*HP dv8 Owners Lounge*

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes Windows 7 will freeze? Today it started and hung at the black screen twice right before the logon? I'm really thinking the latest BIOS could resolve this. Windows has only done this 3 times since I reinstalled it??? Anyone else get this???

 

i have that freeze issue even after the bios update...
it happens to me...when i try to resume windows from sleep mode
also if i have my external hdd attached to the usb port while booting it freezes once every 3 times.

 

matt, that's odd. i am not noticing this on my c2d dv7t... i've been running win 7 ultimate x64 without issue for about 2 months now.

 

Yep, after resuming from sleep its going crazy, I don't know why. Are you using a clean install?

 

anyone add a ssd drive to their DV8t. It made mine very snappy. Boot time is now under 20sec and most programs are instantaneous...due to faster access time i think. However, on any bench i get i have read times of only 90mb/sec and write of 15mb/sec... anyone else have any experiences with this laptop and ssd drives?

 

Hey everyone!

Just finished reading all 166 pages *cheers* *applause*

but srsly my eyes hurt. My stats for my dv8t are in the sig, havn't done a clean install yet because Im going to be doing a dual boot with xp32 bit.

Anyone know where I can get dv8t xp drivers??

Oh yea, got my laptop on the 15th I think~ loving it so far, but do have the nvida driver issue, as well as the treble. Will address those when I do a clean install.....but none the less hellllllooooooooooooo *seinfeld*

 

btw, here is a screenshot of all my tabs after going through 166 pages





Also, thought id point out the horrendous experience im having with M-Audio and their faulty drivers for their Firewire 410 interface. Already posted the issue to the consumerist. VERY DISSAPOINTED in m-audio here, and this is the reason im dual booting with xp32bit

 

ahh a fellow chrome user, but you wont be able to dual boot with xp. Someone else tried it a few pages back and there was like no drivers for it. You may want to look up virtualbox, or if you have 7 pro, you can use xpmode.

 

I wanted to set up a dual boot with XP-Pro 32 bit, but had a heck of a time finding drivers.
nvidia.com has the video and sound drivers.
Intel.com has the chip set drivers.
The big problem is there aren't many XP drivers listed on HP's website.

So I installed the 'Virtual XP' and, so far, have had no issues with it.

RT

 

this wont fix my issue for my m-audio problems, if you go over to their forums its a mess, not one person can get their product working for win7 or vista, because their drivers are faulty. From what I heard I guess there was a change in something with windows and sound. But I think someone mentioned on the forum running virtual xp mode wont fix this. Let me find a link to the thread.

thnx for the input on your situation with xp tho. this is actually very sad news for me. This is the same issue I had with my dv9000, ended up getting all the drivers off these forums.

 

To be real honest with you, I don't think a clean install is that great anymore. I 've done it a few times now just to experiment so to say. The only problem I had with the factory install OS was the fingerprint reader was not detected after resumed from sleep but I fixed that by downloading the latest driver for the digital persona software. The clean install has given me a lot of problems so far. Constantly locking up when resuming from sleep. I was browsing this site last nite and it completely froze me out. Ran the Windows Experience thing and got a 4.1 when I should have a 5.9 however thats irrelevant to me. I know I said a few posts back that a clean install runs a little smoother, well come to think about it now it doesn't. My computer restarts in 84 seconds on a clean install and 82 on the HP factory installed OS. One thing I noticed is uninstall the all the bloatware or crapware or whatever you wanna call it with CCleaner then clean your registry. Just my experience so far, still LOVING THIS LAPTOP

 

not a clean install....although doubt if thats the issue here

 

Did u install the chipset drivers?

 

I installed everything

 

Whats the link to that website?

 

Windows 7 has yet to freeze on me or give me any problems and I am using the HP factory version. It seems to me like its the clean install that giving you problems.

 

Im going to stay with the factory then. Because I need this thing 100% as ill be using it for gigs. But not having XP on this is a HUGE negative for me. I find it ridiculous HP isn't supporting xp again, as I said with my dv9000, it was a pain to go from vista to xp, because they refused to tell you what drivers you needed.

So there is not one person on here with xp? :'(

 

Also, windows xp virtual mode doesn't support firewire, which is what my soundcard uses. :'( M-Audio is such a mess right now its driving me insane. I have a $400 soundcard that is now useless

 

XP is long gone, its growing to become obsolete sadly. It was a great OS but MS has moved on. Technology is always going forward and never looks back. Of course your not going to find drivers for XP for a brand new laptop with a brand new processor. HP doesn't want customers using an 8 year old operating system. I heard the 64 bit version of XP is really bad and you won't be able to get full advantage out of your computer by using it. Windows 7 is great. I'm not going to really worry about the freezing issues and I have an idea it has something to do with the processor. The core i7 is brand new and I'm sure it has bugs. Hopefully in time they'll have the bugs worked out by some updates.

 

winxp is far from the over. especially in proaudio/video. Not one company has their drivers working 100%, and the industry is not even of THINKING of switching yet. Prob around sp2 is when they will start taking interest. Believe me, im all for win7 and everyone moving on, but the industry is lagging so far behind, some companies havn't even started on their drivers. whats sick is the beta was out for over a YEAR, so they have all had plenty of time, but companies are greedy, and can care less about customers, so they will support it when they feel like it. As of now, the 3 main thing I use for work: Lighting Controller, DAW (sound editor), and sound interface, all only support 32bit. Sad sad sad.

 

also here is a downgrade thread, http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Operat...-XP-Downgrade-Guide-for-HP-Laptops/td-p/83267

 

I'm not gonna lie I would love to dual boot XP on the DV8t. But I don't think it could be done successfully with drivers.

 

Well, im going to push hp like hell.... It is sort of ridiculous they wont support a operating system which is still used widely, and in no way shape of form "out dated"


wish me luck!

 

Good Luck but I know Microsoft is the one to blame for manufacturers no longer supporting it. They don't want people on it, they want people on Windows 7 and that's fine but I agree it should be the consumers choice and drivers should be available.

 

exactly, cause especially in the professional fields i've yet to come across someone using win7 as their primary operating system. Again, I love win7, just the lazy companies are lagging way to far behind making sure their products work 100%

Trust me, if you guys saw the lack of respect im getting on my issue with m-audio, you'd be disgusted. Im currently being ignored on the forums along with 100's of others.

Also, hows that nvidia fix you guys posted? About adjusting the .inf file. Is that a fix so far?

 

Oh I believe it. These are the HP forums right? Yeah I've posted over there and finding solutions was pretty much non existent.

Yes, that does fix the Nvidia driver from flashing to a black screen.

 

I face the same sometimes after resuming , I get reader not found ,since I have a password , the cursor goes to the first position , so if I type my password I have to more the cursor with the right arrow key for my password to be accepted . Also sometimes when I power on the laptop the keyboard is not functioning , I have to power off/on for it to work again .

I was facing the same keyboard issue with Win 7 rc2 and a dell 630 , so I guess it is Win 7 issue .

 

No, im talking about the m-audio forums. they aren't even admitting their drivers dont work when they clearly don't. Hp forums are just slow, and hardly a community on it. Here is where its at

 

you just need it for work?
install xp as a dual boot, a number of things wont work, but the wireless card, processor, and gcard should all work in xp, firewire should work as well.

 

An opinion ...
I didn't want to start a flame war so I was waiting for someone (thanks Matt) who had done a clean install to say it first but I can't agree more that a clean install is not the way to go with this machine. Yes, there's some bloatware on it, and I'd have rather have given HP $50 for a pristine install instead of one filled with crap, but I've uninstalled things and run CCleaner (long ago called Crap Cleaner before it got PC) and the CPU is just so fast if there' s some crap it hadn't slowed operations down. OK, maybe boot is a bit slower than it could be, but it's more than made up for by everything working all the time.

A few things that I've noticed ...

• The fingerprint reader. I laughed when I first saw it, but it works. When I wake up the machine it takes ~10 secs to see it. But it always sees it.
• iPhone sync issue. I did the bios update and it didn't solve the problem, but I figured out that my problem was only with syncing PHOTOs by turning things on/off one at a time, and then moved the photos from a USB drive to the C drive and have had no problems since. It might be a USB drive wakeup issue, as it does take 5 secs or so to spin up the external drives.
• I didn't do a clean install and haven't seen any of the treble/bass or video lockup problems of others. There has to be a hidden driver there somewhere, or something is installing out of order possibly.
• I too have some keyboard bowing. Not a lot, but it's there and the keyboard is bouncy, especially the number pad. Good thing I use a wireless keyboard in my lap! It would probably drive me nuts otherwise.
• I was worried about the thermal profile of this monster, but I must say I've been impressed with the temps. They seem very well managed. I've done batch photo processing on all 8 cores running at 100% with temps only to the 80s and played Dragon Age full screen with the GPU only in the 70s.
• COSTCO is great for computers. If you buy this machine (acutually any machine) via COSTCO they double your warranty to 2 years for free, and if you use a COSTCO AMEX card they up it to 3 years, for FREE. I wound up buying straight from HP and using a $500 coupon instead as it was cheaper, but if you can't find a coupon and want a three year warranty you can buy from the COSTCO web site.

And a question ...
Who's running a SSD on this beast, which one, and what's there experience with it. That's next on the wish list.

David

 

Well I noticed if you download the latest version of digital person it seems to fix the fingerprint issue where it doesn't detect it from resuming from sleep. Windows 7 could have some issues with the core i7 since its brand new because Windows 7 works flawlessly on my core 2 duo pc.

Well what made me start to worry was yesterday i turned the computer on and it froze twice on the black screen right before you login. Then I put it to sleep and it locked up and froze, did this twice. Never once did this on the HP install of Windows 7. But on the HP factory settings again, I removed about 30% of the garbage and it runs just as fast as it did on the clean install. Some of the programs are actually neat like Corel Video Studio and Paint Shop Pro. Today is the full test though because I work 4-10:30 and I'm going to have it in sleep mode during that time. It seems to be only having issues when in sleep more for several hours.

 

It sounds like you are really in a bind. In a pro field you need everything to work all the time, and are willing to pay the bucks for stuff that does. You are the core customer for pro a/v vendors but a small niche for HP and other general-purpose PC mfgrs. So they don't care if you need XP to run on new equipment, and the a/v companies apparently don't care that you have new equipment that won't run XP. I'm just curious: what does the majority of their customer base use? Are most a/v pros still using legacy high-end tower systems? Because when XP was king, laptops with serious power just didn't exist yet.

 

This was going to be my mobile studio for both audio/video/lighting. My main desktop is just a core2duo e660 overclocked to bout 3.0ghz with 4gigs of ram running avid, then have TB's of storage on my WHS. This is the SAME EXACT situation I was in when I bought my dv9000, and as I said had to get the drivers off this forum.
But yea everyone I come across work on desktop that are usually custom built, then on a rare occasion come across Mac's (retarded). Some people think "final cut pro" is an industry standard, which is far from true. Any huge production company uses avid, and avid only. As for audio, I posted my situation on their forums, and everyone said they aren't even considering moving to windows7 yet, and that neither should I, and they are correct. So im going to have to battle with hp here, even though I highly doubt I'll get anywhere.

 

Did you see my post?

i hardly think this is hp or microsofts fault, it is avids fault and hp shouldnt have to deal with it really.

 

I just received my Intel X25-M 160 GB ssd and got a Seagate 500 GB regular hard drive for my 2nd drive. Despite all I have been reading here about a fresh install, I am going to go for it. I have Acronis and will make a disc image of my current drive, so I can revert back to that if I have problems. I probably won't get around to putting in the new drives until this weekend. I'll report back on how it goes.

Murray

 

Woops, didn't see that post. I might give that a try, but like someone said above, things need to all work 100%


I have contacted M-Audio and they are the WORST company i've ever had to deal with in my life. Completely am being ignored on the forums, and they offer NO solution to their non working win7 drivers. This does not say though that hp still shouldn't offer xp drivers through their website. I cant imagine all the business people who still have to us xp, I wonder what they are doing as a solution. It shouldn't be HP's decision to decide when a operating system is "dead". Im not blaming this issue on hp, this is the fault of all the LAZYYYYYYY companies that are lagging so far behind to make their products work on win7. But HP should also be fair and offer their drivers for xp as well.

 

actually, unless im retarded do these have a pci-express slot? I see one on the left side, but thought that was for the remote? Is it a pci slot?

 

I ordered an Intel X25-M 160gb and should be getting it before this weekend as well. I can't decide whether to do a clean install. Most people seem to recommend it for an SSD because Windows 7 will recognize it and apply the correct settings automatically. On the other hand, with all the issues people are having on this laptop with clean installs, I'm just not sure. I'll be doing one or the other this weekend, so I'll post my results too.

 

Well vs the clean install my laptop was in sleep mode for approximately 6.5 hours and I resumed from it and the reader was detected and it didn't freeze. It did freeze and lock up on the clean install about after an hour into sleep then resuming? So go figure?

 

expresscard 34/54

 

Just curious, where did you buy the intel x25-M? You would need the HP HD kit which has a plastic caddy and a special wire to connect the drive to the MB. The connector is real small so be careful not to break the wire.

I have been using Acronis and I am very happy with the result.

 

First, HP does not write most of the drivers. The chip manufacturers do. HP installs them or makes them available on their web site, so don't shoot the messenger (HP) because there are no drivers or support for XP.

Second, you may be in a specialized field (pro audio), but the rest of the world moves on. Most users are finding the migration to Windows 7 a great one. The "business users" you mentioned are still mostly on XP because they run Office apps mostly. All my clients mostly are on XP. That's because nothing changes on their systems, and that's all they need to run Word, Excel, Outlook and get web access.

You will likely NOT find a notebook manufacturer that is going to support XP anymore. Not HP. Not Dell. Not Lenovo. No one.

Given your need to run these specialized audio apps from software developers that are obviously way behind the times, you really need to direct your scorn at them, not HP. I've read for years and years how you pro audio guys have nothing but problems with firewire, usb, pci this-and-that...can't anyone in your industry write something that just works?

 

Lancorp, I still wanna know why you returned your dv8t?

 

I didn't return the dv8t, I resold it (which I now regret). I have the dv7t, which I am trying to determine if I am going to keep it or not. I like it, but am not thrilled with the 1600x900 screen. My Dell 1640 with 1080p screen is gorgeous, but I'm wanting an i7 system...not sure what to do!!!

I wish I had my dv8t w/8GB...that was a screamin' deal! But, I'm sure there will be other coupons out soon (like the awesome percentage off!!).

 

Hmmmmm, why did you sell it and get the dv7t? I had the dv7t quad and it was fine but once I got the dv8t I just loved it so much more the 1080p screen is awesome.

 

I ordered both the dv8t and the dv7t on Black Friday (or Cyber Monday, I forget which).

When I got the dv8t, I was having 2nd thoughts as I have too many computers already (which I am currently doing something about), so I figured I could get better pricing if they were sealed in the box. So, that's how I sold it. I had already called HP to cancel the dv7t (after I ordered the dv8t) but of course, HP cannot cancel, so it shipped and I got it. I was just going to ship it back, unopened, but I figured I take a look at it anyways and play with it.

So, that's my story.

 

A warning about HP Customer Support in the UK

I sent a HDX18T in for repair (very similar to the DV8), with the well-known graphics card overheating error. It was booked via email support. HP ignored the error and replaced the hard drive instead. Can you believe how incompetent that is? The graphics card failure was logged and a note attached with the laptop as well explaining this. The artefacts were clearly visible on the screen - the technician had only to boot it up even if he had no reports from any source. But he must have just read some false report from administration to say it was hard drive and proceeded to replace the hard drive without even checking and ignoring the customer's note.

HP then returned the laptop unrepaired with no documentation to say what had been done. I only found out on the telephone. Then I had to be on the phone for an hour (from which I was hung up upon) to book another service and I was charged for HP telephone support.

Unbelievable. Let that be a warning. Don't book via email support, book via telephone support. Confirm everything. Get all names of people you spoke to, what time, get them to repeat the problem back to you. Attached several notes to your laptops - firmly. And check it when it's returned while the delivery courier is still there, so you can give it straight back if it's unrepaired.

 

Oh ok I gotcha. If you ordered on Cyber Monday then you got the same deal as I did, the $450 coupon off, I think the dv8t was $849 shipped with that coupon which was a great deal. maybe they'll have a $500 coupon off soon.

 

The HP online store is showing the DV8T now configurable with SSD as an option for the primary HD.

 

Your right. So I guess i'll be pointing my fight at m-audio. And yes, the industry is far more retarded then anything else in this world i've had to deal with. Like the issue with my soundcard, m-audio is now saying "most computers have irq conflicts with their firewire ports, so we suggest buying an external firewire card" Now whey they didn't mention this on the box before I bought the product is beyond me. And video, dont even get me started, they say we have an "industry standard" for codecs, yet every time im handed something, its in the wrong codec, and when the final result looks like crap, im the one to blame. Then lighting, cant even get their wiring correct, you have 3 pin cables (out dated, un-reliable) then 5 pin dmx (a litter better, still not as reliable, very expensive) then you have art-net which is your cat-5 cable which should be the standard now due to wifi. Then in your rig, your fixtures are ALL different input, some have 3 pin, some 5, some cat-5..... adapters adapters, adapters......So yes, sometimes I wonder why im in this industry which is nothing but headaches, but hey, I LOVE lighting/music.