*HP dv4t (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

I've said this somewhere else before but HP laptops deal with heat poorly. Go to any retailer and touch any laptop on display: HP is always hotter, even in their netbooks which are all basically all the same specs. HP makes them to break down. HP never again!!!

I had a Hp 2133 break down due to overheating in 3 months. As did many, many others, HP just waits for the warranty to expire.

In Australia, you could take em to Consumer Affairs-their warranty needs to be consistent with what you paid: if you spent $400, 12 months is ok, if you spend $1400, 12 months is NOT, regardless what THEIR warranty says.

BTW I want to change my hard drive. I opened it up and the drive is wrapped in a black membrane with foil on the underside. It has perforations on the edges. IS this membrane have any electical function or is it just padding?

What temperatures do people's hard drives operate at? Mine is never under 50 degrees Celsius, and I've already had one hard drive replaced 4 months after I got my DV 4.

 

Heat was always a major issue with this laptop. I smelled a burning smoky smell at a few points during the year and some days I had it. I called tech support the first time and was told that unless it was an actual failure of one of the computer components, or the computer, that it wasn't worth sending in for warranty work, as the performance wasn't affected, and of course, I'd be out of a laptop for 4-5 weeks.

my hd was also in that black padding as well. The tech had me remove it to back up files, and I wondered the same thing. If you peel it off it looks to me that it functions to help with heat?

 

You should state your previous history of heat and the burning smell, and that it was happening when it was still under warranty to HP. Its NOT good enough what they've done for you. I've never had any of my Toshibas fail, I only replaced them because they got old.

On closer inspection the black padding is plastic on the outside but foil on the inside. It wraps around to the side body of the hard drive, where the foil is exposed, and is then screwed in to the side of the drive. My guess is that this functions as an earth against build up of static on the underside of the hard drive which has exposed circuitry. Makes sense as that part of the case has air vents, and would sit on your lap, and depending on your clothing you might get a spark jump through.

Well I removed it before I knew any of the above. I wanted to reduce the heat build up, and I reasoned wrapping a hard drive in plastic would make it hotter. I also stuck on some rubber feet on the underside of the laptop to lift the bottom up by about 1/4 inch to improve air flow. Hard drive temperature has gone no higher than 48 degrees C, compared to the 50-60 deg C I was getting. 60 C (140 F) is listed as the maximum operating temperature for the drive I have.

 

I wonder if it's the intel cpu version with the heat problem. My amd version stays at a moderate temp.

The battery still sucks though.

 

In my case its the hard drive that heats the most. For comparison, my GF has just bought a Toshiba laptop, for $600 (half of what I paid for my dv4), and this has the exact same model of hard drive. Its temperature is ALWAYS 10 degrees celcius lower than mine, under identical operating tasks and room temperature. Both the Toshiba and my Dv4 have the intel c2D cpu's

 

does anyone know how to turn the dvd rom drive that we have in the laptop into an external? Is there anything special we need to do?

 

I'm 2 days into my new PC technician job repairing computers and what was I presented with? A lovely dv6000! It is having issues where it just powers off randomly if you even look at it funny, but this is either a 6700 or a 6900 and is AMD-based and is also not included in the "service enhancement". Anyway, I digress..... Seeing how bad HP is at applying thermal paste to a CPU and what it ends up doing to the motherboard/CPU, I decided I'm going to tear down my dv4 and clean things up and put down some Arctic Silver 5 to try and help things out as my dv4 gets uncomfortable sometimes so I'll let you guys know how bad the factory failed at the thermal paste application and how much better things are now.

Also, are there any opinions in regards to tearing the black plastic off the hard drive bracket? I'm sure it would help the heat in the palm rest but I'm concerned about what it does to protect the bottom of the hard drive from dust, liquid, etc.

I'm also planning a few upgrades:
1. Internal TV Tuner
2. 8 GB RAM
3. Blu-ray drive
4. LCD upgrade to LED backlight and WXGA+ resolution
(HP has a WXGA+ LCD w/ LED backlight on the partsurfer site.)
5 (maybe). CPU upgrade from a P8600 to a P9700


I'm going to wait on the hard drive until the 750 GB and 1 TB Toshiba HDDs are released in a few months. The TV tuner should be doable here relatively soon since for the antenna jack and the card itself it'll probably only cost around $50 and the RAM is probably doable 4 GB at a time. Right now the Intel P9700s are selling for around $400 so I'll probably hold off on that for a while. The LCD is a really interesting upgrade for me because I really want a higher res screen and the LED backlight will be nice to have but none of the dv4 models offer a 1440x900 resolution that I can find so I'm not sure if that is a typo on HP's part or what exactly the deal with that thing is but I hope that the listing is right.

Anybody have any input or suggestions I may be forgetting?

Edit: I was reading through the dv4 service manual to find out how different this was from the dv6000 (not very) and it does not list a wxga+ lcd so i'm kind of bummed that maybe partsurfer was wrong but having the led backlighting would still be nice to have. Right now I have the "full glass" screen with a CCFL backlight. Would I have to order a new display assembly as well to fit the new LED backlighting?

 

Regarding the black plastic wrapped around the hard drive: its actually foil on the inside, and I *suspect* it might have some electrical earth function. I tore it off, and yes it cools the hard drive. Not sure if its the right thing in the long run though.

I purchased one of these laptop coolers:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/USB-Power-3-...iewItemQQptZAU_Components?hash=item3a54144438

The hard drive runs 10 degrees celsius cooler now, rarely does it reach 40 degrees.

 

Here's a reference to my thread on hp support forum. http://bit.ly/95P2mH

 

I had the same problem with my hp dv4-1242 tx with 4gb ddr2 ram, intel core2duo t6400 @ 2ghz processor, nvidia geforce 9200gs, wd 320 gb hdd.
Its been more than a year and 2 months since i'v purchased it, so technically its out of warranty. And You known what i somehow managed to revive it myself. Here's a Guide to what i did, Please follow it if you have some fair technical knowledge about hardware and software !

Would like to mention a few more things before i start the guide, my DV4 had a history of overheating issues, which the hp authorised service guys could do little about.And my battery couldn't be replaced under warranty cause the hp authorized guy tells me that my battery serial number does not match with the original battery allocated to my laptop during manufacture ie. they claim my battery has been wrongfully replaced without my prior knowledge, which is highly unlikely cause i never did i leave my laptop unattended nor did i let others use it, i never had strong proof to project my case so i decided to purchase a replacement instead. The other problems i am experiencing are broken/non-functional keys. I can't even log onto my bios cause my f10 key is not functioning due to unknown reasons :S and yes i shall be ordering a backlit dv3000 keyboard and install it on my dv4(i'll post an other guide when i get through with that). Anyways coming to the topic:

I had the exact same problem as rvbert is experiencing. No boot, blank screen, caps lock/num lock led's flashing 4 times followed by a long pause in a loop. Followed up with the hp website for led blink codes (Reference Link: (Link: Troubleshooting LED Blink Codes or Beep Codes During Startup or Boot HP Pavilion dv4-1242tx Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)) and diagnosed it as "graphics controller not functional". I was frustrated, did a lot of googling and found out its become a common fault with almost every laptop with a nvidia chip with insufficient cooling resulting in overheating, regardless of brand. So i decided to open up my laptop and try finding out a way to fix it.

Here's a reference guide to disassemble a dv4t: http://bit.ly/cYVvnr

So i ripped open my laptop, i found a lot of loose cable connections/screws on the motherboard, tightened up each and every thing. Was following the component manual closely, was checking if every part was in the way it was supposed to be. There was a lot of dust accumulation on the heat sink and near the fan. Cleaned and removed the dust. Unplugged the heat sink and cleaned it thoroughly.

Random Reference Pics:

Heat Sink:-



CPU With Factory thermal paste:-



The trick here is to replace the thermal paste with a new set. You can find a step by step guide to replace thermal paste on this link: How To: GPU - Reapply Thermal Paste - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net
What happens if you replace the thermal paste ? Ans: It will absorb more heat and prevents overheating. I used Cooler Master Thermal Compound (HTK-002) (Google for more info). But i would suggest Arctic Silver 5.
After i applied the thermal compound, i put back all the parts, crossed my fingers, and VOILA ! It finally went past post and even the OS booted up without any hassles except for the cmos checksum error caused by the removal of cmos battery. I couldn't believe my luck Was happy !

But my happiness was short lived cause after a few days my laptop started freezing again + the dreaded blue screen :S It used to randomly freeze while i was gaming or browsing. I Put on my thinking cap again, A short tap on the keyboard/palm rest area fixed the blank screen problem at boot (*phew*!) and then later i realized if i used my keyboard more often, the blue screen would appear, but it never froze if i would use the 'on screen keyboard'. So the solution would be some loose connection beneath the keyboard area or replacing the faulty keyboard. Ripped it open again and checked for any loose connections and found none. At first i thought it has to be the faulty keyboard, or some faulty chip on the mb, but then later i found out the thermal compound i used was a dud, it wasn't functioning properly. So now i am planning to replace it with Arctic Silver 5.

I hope those with similar problems would try their luck while following the steps i took to get over the blank screen problem. Will keep you updated on the results of applying Arctic silver 5 and replacing the keyboard.

Regards - Kailash

 

Solved it myself

 

wrong thread

 

I've had my HP DV4t-1400 for almost 2 years now. I was fortunate enough to buy it with a Intel P8600 (Centrino 2 that runs cooler than the T's). I hated this laptop as it was Really Slow (slower than my Pentium 4 desktop running XP, I bought 6 years ago), and the hard drive (and also my left palm) was always getting scorching hot.

I finally decided to do some research to fix both these problems. My first order of business was buying windows 7 home premium (I was running Vista home premium before), and upgrading my harddrive from a 250GB 5400RPM 4 MB cache to a 320GB 7200RPM 8 MB cache. Then, I took my laptop completely apart, and cleaned all components and reapplied Arctic Silver 5.

Before Upgrades:
HD Temperature = 51 - 60 Degrees Celsius
Boot Time = 3 Minutes

Upgrading to Windows 7 (Clean Install) and 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive:
HD Temperature = 47 - 57 Degrees Celsius
Boot Time = 50 Seconds

(Just want to note that when I replaced the HD, I noticed my old HD's edges were a little melted from the intense heat it experienced in the 2 years. This also goes to show that faster hard drives doesn't always mean hotter temperatures. It's better technology. Also, it is very important to only install the HP software you need, and use MSconfig)

Cleanining All Components and applying Arctic Silver 5:
HD Temperature = 43 - 48 Degrees Celsius
CPU & Motherboard Temperaturs went down as well, but I don't know by how much since it was never an issue for me before.

(Taking apart the laptop did not take long at all. Putting it back together took hours since there were so many screws and parts that I had trouble assembling it together correctly, and had to dissemble, re-assemble, dissemble, re-assemble. So, I suggest to be really organized if you attempt to do this.)

I thought that there would not be any need to clean my laptop as I am careful to not get the insides dusty. I was completely wrong, as there was a huge clot of dust on the heatsink, and the fan was really dusty. The factory did a horrid job applying thermal grease on the CPU (alot of it was on the MOBO), and they used thermal pads for my integrated graphics and the two mobo transistor thingy's. There was alot of dust that had accumulated on the thermal pads.

IMO, the hard drive is still running a little too hot. Under the sugggestion of someone who posted on this thread, I bought a Cooling Pad with three fans. Too bad they do not make a cooling pad specifically for this Laptop. All I really need is one fan blowing at the hard drive.

Forgot to add: rip off the black covering for your HD. It protects it from static, etc., but it also locks in the heat. Also, leave in your remote, express card, or slot filler that goes in above your HD (left side). You might think that it will make your laptop run hotter, but I have confirmed that filling the opening will cool your HD (mine was by 2 degrees).

So, I received the cooling pad and got to test it out. The one I bought was this one, which costs me $15. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001QGINY2/ref=oss_product

I use it upside down so that the two horizontal fans are at the bottom of my laptop. Now my HD temperatures are 38 - 40 degrees celsius. With all these tasks, I was able to bring the max HD temperature down 20 degrees celsius, which is an unbelievable improvment. I am, now, very happy with my laptop. I also just found out that my laptop can run Starcraft 2 on the lowest settings (Intel GMA 4500MHD). Nice!

 

Hi guys. Long time reader, first time poster. I have had DV4-1225ee for more than a year now.

I have a question (more like a small request) for Charlie123:
I see you have just cleaned out the fans and replaced the thermal pads with Silver Arctic 5 thermal paste. Could you maybe run 3DMark 2006 (on default settings @ 1280x800) while having the HWMonitor in the background to check the temperatures? (without the cooling pad)

My DV4 is really ovearheating, check my results after the 3DMark 2006 test (default settings @ 1280x800):


You can see the highest values that were achieved during the test. They are really high, especially the GPU, which is at 102C!
The lowest values are those that I have when browsing the internet and stuff like that...

EDIT2: I forgot to add, I have my processor (P7450) undervolted already! All three multipliers (6x, 7x and 8x) are running at 1.000V stable (originally 1.250V). The above temps are really hot considering it is undervolted already. I am planning to dismantle the whole laptop, clean the vents and replace the thermal pads with Silver Arctic 5...just have to wait for it to arrive.


Another question for kailash9999 (or if anyone else knows the answer):
Did you ever get around to installing the DV3000 backlit keyboard on your DV4? Does it work like it should? How much does it lower the battery life?

EDIT1: BTW, I checked some of the DV3000 backlit keyboards on eBay...the front and the dimensions are prefectly ok, BUT the screw holes on the back of the keyboard are NOT in the same places. That would pose a problem, wouldn't it?


Another random question:
I heard that some HP laptops have sort of "hidden" usb port on the mainboard. Does this one have it too? The reason I'm asking is that I think I ruined the connector for bluetooth module on the mainboard and I would like to open up one of those small usb bluetooth dongles and solder it directly to the "hidden usb port" on the mainboard (if it has one, ofcourse).

 

Seems like this thread died :/.

 

Sorry, Nazgul. I don't think that I can help you much with running 3DMark. I don't game on this laptop (I have integrated graphics), and I was getting temperatures higher than what you show before I made any upgrades/changes. Also, it seems your main concern is your graphics card. I can guarantee that cleaning & Applying AS5 is really going to help with your overheating. If you're still not satisfied, use the cooling pad I mentioned.

 

Oh, it's ok . I'm dismantling the laptop tomorrow. I just I hope I don't eff it up.

 

Ok, so I dismantled everything, removed thermal pads from heatsink & applied Arctic Silver 5 to all areas, like supposed to.

CPU temps lowered, but GPU is overheating now.

I know where the problem is, though. Factory thermal pad was about 2mm thick, but the new layer of Arctic Silver 5 is much much less. Because of that, there's a gap between GPU chip and heatsink, no matter how much I tighten down the screws on the heatsink.

Are your heatsinks like that too?

It appears I have to do the copper mod ( Dell XPS M1330 - nVidia GeForce 8400M GS - Copper Mod, but I don't have any copper :/..

 

Well, approximately 15 months after purchase my laptop has suffered the blank display problem. I disassembled the machine and applied new thermal grease to the CPU and GPU, with no effect. Of course, HP has offered to fix it for $400.

Took it to a local repair shop and they will eval it for $30. Two lessons from this laptop: No more HP's, and I should never be sinking ~ $1000 into a laptop. I have about decided to spend half as much and replace twice as often.

 

Hey I have a dv4t-1400. its about a year old.. about 2 weeks back I had a problem with the screen.. it would randomly flicker for a bit and then stop... I contacted HP and sent it in to get it checked.. they changed the display, inverter, some pins etc.. N 2 days after I got it back I opened it from sleep and it flickered again for a few seconds and stopped!!!


Any ideas wat the problem might be?? Is it more likely to be a hardware issue ( considering that they've replaced quite a few parts)

 

sounds like u have a loose cable wire, have u tried opening the display to check if the cables attached are not loose?

 

hello everyone. My sister owns a DV4t-1000. She upgraded to win 7 from win vista and was updating drivers. She downloaded the BIOS driver and updated that and restarted the computer. Now the computer has frozen at startup and the keyboard seems to be unresponsive. I found this post which explains steps to reflash the bios using a flash drive

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-compaq/304332-cq45-insyde-bios-recovery-using-usb-thumbdrive.html

Unfortunately I think I keep flashing the wrong BIOS file because i still have the same issue. I was wondering if it was possible for you guys whose computer is still functional to tell me if maybe you have access to the BIOS that's running on yours to make a copy so I can use that file instead. Thank you so much for your help. I hope I can fix it.

 

make sure the bios file that you have is for the actual processor (amd or intel) look back at the dv4 drivers forum for the previous bios files

 

I have a DV4 - AMD Processor, had heating issues. Now, laptop wont boot. Screen doesn't Turn on. I get a single flashing light of the SCROLL LOCK and CAPS LOCK in tandem. Flashes once every 1.5 seconds or so.

I googled and think it said it meant a processor error. Any confirmation? Any way to resolve this? Would replacing the CPU fix this? Found a replacement on ebay for $40

 

Happened to me, was supposedly graphics processor. Sent it into to HP (probably bad money decision) even though I took it apart myelf to look first. Was costly.

 

I purchased a Pavilion dm4x model # LX130AV and received it today. The box, case, and even the computer memory state the model as #LX!25AV, which is a Pavilion dm4t. I spent hours on the phone w/4 different CS reps, all of whom insisted that the serial # verifies it is, in fact, a dm4x. I can understand it being shipped in the wrong box, even the wrong case...but the memory? I requested an RMA and am returning it. Has anyone else had this experience? Thanks.

 

Check if your RAM modules are clean from dust and if they are slotted properly in to the RAM ports or whatever you call it. Also keep the power button pressed for 30seconds or so, works for me everytime I get a one blink blank screen error during startup.

 

anyone got the WiFi on/off touch-button on the quicklaunch button row to actually work on win7-64?

mine is perpetually amber, and therefore i can't connect - the button seems to override the app that controls the wifi-card's power.

 

Not to sound like an idiot but is there another dv4t thread discussing the newer core i3/i5 equipped dv4ts? I like the backlit keyboard option but can't seem to find any info about them. Otherwise it looks like the Dell XPS or Vostro is the way to go...

Thanks guys

 

yes, we need nVidia video - gone from here.

 

Mine works with 64-bit Win 7. Didn't have to do any special tricks to make it work - just driver reinstalls after the last rebuild. Sorry no magic tricks on this one.

 

Is anyone here considering upgrading their dv4t to Win 8 when it is released? The upgrade is supposed to be available for $40. My dv4t-1000 is still running Vista, and it needs a fresh install anyway, so I am thinking about upgrading. The biggest concern is driver compatibility for HP-specific features like the quick launch buttons and hard drive protection sensor.

If anyone has tried one of the pre-release versions of Windows 8 on a dv4t, please let us know how it went. Thanks.

 

If anyone still reads this thread I'm looking for info. dv4t-1400. Hi def LED display. Looking for a display cable since mine is intermittant. All the cables I see including the one listed for my dv4t do not look like mine. My cable is short. Goes from the computer, around the hinge and the ends at a circuit board below the display. The circuit board then connects to the display. One break out for the logo light connector and a longer one for the MIC/CAM. Talked to HP parts, support, etc.. No luck. Anyone ever run into this? I run my dv4t with the lid up all the time. Have the display bezel off so I can "adjust" the cable when needed.
Marty

 

DV4t-1000 Still Kicking after Upgrades

This thread is pretty dead but I thought perhaps someone might wander along and find the following interesting/useful.

I purchased a DV4T-1000 for my daughter Christmas ’08. The unit is well cared for, in excellent condition, and never traveled until my daughter took it to college last year. Originally equipped with the Intel P7350 2Ghz Core 2 Duo, the unit met her needs.

Last year however, she started complaining about very slow program starts, layer lag in InDesign, and other minor issues. So this summer I thought I’d give some upgrades a try. I installed an Intel P8700 @ 2.53Ghz, replaced 4GB RAM with 8GB, upgraded to Intel 5300 Wifi and 3rd antenna, and just topped it off with a Samsung 840 500GB SSD.

Result.
Win 7 Pro 64 scores went from:
Processor - 4.9 to 6.2
Memory - 5.8 to 6.2
Graphics - 4.1 to 4.3
Graphics - 3.8 to 4.1 (Gaming)
Drive - 5.8 to 7.8 (SATA II Limited)

Drive went from about 70 MB/s +/- to 279 MB/s Read / 267 Write (SATA II Limited)

The parts (processor, ram, wifi) cost $110 from ebay. The 840 was $315 new from BH Photo. My thoughts were that if the experiment failed and the computer didn’t meet her needs I’d just pull the SSD and move it to a new unit. As it turns out… I didn’t have to. The little beast just flies now. Starts in under 20sec, opens InDesign in about 6sec, and runs through layers with a snap. It’s obviously not a gaming rig (never has been) but for now it meets her needs very nicely and everything works as it did on the day she got it…. just a whole bunch faster, cooler, and with slightly better battery life.

Hey to 2.0, KLF, Flipfire, and Justin ; ) Hope you and yours are well... and ya get a grin. :hi2:

Best, Dave