HP Spectre 13T-3000

OK, thanks............ now I know how to ck my CPU speed..... What can I run or do to see what my max CPU speed really is ?????
thanks
tom

 

I uninstalled from programs in control panel, after I've got the exclamation item, I went to the CPPC install folder (uncompressed off course, you could see the drivers in one of the folders) and simply did a driver update... I didnt have any problem, maybe you can force the driver to update.
Till today my laptop is working mostly flawlessly (take this with a grain of salt, HP should solve the problem, I have even open a ticket with quality department and they told me that will investigate the issue, time to find a solution, 1 to 3 months ) and the issue seems solved. The cpu scales from 0.7ghz to 3ghz normally.
It runs a bit faster than Macbook pro 2.5 i5, even the video.

The screenshots:






NOTE 1: The driver I used: http://www60.zippyshare.com/v/82329352/file.html

FINAL NOTE: check this start menu: http://www.reviversoft.com/start-menu-reviver/
Great for our touch screen model, I replaced my startisback+ with this one...

 

wPrime209 is a free performance tool. It should cause your system to use maximum computing power. Open Task Manager, Performance Tab and then start wPrime209. Arrange the windows so you can see CPU speed. You should see the speed start at about ,76 GHz and then increase to about 2,58 GHz as wPrime209 runs.

Good luck.

Jim

 

I've received my laptop and so far so good. The screen has almost no backlight bleeding. Two minor issues are that they touchpad jiggles a bit and the metal plate for the bottom "clicks" below the touchpad as if it keeps popping above the metal of the edge occasionally. Both are very forgivable.

I have two questions though, is it possible to disable the backlight LED key on F5 and what browser are you guys using? I've got the QHD display and my browser of choice, Chrome, looks terrible. The text is all fuzzy. If tried disabling auto-scaling and other tricks but then it becomes too small to read. Currently using Internet Explorer which surprisingly is decent, but I miss my Android integration.

 

Kudos for all of your great information. Thank you for all the effort you put into the post. There eere a few thumbnails I couldn't read on my gs4 even zoomed way in so I will check them out when I get home. Really like the looks of the start menu alternative you found. Really seems like you can custom design the U/I with part W7, part W8 "modern" (I'll take mostly the former, thank you, but mixing a few live tiles is appealing.

Welcome aboard! You will clearly be a great addition to this already-superb thread.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

Glad to hear you're happy with the Spectre 13t. I noticed slightly loose "clacky" touchpad in the beginning but have had mine more than 3 months and never even notice it. The other issue, with the bottom plate is a defect that some have encountered. As you say, it is minor so it may be best to stick with it since overall things are good.

You can turn off the F5 keyboard backlight LED with an Alt-A. As for browsers, I've been a Firefox addict for years so haven't dealt with Chrome's scaling issue, though have read about it frequently here. You might want to search the thread because I vaguely recall a workaround for Chrome at QHD. Seems hard to imagine Google would not hard code a fix for this as popular as ultra high resolution has become. Hopefully someone who knows more will respond to your question.

Welcome! It's really a great computer and this is an excellent owners 'thread.
Best, Jeff

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

no, I do not wish to overclock it....... my specs for I5 4200u 1.60 shows it has turbo speed of 2.29 I can only get it to run 1.58 which is ok, but cant get it to go any higher, I am even running Wprime 290 and still no increase in speed
.

 

If I'm not wrong, QHD is more and less 222 dpi, I tested Chrome in my lap that is FHD (166 dpi) and Chrome its not blurred at all, personally I use Firefox with the extension fontdpi set at 166...

have you tried this in Chrome:

1. Open Chrome, type “chrome://flags” into the url field.
2. Search for “HiDPI Support”.
3. Change to “Enabled”.
4. Restart Chrome.

Have this solved your problem?... check even if it using the correct agent, in some site it is recognized as IOS...

 

Well as promised, I cracked open our laptop with 3 tasks to perform: replace the Canadian bilingual keyboard with a US layout keyboard, replace the CPU thermal paste, and replace the 128 GB SSD with a Crucial M500 480 GB SSD. I had a major screw-up on one of the three. Guess which one!

1. Keyboard: after uninstalling the back cover, the battery, the WiFi card, the CPU heatsink and fan, the motherboard, I got down to the keyboard. Geez! The thing is held down by a gazillion screws. Actually, there is a backplate on the keyboard that is held in place by 12 screws (Philips #000) and the keyboard is held down by 45 more screws. With that finally over I discovered a major screw-up: my Canadian HP Spectre 13-3018ca has (of course!) a different grid of holes, designed for the bilingual (and probably UK/European) keyboard, so my US keyboard can't fit into the holes. Dremel? No way. I could buy a US top cover. ARGH!

2. The original thermal paste on the CPU was very thick and flaky. It seemed really dry. I easy removed the majority of it with Q-Tips and then used ArctiClean to remove the rest from both dies (CPU and smaller GPU) and from the heatsink. I then applied a thin layer of Antec'sFORMULA 7 Nano Diamond Thermal Compound. It's not easy to spread, but it has worked well for me in the past.

3. Before the disassembly I booted Clonezilla (Ubuntu based 64-bit Alternative Stable build) from a USB flash drive and made an image of the original 128GB SanDisk SSD to an external hard drive. No problem booting even in Secure Boot mode. Press ESC immediately after powering on and then select the USB flash drive. Note, in this version of Clonezilla you have to log in as "user" with password "live" and then start Clonezilla from the command line with "sudo clonezilla". Not too hard. I ran Clonezilla in Expert mode, but selected all of the default options.After the image was complete I was back at the command line. I shut down with the command "sudo poweroff". I also made a Recovery USB drive and used Windows 8.1's System Image Backup (Control Panel > File History > System Image Backup) function to write a Windows version of a system image to the USB hard drive (all partitions selected). Lots of backups.

I had purchased an M.2/SATA adapter and decided to try cloning the 128GB SSD straight to the new one. I again ran in Expert mode. This time I chose to not expand the partitions. I wanted to copy the partitions exactly as they are on the original SSD. I figured that I would expand the Windows (C partition later in Windows' Disk Management. When I reassembled the laptop the last thing I did was replace the original SSD with the new Crucial M500 480GB SSD. This drive is the same "2280" size as the original, so there was no problem. I booted my USB flash drive again and this time Windows booted right up the first time with no issues.

I ran into an issue with the Recovery partition. It was between my C: partition and the rest of the SSD. I wanted to keep the Recovery partition (only 16GB), but I couldn't figure out how to move it. I couldn't then get GParted to boot from a USB flash drive in order to move the partition. I tried MiniTool Partition Wizard (free Home Edition, recommended on HP forums), but it could not move the Recovery partition either. Finally, I used the HP Support Assistant (>Storage, Backup, and Recovery > Recovery > HP Recovery to delete the Recovery partition (16 GB in size). This left a partition named "OEM PARTITION". Afterwards I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to create a 16GB partition at the end of the SSD and then expanded C: to use up all the free space. Later, I used Clonezilla to rewrite the RECOVERY partition to the new 16GB partition, but I do not know yet if it is usable.

Once I figure out how to upload images with thumbnails, I'll post some pictures.

 

In my desktop I prefer startisback+ but in this laptop with touch screen I prefer reviver, they will improve this menu even better on may...

For the other side about the issue CPPC, even if you get any error in event log the processor will do the scalling mostly well or at the first sight is doing it... this scaling is remembering me Android with its governors....

Another useful program for me is HOTKEYCONTROL ( Hotkeycontrol - Home) for creating some hotkey combinations, for example when I execute Total Commander with a hotkey or changing something in the keyboard layout, for example the "ins" in the 13-3010 is behind printscreen (what the hell has HP in its head!!), key mapping could be done by sharpkeys too.

Another useful stuff, want to check by eye if your device cover the full SRGB color gammut?... open the file in the attachment, if you device cover full SRGB you shouldnt see any white in the screen, my screen's lap is covering like 98% of srgb, only small white I can see, I can measured it with
Spyder too, so its mostly at the same level of the Macbook pro's screen

 

Thank you for taking the time to post your experience! I'm sure it will be very useful for a lot of people.

1) I know many asked about replacing the keyboard, so your findings about the different grid of holes is very important.

2) Let us know as you start using your spectre again if you think the thermal paste replacement made a difference

3) I am not very familiar with this kind of procedures. You mentioned that you had a M.2 SATA adapter and were able to clone directly from the original to your Crucial SSD. How did you connected the crucial to the laptop??
Can anyone confirm if the recovery partition is to the "right" side of the C: partition in the original system?? That is kinda weird, usually they are the "first" most "left" partition. Either way is good to know that you successfully changed the SSD!!! I am getting the 128 GB eventually and upgrading in the future to a bigger SSD like you did

4) Was the spectre easy to disassemble?? Many screws to do regular maintenance - cleaning the fan, changing thermal paste ?
Did you notice any warranty stickers that you had to break in order to open its guts ??? It would be great if everyone could crack it open without losing the warranty.

 

Hello, I tried to take the back cover without success, in mine seems that I missing something, after taking out the eight torx screws, the cover still remain attached, how do you removed the cover?...

Anyone had success in changing the wifi card?... mine comes with N 7260 that is 2.4 Ghz only and I want a card with 5 ghz.

Why do you need to clone the partition?... I have made a clean install of Win 8.1 with success...

 

Great post and I'll try out that start menu when I get back from travel (I'm currently using Classic Shell). I followed your instructions and the CPPC driver installed without running the Setup program. Unfortunately, my Event Log is still showing the CPPC error, associated with the system firmware (I'm assuming this means the BIOS). What BIOS version do you have?

 

Yeah, my bad. wPrime will not cause the CPU speed to go higher than 2.3 GHz. Maybe limited by CPU temperature. I have a simple benchmark that does go into turbo mode which gives a CPU speed of 2.6 GHz. If you are limited to 1.6 GHz, try running wPrime with the AC adapter plugged in. If it still won't go to 2.3 GHz, you will have to uninstall Intel CPPC in Programs and Features and disable the CPPC driver in Device Manager. This is a HP bug which HP has not yet acknowledged.

Jim

 

My Bios is F13, besides that how is the scaling of the cores? the error messages are no so important if the cores scales the frequencies... in idle should be 0.7ghz and if you run a benchmark should be near at top, if this happens, you have mostly resolved the issue till HP give us a final solution.

 

After you remove the 8 Torx screws the bottom cover is held in place by plastic clips along the back and front edges. The front is hard to grab so I grabbed the back edge, on either side of the display hinge (near the corners) and pulled/squeezed towards the front of the laptop. I felt and heard the two clips (one on each side of the hinge release. The back edge of the bottom cover popped up a bit and I was able to carefully lift it. After that I carefully held the back edge and tried to pull the over away from the front edge of the laptop. This released the 4 clips along the front edge. That's it. When I reassembled the case I did everything in the opposite order and pressed down (gently) over each of the clips and felt/heard them click back into place. Then I screwed in the 8 Torx screws.

I did not change the WiFi card.

I cloned the entire drive because I did not want to re-install Windows. We've had it since January and I was being lazy.

 

1) This morning I ordered the US Top Cover ($69 + shipping) from Amazon (actually DEC Trader), so I'll be back inside my laptop when that arrives (probably 2 weekends from now). I'll have to transfer everything to the new cover. Fun!

2) Of course I stupidly did not run any stress tests to record before and after temperatures. The fan has come on a bit, but I couldn't say if it's more or less than before. I'll post some temperatures later.

3) Yeah, despite all the detail in my post I did leave out information about the adapters I used for the cloning. I placed the original SSD in an adapter I bought for $15 from Amazon. It's the
ZTC (Zeus Technologies & Computing) "M.2 SSD to SATA III 6.0Gb/s Aadapter" (the second "a" in "Aadapter" is on the label in several places). I am not permitted to post images yet or I would. This adapter converts the M.2 connector to standard SATA data and power connectors, like you find on any 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives. I connected the ZTC adapter to my trusty Kingwin USI-2535, ad USB 2.0 to SATA and IDE adapter. I've used this for several years and it's never let me down. I plugged the Kingwin adapter (connected to the ZTC adapter) in the left USB port and plugged the USB flash drive with Clonezilla into the right USB port. Clonezilla is a text based application so there is no need for a mouse (besides, there's the touchscreen and touchpad for that). Don't be intimidated by Clonezilla. I selected almost all the defaults even though I selected to run it in Expert mode. I bet Beginner mode would have worked as well, but I wanted to make sure that it did not install Grub (a bootloader used by Linux) onto the new drive or expand any partitions. It's not hard. Just make sure to use the Ubuntu-based "Alternative Stable" version so that it boots while the laptop's BIOS is set to "Secure Mode". Power on, press "ESC" immediately, and choose to boot from the USB flash drive.

I plugged my original SSD back into the laptop (via the aforementioned adapters) and both Disk Management and MiniTool Partition Wizard show the Recovery partition listed to the right of the Windows partition. Again, I am not permitted to post attachments and I cannot upload images. Send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send you the images, if you like.

 

Two quick questions before pulling the trigger on the spectre:

1. New generation CPUs are to be coming out in a couple months I believe. It seemed well worth it to wait between 3rd and 4th gen - is the next iteration supposed to be a significant improvement over the haswells?

2. Is there a real world noticeable performance difference between the i5 and i7? does that decision impact battery life?
I am going to get the QHD, 8GB 256ssd - I'd like the thing sooner rather than waiting for it to be built but would ideally get the i7 but it looks like that may take a couple weeks longer to get than the i5 "best value" package that I assume is in stock. My uses will be moderately complex excel workbook/spreadsheets, I view a good deal of plans/drawings but 90% of the time I am viewing multiple PDFs of larger format drawings as opposed to cad files. I don't game or really do much photo/video editing at all.

any/all opinions appreciated

 

Well, we all have opinions and a--h---s , but here's my view of the former. I have read that Broadwell processors are more like 5-7 months away and, for the use cases you cite I can't imagine what benefit you would get from waiting - unless 8 hrs battery life isnt enough and the HD 4400 igp will preclude anything you want to do - that you didn't mention. Waiting for technology is always beneficial financially (the now-current models will go on closeout sales) and for performance (you'll get the next gen hdwe for the same price as today's. That said, taken to its extremes you would never buy anything! This Spectre is a honey and if HP is running their 20% ocf sale it's a no-brainer.

As for cpu choice, conventional wisdom is that going from a dual core ULT i5 to i7 will get you at most a 15% performance advantage (on synthetic benchmarks; likely less in real world tasks. It will also get you a bit more heat which will lead to more fan noisdtand will nick 15-30 mins off your battery life. Oh, and it will cost you an extra, what, $150?

Personally I got the i7 in mine and its the only decision I regret: some pain for no gain, especially the way I use mine. The main reason I ordered it was that the total price was so low I wasn't thinking that $1,150 maxxed out may be a steal, but $999 for functionality the same product (but with the i5) would have been, like, grand larceny, lol! If there is one reason to get the i7 (in addition to a need for max cpu power) it might be resale value. People buying 1-2 gens old tech are reassured if it had max performance at the time - even though C2D cpus provide more than enough performance for the majority of Ultrabook users (that would be an unsolicited opinion!)

I'm curious to see what others will say.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

1. Personally I wont care of next gen processors, they should be more energy efficient and its ok, but take into consideration that motherboard chipsets and its drivers should be polished a bit, for better drivers expect one year after release. My lap is Core i7 (I had no option for i5) FHD display and yesterday I've got 9 hours of browsing internet... for me its ok.

2. This is personal preference, when I chose my lap I was trying to find a model that is not QHD, for me that resolution is no sense (I'm a pro photographer) because you get the same video card for QHD or FHD and of course the FHD will be faster. Windows is not so good at scalling, I could find little scaling issues with FHD so expect to be worse on QHD. I dont know how is the color rendition and brightness of the QHD panels, with FHD you get 98% of sRGB with good brightness but you said you are not interested in photography, so this wont be so important for you but you will get larger drawing in pdf, so expect a better speed at rendering pdfs on FHD screen.
Core i7 over i5 I think the difference is marginal, both are 2 core processors, one at 1.6ghz and the other at 1.8ghz... if you think that 0.2ghz of difference could make a big difference go for the i7

 

May I ask what program is being used for the second to last screen shot? The one that is displaying the system information and temperatures?

Thanks!

 

Thanks So if both QHD and FHD use the same video card am I right in assuming hooking up a larger monitor to the laptop could be the same high QHD resolution on the external monitor? (I mean even if I purchased the FHD) Screen real estate is important for me especially on the external while looking at large format pdf drawings?

 

Awesome thanks for the thoughts! OCF sale? derp is that a running sale or code to get the 20% off??

 

This the program: Speccy - System Information - Free Download

I put the mean temperature value of both cores on the tray icon

 

If I'm not wrong, the max resolution of the Intel 4400 HD is 3200 x 2000@60Hz, on HDMI it could be 4096 x 2304@24hz... on the lap you are limited by the panel only.

 

First of all, thank you to all of your posting, all of the information has been extremely valuable and helpful as I've been struggling to figure out what my next work/home machine would be. My current laptop is a 6+ year old Dell XPS M1330, and I've reluctantly come to believe that nothing like this (13", light, sturdy, latest gen CPU and discrete graphics) is really available from a mainstream manufacturer offering a long warranty, without spending over $2K. So, dropping the discrete graphics got me finally to this machine. I was all set last night figuring on going the FHD route, as I tried one at Best Buy and the screen was really nice, much better than what I have now, and I've found that if connected to a TV to stream something other than what I have TV apps for, having the same resolution as the TV leads to better video performance. Plus, I read somewhere that the FHD screen resulted in the great battery life, and that the QHD system would be in the sub six hour range versus nine plus for the FHD. Has anyone run a battery test program on both types of systems for a sort of apples to apples comparison?
I'm tempted by the I5 for longer battery life, but one of the programs I use does use some graphics processing (they recommend 1GB discrete, obviously this is out, but I run it now on my M1330), and I think I also read somewhere that the I7 might add some graphics benefit, even though it is the same 4400 GPU.
Can anyone speak to this? Or by chance does anyone out there use LOGOS software with this machine? I hook my laptop up to a second monitor at home and work (extend the desktop mode) so if anyone has experience with that, good or bad, I would appreciate it. I'm about to research what the best deals are for this machine right now, it seems some of you have received better prices than what I can find now.
Thanks again for all of the help, I spent the better part of the day reading through this thread, and am looking forward to being part of the spectre community for hopefully the next 4 years, and as long as it lasts like my dell, i would be happy with 6 years

 

In my experience, I prefer the feedback from the people than battery tests, this test does not reflect your day by day use of the computer, Apple say a Macbook pro up to 9 hours wireless web under Apple testing, the result is when I tested the Macbook pro the battery arrives to two hours... so here there are no miracles, comparing i5 to i7 I dont think there is a difference because the battery depends on how much juice you pull from the device... if your software elevates the clock of the cpu or the performance of the GPU, it will consume more battery (here 10 min more and less comparing i5 to i7 does not make any difference) and maybe you will finish having no more than 3 hours on battery or less as an example...
All the laptops I tested have some kind of flaw, today is better to go with the one that has less flaws and I think is the case of this HP 13 even if my experience with HP in the past was not the best.

 

I meant to say "20% off" It's normally a coupon code. They have had s running 20% off promotion for easily half the time the product has been selling in the product . You can Google for it, simply call hp and ask if they'd honor it an/or wait to see if there are members bere who will know. If there is no current coupon deal and HP won't give the discount (they sometimes do even when no promotion is running) you may want to give it a week or two as they are constantly re-running i. I would estimate at least 2/3 of the owners on this forum got it for 20% off.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

Likewise I don't believe the QHD screen takes more than 20-30 mins max. My QHD easily gets 8 hrs for light work (web, Office, screen at 3/4 bright) and professional reviews have gotten the same result.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

Has anyone tried a non-powered USB 3 hub with the Spectre? I'm looking for a simple 4-port hub, but I want to make sure it will run a 2.5" external HDD that doesn't have external power, a software dongle (which probably doesn't take much), and 2 other items (audio device and another external HDD) that have their own AC adapters.

ONE MORE THING. I can't seem to find a way to change the behavior of the F12/Airplane Mode button. I want to be able to turn off my WIFI by pressing the button, but not my bluetooth. I did a few searches and found nothing. Any ideas?

 

Do anyone that has wifi card 7260 N and tried to change it to 7260AC?... the wifi card that comes with my model is only 2.4ghz thus slow, I get only 10 Mbytes/s when with my smartphone at 5 Ghz I get 25 MBytes/s...

 

I've done as you stated, but it didn't change the fuzziness of everything. I'm not sure where to check the agent for the Windows Chrome, I know this is an option for Android. I tried Firefox but found that it was VERY poor in scrolling with 2 fingers on the touchpad. I will try it again with the dpi setting.

Thanks!

 

Try using the beta version of chrome. High dpi support is now controlled by a registry setting stored in[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome\Profile]. The flag is called "high-dpi-support" and is a DWORD. The flag can be set to "0" (disabled),"1" (enabled) and "2" (default). If the setting is not found, then it defaults to "2"/default, which for now means the same as disabled. Set it to 1 to enable.

Also, under chrome flags enable the direct write flag as well, this will improve the font spacing in high resolution.

 

I'm not the correct person to answer about your issue because I have a FHD display and I dont have any of the issues you have on Firefox and Chrome (both are very sharp), included the 2 fingers touchpad scroll, I see no difference in the scrolling between my lap and a Macbook pro, slight better on Mac but the difference is marginal.

What about the video drivers?... have you installed the last drivers from Intel?... if not, uninstall completely the drivers you have and install the one from Intel.

 

I've updated to Chrome Beta, but I don't see anything in the registry under Chrome\Profile. Should I create this flag?

 

I've had the HP utility update my driver for video. Currently I'm running v.10.18.103833 released 4/18/2014. The Intel site found newer. I'm updating now.

EDIT: The Intel driver won't install as it's not been validated for this computer. Weird.

 

I've gone through the same thing you have. I did the Chrome registry entry (I actually had to create it in regedit) and it lasted until the recent Chrome Dev channel which completely broke everything (and I'm not the only one complaining) so that it is unusable. I use Firefox and to improve the scrolling download the "Yet Another Smooth Scrolling" add-on and adjust it to your liking. Mine is now even better and easier to use than IE. Firefox also doesn't suffer from any scaling issues. I'm actually using the Nightly version but everything should be fine on the stable version as well.

 

Just pulled the trigger, chose the 13T-3000 over the other ultra-books comparable:

Spectre 13 Ultrabook
Product number: 902170_1_E5J34AV

• Windows 8.1 64
• 4th generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U Processor + Intel(R) HD Graphics(For 8 GB Memory)
• Onboard 8GB DDR3 System Memory
• 13.3-inch diagonal Vivid QHD Infinity LED-backlit Display (2560x1440) Touchscreen
• 256GB Flash Solid State Drive
• No Additional Office Software
• Free Upgrade to 1-yr McAfee LiveSafe service(TM)
• 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• No Internal DVD or CD Drive
• Backlit Keyboard
• Included 2 Year Warranty
• Webcam and Microphone
• 802.11 AC WLAN and Bluetooth(R) [2x2]

 

Yes, in needs to be created.

 

The chrome dev channel is temporarily broken, however the code has been fixed and it should be pushed out in the next week. The beta channel is working.

 

Were you able to get an additional discount over the standard "popular configuration" discount on hp.com?

Thanks! I hope you love the computer, pretty sure I'll be ordering one as soon as I figure out costs.

 

Thanks. I'll try Chrome again next week...will stick with Firefox for now. I've always been one of those "bleeding edge" guys so I run the beta versions of Java and Flash and Chrome and Firefox are my main options that can use both (IE now has the embedded Flash and doesn't update frequently enough).

 

I wasn't able to use a 16GB flash drive to create the recovery media/move the recovery partition to, thought it would be enough but I think it is off by a tiny bit because of what was actually useable on the flash drive.

Is it ok to use a USB3 flash drive or should I stick with USB2 just to be safe?

 

That's strange. Did you use the HP Assistant to make the Recovery Media? I used a Lexar 16GB flash drive (formatted (FAT32) capacity = 14.9 GB) and the files occupy 11.6 GB, leaving 3.22 GB free. I believe it's a USB 2.0 drive.

 

I nutted up and created the registry object. It works like a charm! Text is crisp again. + Rep for you!

 

For the people that want to dismount the back cover to change the harddrive or the wifi card, here is a video that explain very well how to do it, I have done it to my HP 13-3010LA without any problem, now planning to change th wifi card to 7260AC, very good video!

Hp Spectre 13t-3000 Hard drive upgrade

 

Why dont you boot your machine with Acronis True Image Home 2014 usb ( Booteable ISO)?, you can backup the partition in any media to recover it later. I use this software everytime.

 

Nice video. My laptop's bottom cover did not come off as easily as the one in the video. I had to compress the rear edge a very small amount to disengage the 2 plastic clips that were on the underside, before I could raise the rear edge of the cover. There are 4 other clips on the front edge, too, that have to disengage before that edge can come away. Finally, I used a Torx T5 screwdriver for the screws, as instructed by the HP's Maintenance and Service manual.


Sent from my nook HD+ using Tapatalk

 

A few of us addressed this a "long" time ago before the thread got big. I'm only running a few of HP drivers. My Bluetooth, Wifi, Rapid Storage, Rapid Start, Video, Management Engine, Chipset, etc. drivers are all the Intel ones. You can use the auto update, but i prefer to browse through Intel's site and download the driver package itself (just hunt down the 4400 driver for Windows 8.1) To get the newer Intel video driver to install you need to go into Programs (Control Panel) and uninstall the Intel Graphics Driver. Restart the computer and go into Device Manager. Find the Video card (it will probably have restored an Intel driver without the app), choose update driver, choose from list of devices, and select the Microsoft basic adapter (or something like that). You might need to restart the computer and the graphics will be very bright and not necessarily super sharp. Now, you can install the Intel drivers and shouldn't get the error. Your FHD or QHD screen will look gorgeous again. Hope this helps.

 

Yes I used the HP Assistant, seems my recovery partition is over 14.5GB in size and my usable space on USB drive was 14.5. I have not installed many programs or apps yet so I wonder why my partition is so high, maybe because I have 8.1 Pro and I did do the Update 1 before I tried to create the USB drive.