*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

How screwed am I?

I just got my HDX9494nr from Newegg a couple a days ago.

Researched this ENTIRE thread and finally settled on which drivers I was going to use when I did a fresh install of Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

I started off with running sp40001.exe to update the bios to f.39.
The update seemed to run just fine - got to the shutdown timer and I just let it shutdown the machine.
When I went to restart the machine the next day - nothing.

The power led and all of the QuickLaunch leds light up, but nothing ever appears on the screen - just blackness.

I tried removing power and the battery and holding the power button down for a least a minute - still nothing.

Does anyone know if there is a way to recover, or will I have to return it and hope that I can still get a replacement?

Thanks in advance...

 

Do you see the boot screen? Then the hard drive light indicating tat it's accessing the HDD?

Do you have sound? As in do you hear the windows boot up music after about 1 minute of the system beng powered on? If so, then hit FN+F4.

 

Still getting this :

 

My system only has the lowly ATI X2600 XT graphics card, not the NVIDIA. Is there a program I can use similar to nTune, that is compatible with my ATI card? I tried installing nTune but it gave me an error saying it couldn't find an nvidia card, so I guess it is only compatible with machines with a nvidia card installed. Or did I download an incorrect version?

Also, does anyone have any issues with the power/range of the built in remote? My HDX came with batteries, which appeared to be brand new and unused. After installing them in the remote, I can't be more than literally 2 feet away from my computer when the remote falls out of range, and thats if I'm pointing it DIRECTLY at the IR receiver by the headphone jack, and holding buttons down for at least a second (quick one touch presses do not register). Do I have a bum remote, or hopefully it is just the batteries that were sent to me arrived already dead? Or even worse, is this what everyone is experiencing; that this is the best that the remote performs? I love everything about this machine, and I'd assume that for the remote to be practical it can operate at least 10 feet away!

 

Nothing on the screen at all - no HDD activity, no sound.

I turned it on and left it for about an hour - still nothing.

When I hit the power button again, it turned off instantly.

Even so, I'll try the FN+F4 thing when I get home tonight.

 

I've noticed a few people around here have upgraded to 8gb of ram. Is this a worthwhile upgrade that would actually increase performance? Also, is the 4 gb that comes standard in just one of the ram slots - one 4gb dimm as opposed to two 2 gb dimms?

 

Hate to say it, but same thing happened to me......BIOS is fried, had to return it for a replacement

 

My bad, did not mean to re ask the question about it working on your system.

 

I use my remote often from 15 to 20 feet away. However I do have to hold the remote fairly level and at the same hight as the HDX (which sits on top of a stereo component rack/shelf.

 

hmm hopefully its just the batteries then. Are they easy to find? like at a drug store? or will I have to venture to an electronics store like frys electronics, or worse, order them online somewhere. Batteries are not my forte, unless they are double As or Ds or something.

 

The batteries *should* be watch type batteries - flat circular discs. The most popular are the CR2016 or CR2032 types for something slim like this. The remote is too slim to take standard AAA or AA batteries so the drug store would not sell them - at least none here in Oz.

Any electronic store (i.e. Frys) should have them in stock. You should not need to order the batteries anywhere.

 

Takes (2) CR2016 3V Lithium cell batts.

You can find them at Radio Shack, CVS, Best Buy, etc. figure about $4-$5 ea.

Heat shortens their life. And the holster for the remote sits on top of where the GPU is.

 

Here is an update: Ran a test using 650/1650/925, adjusting shaders using the new Ntune utility...pushing my limits of comfort as temps rose to 72C. Score was duh, duh, duhhhh....9556. Screenshot below. Ran ATI tool first and no artifacts for 1 1/2 hours, but the temp still bothers me a little. It only got to 68C during artifact test, which is unusual. Usually 3dMark test runs cooler than ATI....

 

Yep, as wwoods said, locked. FN+F4 wouldn't work then.

If you're really handy and have a few hours to kill, removing the small lithium watch battery called the real time clock (RTC) battery and leaving it out for 5 mins resets the BIOS.

I'm not going to kid you, it's a big-to do to get at it. Instructions are found in the service manual pages 73-75.

Service manual is found on HP's website.

 

Add that to your other post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4052212&postcount=3655

I want to have a good reference link with everything on one post. TIA.

 

It is so

 

It was a bit of a revelation to read the earlier post indicating that each GPU was unique in a sense, and that it was necessary to "work" with one's card. Still, it was game of hovercraftdriver to "go boldly..."

I read somewhere that NVIDIA is ambivalent about overclocking, particularly involving notebook GPUs. But the HDX is not a notebook...it's a tome.

And thanks, as always, to 2.0 for keeping everything focused in the forum.

Cheers

 

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Anyone have any thoughts?

 

Hello all, ive been doing some research on potentially upgrading the hard drive in my HDX 9494. I have read reviews that the 320GB 5400rpm drive it comes with is pretty decent.

Will an upgrade to a 7200rpm 320gb drive be worth the money?

 

I'd wait a month for the Seagate 7200.4's.

However, going to a 7K320 you would see a small improvement, but not one worth the money.

 

Has anyone noticed playback performance of their HDX with Quicktime 720p and 1080p @ Apple Trailers? I am not certain what settings need to be adjusted but I am getting horrendous framerates with either formats even on high performance.

I have heard in the past that only Macs can get good performance from the Quicktime HD trailers - is this true?

 

On a different note - it seems SSD 2.5" has dropped to my affordable price range. Considering a few short months ago I don't know how I paid USD 800 for a 64GB 1.8" SSD for my P1610.

My target is to install a primary 64GB SSD and replace the 2nd HDD to 500GB 5400rpm later on.

My 64GB PATA Samsung SSD has 60MB/s read and 40MB/s write which I found to be a night and day difference on WinXP. The SATA models claims 100+Mb/s read and 90MB/s write -theoretically it is considerably faster - but then again - Vista has been proven to be not SSD optimised.

I am eyeing the following models - anyone with better knowledge of SSD care to comment on these selections?

1. Transcend 64GB SSD - EBay Item #380071389346

2. Runcore 64GB SSD - EBay Item #120319368521

Sorry I haven't reached my 15 post limit and cannot post links directly

 

No, you won't see any perf gains. The 4GB you have now is 2GB + 2GB.

 

Here are the direct links:

Transcend: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380071389346

Runcore: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120319368521

I'd be worried about reliability. There's been some serious reliability issues with cheap SSDs.

Also, you'll be crying if you buy an MLC type. SLC type is what you'd want for Vista.

 

Many thanks for the update 2.0 - I understand the difference between SLC and MLC regarding lifetime of the unit in terms of writeability. Any other reasons why MLC would be bad for Vista?

 

For the drives you listed, they are optimized for data storage and not OS use. For OS use, they would be slower than a 4200 RPM HD. Most of the issue has to do with their controller. Intel MLC would be the best for an OS but nothing beats an SLC SSD for OS use. MLC's are not good for the type of random reads and writes of a windows OS and don't index well. Windows does a lot of journaling and the background services are constantly accessing the HDD(SSD). All of which considerably slows down the access time of an MLC. Also, they will use up significant CPU resources to operate.

SLC or Intel's MLC SSD are your only viable options.

 

2.0

Do you know what will be the performance enhancements provided by the Seagate 7200.4's?

Cheers

 

Nope. But it'll be out in December. There will be benchmarks then and we'll be able to tell. In addition, they will most likely offer 400Gb and 500GB @ 7200 RPMS.

 

look here for more info:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=19549a9dafc0b110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

Also here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=271131

This is the meat of the info.

"The Momentus 7200.4 hard drive, with its 7200-rpm spin speed and a Serial ATA 3GB/second interface, delivers true desktop performance. The power-efficient 7200-rpm drive maximizes battery life and comes in capacities ranging from 250GB to 500GB with a 16MB cache."

More power efficient, more capacity, and 250GB platters.

My primary is the 7200 RPM 320GB Seagate. I will be getting the 500GB 7200.4 as my secondary when it comes out to replace my 320 5400RPM Toshiba that came with my HDX.

 

Looks good!

 

Keep your eye out for the Hitachi travelstar 500GB 7200RPm HDDs set to come out soon also.

 

Quick question if anybody knows, does the card reader accept the Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo cards? Thanks

 

Digital Media Slot: supports SD, MMC, SD I/O, MS, MSP, xD-Picture Card;

with adapter, supports mini versions of SD, MMC, and MS Duo (adapter is not included)

 

Thank you again. I will go ahead and order an adapter.

 

What features will the new Hitachi provide? I've always been attracted to the Seagates because of the perpendicular drive and the 5 year warranty. Also the new Seagates seem pretty robust based on what I read from the link.

Do you think prices on the new drives will be good?

Tip for today:
Don't pour Lyles Golden Syrup on your electronics.

Cheers

 

Quick question...

I am thinking of purchasing a HDX 16t but I have some processor questions and a video card question.

I was going to go with the T9400 upgrade or should I just go with the P8600? How good of a video card is the nvidia geforce 9600m GT? I would figure with 512MB at my disposal it should be good, but I just want to make sure I make the right selections while trying to save a couple bucks. Also I just want to get Vista 32bit, due to RA3 not supporting Vista 64b, but is there a way to work around it? I know nothing of this stuff, but I do like to play games on my laptop when I am travelling.

TIA!

 

Tried this too - what a pain!
Still did not work.

After 2.5 hours and 9(!) transfers to 'someone who could help me', I finally got HP to agree to take the laptop in for repair.

So, now I'll have to wait several weeks for them to repair/replace it.

 

Here is a link to compare the pecking order and specs of laptop GPU's:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

Also, please feel free to visit us anytime, but you can probably get a lot more answers about the HDX 16 in the HP HDX16 Owner's Lounge, right here in these very forums:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=300646

cheers

 

It depends on what you want to do - "Easy to use" isn't usually associated with Vegas, nor Premiere or After Effects for that matter. Remember that when you're dealing with movie and video editing, you also require a good audio program (unless you're going to render it with mono and not stereo or Surround), an effects program or plugins for editing, and a good DVD authoring program. Personally, you can't beat Adobe's video/movie editing programs (Premiere, After Effects, etc.) But they're not cheap by any means.

Vegas has had problems with DVD authoring, not to mention a learning curve problem that's spawned many complaints.

If you just want an inexpensive solution, check Pinnacle - they consistently rank at the top of the list every year for home studio type solutions for movie editing programs.

However, all that said, believe it or not your best solution might be what you already have on your system - Cyberlink's PowerDirector 7 was PC Magazine's "Editor's Choice" for movie editing software program of 2008, and comes with the HDX.

 

In case anyone is looking for an ExpressCard Compact Flash (CF) reader for their HDX, I just purchased this high-speed UDMA 0-6 supported reader off ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ExpressCard-54-CF-Card-Reader-support-Sandisk-Extreme-F_W0QQitemZ220298285287QQihZ012QQcategoryZ51082QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

Nice thing about it is when installed, it is perfectly flush with the HDX. In other words you can just leave it in all the time, and it looks like it's built in!

It also supports the highest transfer rate cards (like the Extreme 4 and Ducati Edition Sandisk cards) for moving those big ol' 12 megapixel files to your HDX!

 

Hello everyone, I came across this place through an engine search last night.
I've had an HDX since last March, and it's been nothing but issue after issue with it.
The first one I got, was in February, received the box after may problems going through the purchasing process, the system booted up great and seemed to run ever so smoothly.
I left the files and settings transfer wizard running between it and my desktop working overnight.
In the morning, it was all done and both systems were working good.
I left them both on and left for work.
I returned home after a few hours and had to reboot my HDX as prompted by windows, after this, the system no longer booted up, it wouldn't so much as power on either.
Called HP support and they had me do a couple of things like take out the memory and hold down the power button , etc.
After a while they determined that I needed a replacement and so they had me ship them that system.

After a few weeks, I received another one, which was supposed to be new, but didn't really look it.
Anyway.
That is the one I have now, like I mentioned earlier, I received it in March of this year, and it worked fine up until the time I had to go to Kuwait/Iraq, I took real good care of it and it didn't get crushed or anything.

Here's the issue:


The system behaves in a very strange manner, the quicktouch buttons seem to have a mind of their own, they would launch the quickplay suite so I had to uninstall it. The volume controls in particular are what's the most annoying, from time to time sometimes only once in 4 days, sometimes all day for two days, the volume will either go all the way up and refuse to move from there, or all the way down, the mute will toggle on and off.
These issues also make themselves present when playing any audio or video media, with whatever player I use, be it WMP, iTunes VLC, you name it, the media will skip, pause play the same songs, etc, just very erratic behaviour, almost as if the system were possessed .

The quicktouch lights also come and go as they please.

I ran numerous antvirus and antispyware scans and nothing came from that.

I went as far as to format the HDD and reinstall everything with the help of the recovery disks.

This did nothing.

At one point I finally gave up and called HP, they sent me a box out to Iraq for me to ship the HDX back in and so I did.
Many weeks passed and I kept in touch with my case managers, they kept telling me that they were waiting on parts.
Now, when I sent the box, I gave this a very detailed explanation of all the symptoms, and all they did when they got it, was reinstall the OS...

I was extremely frustrated to say the least when I found out that not only had they ignored the numerous detailed explanations I had given them, but that they also had replaced no parts nor managed to solve the problem.

As a matter of fact, they might have made it worse, as they took up my time, and somehow managed to install the wrong video drivers and LAN/WLAN ones too.

I called them again and they said that they would send me another box, I had to make a trip to the US, which is where I am now, but at this point I feel that they will not solve my problem.

I was certain that given the fact that I had uninstalled/reinstalled everything, that it had to be due to a hardware failure, but now I just don't know what to think.

So here I have this super expensive laptop that is great at playing videogames and surfing the web, as well as photoshop, but I can't really watch media nor play music on...

Also, as of two days ago, the fingerprint reader is not being recognized...
I've followed the advice that was given to another person here, uninstalled both programs that deal with it and reinstalled them, but when I get to the fingerprint reader recognition wizard, i just get a message saying that it is not connected and that I should...connect it. The windows logon screen also tells me that it's not connected, the device manager shows it's up and running.


I apologize for the super long post, does anyone have any insight?

 

JF,

Uh - actually Blu-Ray problems with the HDX aren't firmware related. I've covered that several times in previous posts both here and on Blu-Ray.com for people with HP systems. It's also not in the video drivers either, nor would one expect it to be.

The problem lies in older installed versions of QuickPlay (3.6 and earlier) which was coded to run older versions of the Blu-Ray standard. All anyone needs to do is to update QuickPlay to 3.7 with the embedded QP update feature in the program (click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of QP, then select Update). HP HDX Support pages are still showing the 3.6 version, which will work, but not always with newer disks that are using the current BD standard.

Even though HP lists a firmware update as a solution on its Blu-Ray issues page, the firmware update in question (for the Sony/Optiarc BC-5500A drive) has never been uploaded, and you'll get nothing but lunacy and bad advice from HP if you call their support line and tell them that. One of them even tried to get me to update WinDVD on my system - which of course doesn't come with the HDX.

For those thinking about using an OEM firmware update from Sony, one, it won't work (the update is coded to stop if it detects a 3rd party firmware already installed) because HP modifies the firmware and the BD playback software (Cyberlink's PowerDVD) to run on their systems, just like all other vendors do. If you try to force an OEM firmware update on a 3rd party modified drive, you'll at least wind up not being able to use it, at worst you'll probably fry it completely.

Of course I'm assuming that the BD problems you're referring to are the usual ones with playback, and not Content Protection (HDCP) problems, which usually occur if you try and playback BD movies in a cloned/dual/multiple display configuration. HDCP won't let you playback BD content in a multi-display configuration - you MUST select the external display as the notebook primary display in the NVIDIA CP, then it'll work without problem. You also have to redirect the sound from your Sound options by selecting HDMI or SPDIF as the default speaker setting if you're using an HDMI-HDMI cable or you'll just get audio from your HDX speakers.

Another "problem" that isn't a problem is Menu selection while playing BD content - you have to use the dockable remote or your arrow keys to select most menu tabs. However, with the release of QP 3.7 I think that's changed some.

If there was something else specific to BD issues re-post it - there hasn't been any BD problems to date I haven't been able to deal with, since HP left me in the lurch when I first got mine. Not that I can't fix my own systems like many of us here, but it'd be nice to actually deal with someone who knows the system instead of how to use a database. Actually, scratch that - they're not even any good at doing that.

 

It looks to me as an assembly problems. Probably there is sth wrong with the buttons plate which is above keyboard but under the surface. You can try to disassemble the laptop slightly to check.

 

I could do that, no problem.
See I am an electronics technician myself, and wanted to do this from the very beginning, but I figured it's always best to go with the "specialists"
I guess I'll open it once I get back to my shop in Iraq, and if I see something wrong.
Is it hard ordering parts?

 

Thank you CyberVision. I didn't see your post until now and unfortunately, I've already placed an order for the Vegas Movie Studio. I have many video clips of family outings/vacations that are collecting dust since it's difficult to view. I basically wanted a software that can put a decent video clips together without spending too much money. I had deleted the PowerDirector 7 when I received the HDX. I'll check to see if the program disc came with the system and give it a try.
Thanks again .

 

Thanks for posting this ! I'm an amateur photographer and it takes forever to transfer images using my current USB card reader. And you have to take the darn thing along with you wherever you go. I need one of these !

 

There is talk in the Linux kernel world that they are optimizing some of the file systems to be fast on SSD devices. Most file systems ( ie FAT, NTFS, others) were never designed for direct access. They were designed to segment data into clusters, etc.

Just another reason to use Linux rather than Windows.

 

Any other suggestions on what I could or should do?

 

Hi, i have some a problem with closing my HP HDX, it dosent close very well, it does not remain hooked, and don´t know if it close like that or if is a problem of my HDX.

Thanks, sory for my bad english