HP Pavilion dv6000z woes

Hello,

First off, I've been browsing around the site and reading some of the reviews, and I must say, I really like this site. It is very extensive and comprehensive.

Anyway, I bought an HP Pavilion dv6000z this past July, and as soon as I got it, one of the first things I did was reformat and reinstall Windows to remove HP's bloatware. Shortly there after, I started running into problems. First off, whenever I listened to audio, it would randomly skip playback. I am running Vista x64, and it seemed to be effecting all non-native x64 apps, like Winamp, Foobar2000, WMP x86. The skipping problem did not happen in one app: Windows Media Player x64, so I'm basically forced to using that. (More on this later).

A few months went by, then in January, I was heading home from school, and like normal, I unplug everything from the laptop (power cord, mouse, ethernet, etc) and put the laptop to sleep. When I get home about an hour later, I recover it from sleep, and find out I can't get a wireless connection. My desktop that also is wireless was working just fine, so I knew it wasn't my router. Then I realize that the little red LED for the wireless is red. I flip the switch, and it stays red. I flip it a few more times, hoping it would turn blue, and it stays red...

So I reboot, it's still red, so I check the Device Manager, and the wireless LAN is nowhere to be found. I was (and still am) totally confused. I reboot once more, and what do you know, it's blue, and I can connect. Ever since then, the wireless LAN has been acting up. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't. I can't really control it at all. Sometimes I will reboot or go into sleep mode, and it will work, other times it won't. So as long as I can keep it turned on and out of sleep mode, I think I will be fine...

I can remember seeing a very long thread at HP's support forum, and it seems that many others with the dv6000 series had been having the exact same problem that I had. I'd link to it, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

Back to that audio problem... I think it is somehow related to the wireless. When the wireless was either turned off voluntary or not working, the audio skipping seemed to magically fix itself, then when wireless was working, it would start skipping again.

Basically, the skipping was random besides one thing. If I would open Vista's "connect to a network" dialog, and either connect to a network, or scan for a network, the audio would skip every time. Could the audio skipping and wireless problem be related?

Has anyone else with the dv6000 series had these problems?

Specs:
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58 1.9 GHz
2 GB RAM
120 GB HDD
Broadcom 802.11abgn
15.4" LCD 1280x800
Nvidia Geforce Go 7200 256 MB
DVD/RW DL
Vista Ultimate x64

Thanks!

 

i think your wireless card is messed up. you might need to replace it. thts all i can think of from your description. as for your audio, maybe you need a better 64bit driver?

 

I really think that may be the case. Since it is still under warranty, I hope HP can fix it.

As for the audio, I updated to the latest drivers available via Windows Update. HP's site doesn't seem to have any newer drivers.

 

HP Pavilion dv2000/dv6000/dv9000 and Compaq Presario v3000/v6000 Series Notebook PCs - HP Limited Warranty Service Enhancement

Basically the older BIOSes set the fan startup temp too high (55C) and the rest of the notebook cooked while waiting for the CPU to get hot enough to trigger the fan. The current BIOS runs the fan slow and quiet 24x7. Broadcom WiFi cards have a particularly high thermal failure rate. That sounds like what happened to you. Flash in the current BIOS, but it's probably too late to help your wireless at this point. I'd check the link and contact HP.

 

Thanks for that. So HP should fix it for free as long as it's still under warranty, tight?

And the laptop does get very hot sometimes. When I'm at school, I always leave the air conditioning on and it doesn't get hot there, but at home, it gets very warm. I've actually burnt my fingertips on it once.

 

If you look around the forum, you will notice that the biggest problem with the 6000z series is the wireless card failure problem. I had the same problem on my old dv6000z, and I've read about countless others that had the same problem. Your laptop is still under the year warranty so they'll fix it for free. Also, if you haven't already, I highly recommend buying the extended warranty for your laptop, you still have time to purchase it, so if you haven't I wouldn't wait any longer.

 

Even if it's not under the standard warranty, if it's on the list I linked to above they'll fix it free.

 

this sucks

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=347497