HP WebCam and Fan

Hello ...

HP health check shows that there is an error in the HP webcam(0013) .. but it's still functioning when i use it in the QuickPlay or muvee... why is that ??

my second problem.. simply my fan is ALWAYS on ... whether I'm doing heavy tasks or not at all ... Task Manager shows the CPU Percentage at least 40% ... is this normal ? by the way I was using f.16 BIOS when this problem occured ... some friends advised me to downgrade to f.15 BIOS

Thank you.

 

I don't bother with the health check feature since it's not really needed and I did a clean install of Vista. Having said that, the Vista driver for the webcam is still not completely perfect...it seems to work for some, while others like myself can't get it to work reliably.

If you have the f.16 or later BIOS that might explain it. The newer BIOS tries to reduce heat and noise by running the fans at low speeds, but I think they're always on. My dv6265 has the f.15 BIOS and the fan only comes on once in a while...and it's very quiet until I stress the computer with some serious number crunching, that's when the fan becomes audible.

As for the CPU at 40%, that's normal with a new setup since Vista does a lot of indexing and defrags the drive for the first couple of days. Once your computer has finished all the indexing, drive activity and CPU should drop off.

With a clean install, my Core2Duo T5500 idles around 0-1%. With the factory setup, it was around 3-4% due to all the extra services and processes running in the background (I couldn't "feel" the difference between the two).

 

Thank you KSC for you assistance...

I downgraded to F.15 (the one which the laptop originally came with) ... the CPU percentage droped and sometimes it reaches 0% ... really i am confused about this BIOS thing ... I was using F.16 for a while and didn't encounter this problem .. why now I have this problem using the F.16 which ended with downgrading to F.15 ....

I used the recovery disks for a complete system recovery 3 days ago ... should i make the clean visa install and avoid the factory settings?

 

I don't know either, but f.15 works for me so I'm keeping it until something better comes along.

If you don't need all the extra bloatware with the factory setup, then follow the GUIDE to do a clean install of Vista. You can always re-install some of the programs afterwards, like MS Works, Norton Antivirus, etc., if you want to use them.

Personally, I did a clean install and haven't installed any of the extra software since I already have better programs like Office, Photoshop, Avast Antivirus, Nero, etc.

Vista supports most of the hardware natively too, and automatic updates takes care of everything else except the Quickplay/DVD buttons (which I don't use anyway). The only drivers I needed were the lightscribe software for burning disc labels, and the webcam driver. Everything else uses the Microsoft drivers and works perfectly.

 

Thanks KSC for your reply....

I have a question about how the computer starts up ... it takes a long time to start up ..and after the welcome screen ..a blank screen shows up and remain at most 2 min. .. i tried to see the msconfig.. which parts shouldn't i have it on the start up ..

Thank you.