*HP dv7t Quad Edition (3XXX series) Owners Lounge*

I have the dv7t. And no. No keyboard flex!
I got mine from BestBuy.

I'm loving this machine.

 

Is anyone else not satisfied with the screen? It looks a little washed out, yesterday I downloaded the latest Nvidia driver for the GT 230M but still the same problem.

 

So whats the difference between the BestBuy and the online order? Arn't they all made in china?

 

Try calibrating your monitor.
This guy talks about it somewhere in the middle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkuvAVj694k

 

I guess the diff would be that in BestBuy its pre-configured (with i7, 6gb etc), whereas if you buy rom HP directly, you can configure it the way you want.

 

Got mine this morning at 8:03am! Just starting to play with it now. I can see a slight bit of keyboard flex, sorta, if i'm really looking for it, but it's definitely not going back for that reason. Won't be able to really get into screen colors / display angles and all that until I get home tonight.

 

Hi Fellow Dv7 owners !!

I got mine on the weekend, love it, Dv7-3020ea. Iam in the UK.

Firstly no keyboard flex what so ever which makes me think that this could be a result of the UK Dv7 versions being non customizable.

Maybe there is a gap on the left side of keyboard for something you can add like Tv tuner or something.... I dunno plain guess work there.

Screen is infinity and yes its taking a little getting use to with the viewing angles but it is very bright and lovely resolution for gaming,

Played WOW solidly over the weekend max res all setting maxed and was getting some seriosly smooth game play.... an absolute blessing when Ive been use to a core dual 1.80 with an ATI x1400.

Heat wise this thing is pretty good, I thrashed it and the vents werent fully exposed ie, the laptop was sitting on the bed, and the GPU temp maxed at 88c and this is with the new nvidia drivers which I may roll back to stock as I have a feeling there contributing to my only problem which I will get to soon.

Idle this thing sits at 47c

CPU temps whist thrashing were 77c give or take.

My question, and problem.

I updated the stock nvidia drivers to

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/notebook_winvista_win7_x64_195.62_whql_uk.html

which automaticaly did the audio driver as well and since then I have gotted two bsod, once while playing a movie on windows media player and another surfing the web.

I didnt uninstall the stock driver before installing the new driver as recommended and I may try this when I get home to see if it makes a difference.

Also I just remembered.... THE BIOS ever since I flashed the new BIOS things have been weird so it maybe this more than the new Nvidia Drivers.

Firsly when I flashed the new BIOS it said that my computer overheated and shut down, on rebooting, the new bios was flashed, I thought nothing of it until now......

Has anyone had any problems with new versions of nvidia drivers or the BIOS?

I see over in the Dv8 thread the BIOS is a problem

Cheers !!

 

Hey, is it easy to upgrade the graphics card on this? Just for future reference.

My laptop was finally delivered this morning, I'll post impressions later when I get home.

 

My laptop arrived around 10:00 this morning and I have started evaluating it.

At first touch, the keyboard seems fine. I was worried about the glossy keys perhaps being slippery, compared to matte keys, but so far that doesn't seem to be a problem.

Here's my first configuration problem: on my Dell 700m with Windows XP Pro, I can set the mouse properties to disable the touchpad automatically if a USB pointing device is present. I haven't found that option on the dv7t with Windows 7. Can anyone tell me whether that option is somewhere else, dropped in Windows 7, not included with HP's drivers, or what the story is?

 

I received my package and i haven't opened. Is it just me or are the contents inside of the box loose? If i flip the box i can feel and hear the content of the box shifting around.

 

The laptop itself is well-secured and won't move in original packaging. A separate cardboard box with internal dividers contains the battery, powerbrick (heavy), and some literature (light, in its own box). The powerbrick could certainly move about some, as could the literature box. The battery could shift only an inch or so.

 

Ok i opened.

There is indeed flex on the keyboard. I believe the reason is because this full sized keyboard was originally for the dv8t and it was crammed into the dv7t. The center of the flex is the 'S' button and a perimeter of about 2-3 keys kind of pop up. The keyboard doesn't have much of a spring strength which makes it kind of award typing on it.

I measured the screen size and it is not 17.3" inches it is exactly 19" diagonal. Can anybody verify this with their laptop and a measurement tape?

P.S.> The laptop is fast so i don't think i will return it. Stuff like keyboard i can live with it if i get used to it because i bought this laptop not to get comfortable but to get the performance out of it which is great.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by pkirangi
Just curious, I have mine ordered with an integrated hybrid HD TV Tuner - Does this come with a Remote control?

Thanks


Jon

Jon,

if the remote stores in the pcexpress slot, can I just throw away the pc express slider card?

 

Hmmm, I guess I am kind of a pack rat. Mine is in a drawer with other equally useful things like 3.5" floppy disks, cassette tapes, and rear slot covers from desktop computers. Oh look, there is a parallel printer cable!

 

My screen measures 17.3" diagonal for the display area. The total size of the top, including the margins, is 19".

There is a minimal amount of flex around the S key on mine also. I don't see it as a problem. The next time I am near Best Buy or Costco, I'll check flex on a dv7t there.

 

I have a question about SSD and SATA configuration.

My plan was to put an 80 GB Intel SSD drive as the boot drive and move the 500GB drive to the secondary slot. Naturally, I want TRIM to work properly, or the SSD will degrade fairly quickly.

I've been reading various forums about the SSD and messages seem to suggest that either AHCI is required or Microsoft IDE drivers are required. The dv7t BIOS doesn't have options to set the SATA type, so I can't tell whether the SATA drive is running in AHCI mode or as simple IDE emulation.

Does anyone know whether the BIOS uses AHCI or IDE?

Are there programs that tell me which mode is being used? I tried a couple utilities and didn't get results that convinced me either way.

Has anyone been through the process making a SSD be the C: drive, reinstalling Windows, and getting TRIM works properly?

 

eSATA port says AHCI in mine DV7(not quad).

 

Where does it say that?

 

Ive been asking the same questions here with no sucess. Heres is my experience.Both AHCI and the microsoft drivers are required for trim to work automatically.Otherwise the Intel toolbox is needed to manually optimize ( and its been pulled for murdering ssds)A utility called crystal disk info will tell you if trim is on .There is also a command line prompt that not only tells you if it is on in the drive and win 7,but another one that allows you to turn on AHCI ( although if the installation wasnt done with the ports configured ahci your foobared) The bios dosnt seem to give you the option to switch it on.The bios tells you pretty much nothing and HP smart friends knew less about their own product than I.They told me you cant put an ssd in this laptop.What jackasses.You also need to know the laptop has sata 1 not sata 2 so this will really limit potential speed.( I got alot of info from the intel ssd forum ). I had already installed software on my computer (that would be hard to get registration keys for) when I decided to do an ssd. I resized the system partition so it would fit on the ssd and then I cloned ALL 4 partitions using 3 backup failsafe methods , acronis 2010 ,win 7 image ( failed to restore) and drive cloner rx ( my favorite restore program-reverted to trial version on restore). , so 2 failed but acronis restored my system to the disk with perfect offset alignment, and everything worked fine but trim wasnt enabled .I flashed the latest intel firmeware and both crystal disk info and the win command prompt querry says trim is enabled and my write benchmark score went way up.Your much better off going with a clean install, but I couldnt go that way. Sata 1 speeds are alot slower than sata 2 would have been, but its still pretty fast so Im happy .(I then put a fast 500gb harddrive in the 2nd hard drive bay ).I have win 7 64bit pro and a dv7t quad edition and mine is working fine. Believe me Im no expert on this subject, Im just passing on my experience,( I couldnt get an answer on what mode the bios uses either and I had the same reservations as you, but the read me file for the firmware tool says ide isnt supported...only legacy,compatable and AHIC is. My firmware updated with no problem so it has to be one of the later 3 and immediately afterward crystal disk info indicated trim was on ( for the first time, it was off on tests before firmware upgrade) Id say that narrows it down.Good Luck

 

Did the dv7t package come with the Windws 7 installation CD for you guys? I want to do a clean install but i can't find the CD anywhere in the box.

 

No.There is a restore partition on the main drive. the first thing you should do when you get this computer is make a set of recovery disks.You can purchase a set from parts for ~$20 but seriously dude...make a set of restore disks

 

device manager...but thats not the port the hard drive is connected to, its connected to the intel AHCI 6 port controller.The question is what mode was used by that controller during install and can we switch that mode

 

I've looked at the installed driver for the hard drive, and it is Intel's iastor.sys, which I think Windows installs when SATA is set for AHCI or RAID but not for IDE. That's at least hopeful.

Yes, this is one of the most simplified BIOS that I have seen.

Ugh. I didn't know that. Well, that's disappointing but not a killer problem.

How did you get Acronis to restore with the proper alignment for an SSD (larger than for a regular hard drive)? I had read that Acronis restored to the original alignment, not to an alignment to fit the target device.

Thank you. I very much appreciate the personal experience report!

 

Theres a video somewhere on utube showing how to do this, but its right out of the book.I just followed the video.Theres a mathematical calculation that tells you if your offset alignment is correct and mine was, to say I was surprised was an understatement because I read the same thing as you .alot of people have acronis problems with ssds,..to be honest..I think I was just a lucky stiff

Also I believe MSAHCI.sys is the windows AHCI driver.. iastor.sys is the one intel replaces it with ( accorting to the good folks at the intel ssd community) But we are talking about controller driver here, right?

 

THE INTEL SSD TOOLBOX ( with optimizer) is back on the intel website for
download

 

Has anyone here installed the latest BIOS update from HP? If so, just wanted to ask if its causing any problems? Plus, how do u revert back to your old BIOS?

Cheers.

 

Perhaps you are not quite understandign teh problem. So i made a screen shot for you guys.


Notice how it says Hardware Reserved 2058MB? Thats not normal. I can understand Windows 7 using a gig of RAM. but i at most have 738MB of free RAM at a time. It bogs down hard when i use lightroom while working on a set of 500 RAW files. And i know it shouldnt be that way.

 

State which problems you're facing? According to HP, the Bios installers used in the DVx line doesn't allow for older versions to install over the newer ones.

When I updated my DV8 bios earlier yesterday, I discovered my fan would constantly run at 100%--someone suggested loading default bios settings, which did the trick there. Turning off "always on" fan options did nothing in the bios...

 

and sometimes when i start up, the resources are liek this...



So obviously there is a problem

 

Well, that's rather alarming. My first question would be... did you update your bios recently? If so, it's possible an option for reserving memory for graphics was set. HP screwed up the most recent DV8 bios to the point where only loading defaults released my fan from zombification--I wouldn't be surprised if recent DV7 bios build had crazy effects as well.

Then again, sometimes you're logging in with 10mb reserved memory, which is close to what it should be... that shouldn't happen only "some of the time" if it was bios set.

Welcome to the Pavilion line friend--I've owned 3 or 4 in the past 4 years, and they've all had the same dim screen. You're likely just used to "normal" laptop screens (Dell, Lenovo Thinkpad, etc). You'll get used to it You'll then look at other laptops and say "gah!! too bright!"

 

Yes i did flash the Bios, so that def could be the problem. So now im screwed? I wonder how i can get it back?

 

There's no going back... well, short of requesting a repair and hoping they replace the motherboard with the stock firmware.

Did you do as I suggested and load Bios defaults and restart? Again, I can't see WHY reserved memory would periodically adjust itself if it was pre-set in Bios...

If that doesn't work, your only other option is to wait for a new bios to come out--and even complain to HP Technical Support to stress the fact that they've SERIOUSLY screwed up with their most recent Bios releases for the DVx line.

 

Can the Current screwwy BIOS damage hardware ??

I also updated the BIOS and am experiencing 'issues'

 

That's rather vague isn't it?

That's... feasible. It depends what the actual readings are, but "redline" changes could certainly hasten a premature hardware failure. I'd say you're worrying too much--never heard of any manufacturer that put out flawed Bios updates that made computers go "poof". I'm more worried about Fans that never turn off. Annoying, and slightly hastens fan failure, but hardly a stability concern.

 

Well since the BIOS update I keep getting BSOD

 

Well that's nasty--I think I'll have to give the last 10 pages or so a read later--sounds like you guys are worse off than your DV8 brethren!!

You actually get Blue Screens? Mine just shuts down. My DV8 has been experiencing chronic restarts (on average, 2 per day) since it arrived a month ago--but that was the stock firmware. No noticeable difference since my bios upgrade. Now I'm curious to see whether it's the same deal with the DV6 Quad edition notebooks as well...

 

Yep have had the BIOS flashed since saturday and have had 3 Blue screens, once while playing a movie and when it Blue screened the sound from the movie kept repeating till the memory dump completed another time in Blue screened whilst on the web. I have also had chronic restarts and when booting back up the diaglog box windows has experienced an unexpected shutdown pops up and sends an error report.

Iam going to reinstall chipset drivers video and audio tonight to see if that maybe the cause of the blue screen but I have a hunch that its the BIOS update

 

Finally got to play around with my new laptop last night. Few observations:

1. First thing I noticed is that one of the panels in the back was sticking out. Had to unscrew all of the screws, place it back in, and screw it back. Took two minutes, not a big deal.

2. I'm having the same issue with firefox as I had on my old PC - whenever I receive a facebook chat message, my firefox freezes for 5-10 seconds. Now that this has happened on two PCs, I'm isolating the problem to firefox, and I'll probably try using Chrome - would chrome work better on a quad core machine anyway?

3. One thing that's bugging me - the speed for the touchpad and my wireless mouse seem to be tied to the same slider. The touchpad speed needs to be moved practically all the way to the right for it to go anywhere, yet this makes my wireless mouse zip across the screen for any subtle touch. Is there any way to decouple the two speeds?

4. A few of the keys on the left side of the keyboard seemed a little 'sticky' at first, but they seem fine now. Also I'm so used to the keyboard being in the center of the laptop that it's taking some getting used to, but no flex issues yet.

 

Well i flashed my bios and i haven't had any problem yet. I guess it is because i just opened yesterday and i haven't given it any extensive use. I report to you guys if anything wrong happens.

@turbodude
Well, didn't know you were talking about the "hardware reserved" part. So i guess there is something not right indeed with your laptop.

 

I must say, I'm slightly disappointed in the after-build quality of the two DVx's I ordered. One of them had a white paint smudge (not a small one) across one of the speakers, and the other had a loose screw in the HDD bracket which made it impossible to close the bay cover without removing the drive. I'm impressed with the overall build quality (compared to past pavilion incarnations)--but I'm dismayed by the poor workmanship that has gone into the finishing touches. They shouldn't allow a machine to pass by that has physical blemishes.

I've had some issues with Firefox on Win7 machines--but these were all older software versions. Recent Firefox installs have functioned without a hitch. Are you certain you're up to date? They've pumped out 2-3 new versions this month alone... I've got 3 win7 laptops running right now, and I've noticed none of the issues you're experiencing. Chrome appears to be no more stable than Firefox at this point--this was not the case only 2 months ago though.

 

It doesn't come with one but you can download the image and make one yourself. Check out this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=432564 and it will walk you through the steps you need to take. Use the ISO Method to make the Windows disk and make sure you run the utility to remove the ei.cfg file from the Windows ISO and also make sure you use Win7Activator to carry your legit activation over to your new install. I needed 6 blank DVDs total. 4 to make recovery disks, 1 to backup c:\SwSetup folder and 1 for the Win7 disk. You'll also need a flash drive for the Win7Activator so the files don't get erased when you reinstall. My subwoofer did the popping while rebooting during the reinstall process but after I installed the HD Audio drivers from HP it went away. I updated my BIOS prior to reinstalling Windows, used the nVidia driver from step 6 in that thread and used drivers from HP website for everything else.

P.S. when downloading Win7Activator, the link will take you to sharebee or some stupid retarded website that won't let you download until you complete some stupid offer. Once you have the sharebee page up, click on the megaupload or rapidshare link instead and download from there.

 

@IXinchnail
Thanks for your response. What i am wondering is why should i use some activator when the laptop comes with a valid OEM serial.

 

Banze...
From what i've read over the past couple weeks, it seems that when you do a fresh install you end up having to call Microsoft at some point to finalize your activation. I'm not sure why, maybe that's not true, but I decided to go ahead and use the activator to keep it simple. Keep in mind that the activator does not hack anything. It uses and keeps your legit serial, it just makes the process easier.

 

I just found out why they have to go over the phone. If you look closely at the descriptions of the download links they are Retail versions not OEM. The serial that our laptops come with does not for the Retail versions.

 

UPDATE!!!! For those of you who have been having problems synching iphones or ipods, there is a new BIOS on the HP support page. NEW version is F13a

 

The keys you have on the underside of your laptops are NOT the keys that come pre-installed from the factory. It is in fact a separate activation key for clean installs, etc. These keys are not pre-activated, and almost always require you jump through hoops for them to be recognized. The nice thing is that you can technically lock that key to another unit, assuming you never assign it to the original laptop.

 

If I were to lose my Activator file and only had the stock pre-installed key written down, would I be able to activate the laptop next time I do a fresh install (hopefully not for a couple years)? Or when I called Micro$oft would they somehow know that it's an HP volume license (or whatever it is) and ask for a different key?

 

At least on mine, there's a button above the actual touchpad that turns it on and off... not automatic shut off when plugging in USB mouse, but hardly an inconvenience, either.

To those with touchpad/mouse issues, I posted a few links recently (a few pages back; this thread is moving quickly) about updated Synaptics drivers and a "middle mouse click" enable. I have no complaints about the Synaptics touchpad anymore since the update.


EDIT:

Also would like to add that my dv7t quad plays GTA:IV flawlessly on the default high settings. Also would like to point out the absurd amount of hoops you need to jump through to install and upgrade that $#&* game, with the Rockstar Lounge, Windows Live, etc etc. Well worth it though, it's a great addition to the GTA title.

 

link please?

 

Device manager.