttons" driver? for windows 7...

 

one more thing... how do I change the treble/bass level in windows 7 if the quick launch buttons don't work?

 

I did not even installed QLB, they were installed automatically by Win7 and have been working fine ever since.

 

but i not understand , is possible to change 8800m gts @ fx3700m ?????

 

Hi Guys (and gals), new poster here. Been waiting to post in this forum for 10 months now. I have been hunting down a HDX Dragon for just that long. I have finally ordered one and it will be here next week. WOO HOOOO!!!!

Now, in the 10 long months i have been trolling every e-store and auction site, I was also reading this forum (I joined NBR just so i could post in this forum lol.) and I have learned a lot from 2.0 and other...

The Dragon can go up to 8GB of RAM (already put the G.Skill SO-DIMM in my wish list on Newegg.)

The Dragon's CPU can be upgraded (a list of compatable CPUs is in the Dragon's instruction manual on HP's site)

The Dragon has a Second HDD Bay (This will be my 3rd HP laptop with the 2nd HDD Bay. That is a definite deal breaker for me.)

I can upgrade the Wireless card (Intel Wifi 5300, but I will have to keep the old card in for the bluetooth to work i believe.)

The only thing I am not entirely clear on is the GPU. Can you upgrade it?? I would assume that if you could, the GPU would be hard to find for purchase and it would def take a few hours to replace since you have to take the Dragon apart almost completely.

That's all from me for now. Thanks guys.

Oh, I ordered the 9494nr

 

No. People are only wishing at this point in time.

 

What actually happened was someone claimed to have a friend that upgraded the 8800 to a 9800 pulled from an Alienware and it worked great. The problem is the person (ilovedragons) disappeared and the guy was never willing to post anything for the benefit of the forum. Also 2.0 tried to upgrade to a 280 but while it booted and he got it to recognize the GPU and the shaders, he stopped after 3 days and sold it. The conclusion was that it as hit or miss but more likely to work if pulled from an HP because a similar BIOS could let it work possibly. Other than that no one has successfully VERIFIED a GPU upgrade to the 8800 that works. That is I think it would be said that you're free to try but it will likely not work and will be a waste of money. No one has tried a 3700 to my knowledge.

 

Just to who wants to create more then one set of recovery DVD-s

http://www.troublefixers.com/create-more-than-one-set-of-recovery-cd-on-hp-laptop-computer/

1. Download Free Commander

2. Open D:\ Drive in Free Commander, assuming d is the recovery partition on your hp laptop computer

3. Find and Delete a file named HPCD.SYS in D:\ drive root folder

4. Navigate to the windows folder at C:\Windows\SMINST and delete another file with the same name HPCD.SYS

5. That’s it done you can now create new sets of recovery CDs or DVDs

Works OK

 

Thank you!!!! I can confirm if you will make clean install win 7 like this then all will work iven treble/Bass. Only things not work for me is also TV button. And I cant play Bluray, I can play DVD-s but if I but in bluray Quick Play crashes.
Thanks again and Eclypse3D do you have Bluray rom, is the playback ok vith Quick Play ?

Thanks

 

I have a HDX9300 with 4gb (2x2gb) of ram - I've heard you can upgraded to 8gb I'm assuming 2x4gb but there are 8gb sticks out there with the same specs has anyone tried to run 16gb on vista 64?

would it ezpolde my computar?

I'm doing intensive video and photoshop rendering - before you post that it wouldn't be worth the return on the cost I've done enough research to think it would be with some of the cs4 apps... though I'm interested in hearing educated opinions on this... thank you!

 

8gb works but 16 will not

 

i opened up the bottom of my hdx9300 and found a bay with two expansions splots... one is holding the WIFI card.

the other is empty... is this a standard slot? what could i put in there? a SSD?

it would be neat to add a SSD for the boot drive and OS or even a swap drive for the OS or photoshop (i edit huge 1gb+files) if its faster and more robust than HDD.

having trouble finding documentation from HP on what specs the slots are and what might be cool or useful to add.

any suggestions on use for the express pci slot? since this thing comes with almost everything but the kitchen sink i'm not sure what to use it for...

i do wish the computer had a CF reader since i shoot canon cameras and have to use a tethered reader to upload.... a CF reader card that didnt stuck out too much would be cool (off to google to hunt now)...

i'd like to hear any other uses you guys have found for these expansions.

thank you!

 

A PCI based SSD would be significantly slower and somewhat more expensive than a SATA SSD.

There's not much you can put in that slot. I've upgraded to an Intel 5300 Wifi card which can only be used in that second slot since the 1st slot (where the original wifi card is) is whitelisted in the BIOS. Meaning, if you plug any other wifi card in there that wasn't originally spec'd with the HDX, the computer will report an error message and not boot.

Before you upgrade your memory, invest in an SSD like a OCZ vertex or Summit, or Gskill Falcon. Then see if you need a RAM upgrade. Might even stand for a CPU upgrade if you are under a T9300.

 

thank you for the fast response and good info...

cpu is 8100 @ 2.10ghz 4gb ram

is the cpu an easy upgrade? do you think i would see much gain?

sorry for all the questions...

so when you say PCI SSD is slower - would you say something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227436

is probably still faster than a conventional HDD? it's pretty cheap....

I just opened it up and was surprised to find the second HDD slot - I was going to upgrade to two bigger and faster 500s since i plan to take this on the road and edit a lot of video and photos but it might make more sense to use the 2nd HDD slot for a 2.5 SSD like you said and just get external eSATA or SATA HDDs for storage...

hmmm options... thank you guys for your thoughts and opinions.

 

any recommendations on ram or sources? sounds like 4gb x2 is the way to go then... thank you!

 

That's somewhat slower than 4200 RPM HDD. A 320GB 7200 RPM HDD is more than twice as fast as that SSD. A SATA SSD is more than 7 times faster than that and siginificantly faster than a HDD. Two factors about SATA SSD's that make them siginificantly faster than HDDs. They not only transfer data faster but have seek times that are several hundred times quicker than an SSD.

Your CPU could stand for an upgrade. RAM is NOT going to help you out given your config. Your CPU is a "bottleneck." Upgrade your CPU to a T9300 or better and get a SATA SSD. You would likely find that you don't need the RAM.

At the very least, get an SSD before even thinking about going to 8GB considering your CPU. You'll be amazed at how much faster your system will be.

Changing the CPU isn't hard. Might be intimidating for a first timer though. Just following the instructions in the service manual (link on page 100 of this thread, blacknight's post). Takes about 4 hours or so to do. Keep track of your screws via labeling. As for thermal paste application instructions, google for them.

 

thank you so much - that was a great help... so hard to find any info on this stuff other than here. deeply appreciated will report back when i do the upgrades!

Philip

 

Another happy customer from 2.0's Dragon tech support!

CJ

 

I agree. I have taken laptops apart and rebuilt them with newer parts before. Looking at the manual, It's not much difference. I am thinking that as long as you keep up with the screws and follow the directions for thermal paste application, you should be good in upgrading the CPU.

 

I have an issue with my quick touch buttons. I have previously have had issues with them not working, but I now know that unplugging the Dragon, taking out the battery, and pressing the power button fixes this. But that is not my problem now.

My new problem is, my quick touch buttons are possessed! They are now in a constant state of like there is a ghost pushing all of my buttons over and over. The lights will keep fading on and off as if someone were pressing the dim button, and it is pretty much impossible to listen to Itunes now, because the ghost keeps pressing pause, stop, next and previous over and over!!! How do I stop this demon ghost from pressing my quick touch buttons?

Oh and quick side note, is there a way to prevent the problem addressed in my first paragraph, or is that pretty much going to continue to happen at random intervals, only fixed by the battery removal thing? Not really a big issue, I'm more concerned with this damn quick touch ghost obsessing on my buttons right now!

 

I had this happen briefly when I had the screen too close to the touch buttons. Raise your screen a few mm up and that might fix it?

CJ

 

nope, the ghost is still pissed off and changing my music. help!!!

 

Ok My Dragon is in the UPS Distribution Center for our area. So it should be here in a day or 2. Now, I am looking for a bag for it. I thought about the Dicota MultiGiant, but I wanted a backpack for it. Then I found the Olympia Cambridge 20" backpack. The dimensions seems ok (20" H x 13" W x 8" D. I can stretch the width the .4" I will need so not worried about that.) and I just really want a backpack for this monster.

Anyone else ever find a suitable backpack for the Dragon??

 

I have the Dicota its ok, no matter what you get its going to be clunky so =)

 

I have the backpack made by Targus for HP. There is enough room for clothes for a weekend getaway and also fits under the seats in airplanes.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/s...=Display+size&v1=20"&catLevel=2#bcAnchor

 

Which is a shame. Though, it could be very telling all things considered.

LOL. You make it seem as if I held it longer, there could have been a break through. Trust me, 3 days was too long. (Actually it was longer than that before I sold it. I believe I had it for a week and a half.)

Not sure that any other HP has a similiar BIOS. The 8800M GTS used in the HDX is custom made for the HDX. Likely, the ability to upgrade is a dead end.

Well said and agreed.

What's more, the 3700M isn't exactly easy to find or affordable. HP lists it for $1600. Since it is not accessible to everyone, it sort of makes exploring to possibility moot IMO. Unfair at the very least. The 280M GTX would have been idle. A place where anyone could get it from. It's relatively affordable. And we could have had great discussion about mods to the HDX to make it fit.