*HP dv8 Owners Lounge*

Price is all relative. I didn't feel my last laptop was slow till I got this one!
All computers now a days are so fast, they seem a delight compared to what we had... but once you taste a SSD drive as your primary with your OS loaded on it, you will feel you got demoted to go back.

SSD prices are actually quite modest IMO if you think about it.
Look what your getting... uses less energy, very shock resistant, much faster and lighter.

When you compare your computer to an older xp system and make an account for the 2K you have in it " or 1.5K" or whatever.. then slice out the cost of your SSd drive drive.... your really getting the best bang for the buck!

Its a bit like beating your head against a wall to put moneies into other areas until you first get an SSD.

I"m so spoiled now.... everything is instant... click on firefox... "bam.. its up"... word... anything and its almost instant.

Its true, that a few seconds here and there is no big deal in the scheme of things.. but with that mentality we may as well be using xp with 1 gig of ram like my last system.

As with a fine car verses a budget car... the subtleties is what makes the whole experience of driving a racecar a passion rather than a means to get from point A to point B.... a computer can be very similar.

I think everyone on this forum has a passion for a smooth fast instantaneous machine..... otherwise there would be no interest to be here.

 

While don't think that was why Peter had decided to hold off (he said he was happy with the speed supported by the HDD), you certainly "hit the nail on the head" with the reasons why I jumped at the SSD offered as an option by HP and, now that its firmware has been successfully updated to support TRIM, it seems an even better deal as a way to make the Dv8 run much faster!

I think the SSD is a real bargain at $1.50 per gigabyte if anyone wishes to dramatically speed up the performance of their laptop (except online where the benefits would be limited by the speed of their internet connection, I presume). I doubt that there's anything else you can do for such a low price to make such a large improvement. I touched on several other benefits as well in my post earlier.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

DITTOES!

I hadn't seen this post before I wrote the previous on the topic of cost. The SSD is a great and economical way to improve the Dv8 performance. Additional memory and a faster processor each cost as much as an SSD and improve performance by far less!

Hope this message gets out to many prospective buyers ...


Regards,
- - Phil

 

And to all of you I say: for additional money, you can usually get something better, faster, nicer, etc. I do agree (on faith in Phil and Alan) that the SSD is the single most performance-improving investment you can make in the dv8. But honestly, as much as it can seem a trifle annoying to wait 2-30 seconds, maybe up to 25-35 times a day, we're talking, what, 15 or so minutes of life? I use the slightly longer delays, such as boot up, to make a quick call, check email on my BB, even go to the loo . My point: I would love, and soon will get one (begging Phil's and Alan's help on installing - it still sounds complicated to me, the moron with the nice computer!), but not because I need it or it will help my productivity or, on this machine, save enough energy to make it usable off-AC for long). I'll buy it because I can! I will get juiced every time things pop up instantly, like magic! I don't know if it will get old and just seem normal after a while. I do worry that it will make me very impatient working on my other computers, because I am not going to upgrade them all. As Alan says, our computers are so much faster than they were 2 years ago, let alone 5 (let alone the 31 since I got my first Apple II!), so here we have yet another fairly significant improvement in step with the long line of improvements.

EDIT: The following paragraph, it turns out, merely parrots what PMorgan said on the very post I pasted above but did not read thoroughly enough to notice that "my" point was already made, more articulately, by Phil. A mea culpa post will appear shortly!

Last point, and maybe the only one that isn't pure drivel here: for me, few if any of my main uses seem to have a lot of disk I/O involved, so other than booting up and loading software for the first time of the day, I don't think the SSD will affect the speed of the majority of what I do during the day. Loading and saving data are nearly instantaneous with the 7200 rpm HD, so other than the gee whiz of loading the OS and big sftwe programs, is there much *practical* productivity gain, or just plain fun? If the latter, like a really fast car, that you can rarely use legally except to go from zero to the speed limit, it's a gas and makes you smile, and this is a good thing. Cheers and peace. Jeff

[Phil: I'm looking forward to your pointing out my factual errors ] EDIT: but no need to lambaste me here about the apparent plagarism; I devote a separate post to a public flooging!]

 

Thanks Phil. I am having a massive bout of sciatica and taking Prednisone, which makes it very hard to sleep, that and the pain both. I think that explains the late hours of my posts and their whackiness!

I thought I had scandisk set to run automatically once a week, but now I can't find that setting. Are you aware of whether this can be done? I definitely run defrag automatically once a week.

Thanks again and one request:

May we please have a page or two of posts that don't include the acronym "SSD?!!" (that is, until I buy mine and need your help, lol

 

@PMorgan:

Quote (you

Its true, that a few seconds here and there is no big deal in the scheme of things.. but with that mentality we may as well be using xp with 1 gig of ram like my last system.

As with a fine car verses a budget car... the subtleties is what makes the whole experience of driving a racecar a passion rather than a means to get from point A to point B.... a computer can be very similar.

I think everyone on this forum has a passion for a smooth fast instantaneous machine..... otherwise there would be no interest to be here.

Phil,

Just for the record, I swear I had not noticed that part of the very post I pasted onto mine (I have grown a bit weary of the endless SSD discussions have taken to skimming ) but clearly my writing, just below will look like a plagarism of yours, about which I can only plead:

1) I really did have it as an original thought, really, and this time my post is at 2:00 in the afternoon . Even I am not stupid enough to try to pawn off a thought as original on the same post as someone was quoted with the same thought earlier - or at least I hope I'm not!

2) Great minds think alike.

3) (had I been plagarizing) "imitation is the highest form of flattery"

4) Note that I did preface the comment that was essentially the same as your "prior art," by saying "this is probably the only point I make here that is not pure drivel!"


With ever growing admiration,

Jeff

 

Look at the drive light while windows is running. It's constantly flashing. That's because it's loading and retrieving things in the background. There's also the matter of indexing. An SSD with a seek time that is several hundred times faster than a HDD, improves that situation a great deal. What does that mean? Everything in windows that you click on, from start menu to tray apps to menus to thumbnails has to load from disk with few exceptions. With an SSD, these things happen instantaneously. Which in turn improves overall system performance to the tune of 100%. Something you can't even come close to achieving with a memory or CPU upgrade.

Everyone who has upgraded to an SSD is amazed at the difference it made. It's usually referred to as "night and day."

When you get one, you will probably want to upgrade all your systems. I know I did. The relative difference between a system with and a system without begs you to do so.

 

Jeff, I don't think most of this has been about telling people to go out and get something better. There have been some interesting comparisons between what people buy and the alternatives.

Sorry the discussion has taken a focus on an area you're losing interest in. For the record, most of this thread is about people looking for ways to improve their laptops - those improvements are in two categories: how to make something work that doesn't or how to get faster speed out of the laptop.

So, in my own defense, when someone writes in and asks whether getting an SSD would be a good idea, I think they are entitled to an "airing" of the pros and cons and I chime in to present my viewpoint on the options they asked about. Since then, four or more of us have weighed in and, except for one of us who doesn't have an SSD, all (including one of our NBR moderators) presented strong positions in favor of getting an SSD BEFORE other popular options for making the machines faster starting up and loading applications.

I hope these viewpoints help the OP who hasn't commented since we responded to his questions.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Jeff, I am sorry that you are in such pain and hope the condition improves soon. Tried heat pads? I found they help a lot in recovering from lower back pain.

I know of settings for interval timing for antivirus scans, antispyware scans, and defragmentation. Unless you write a VB script, or the like, to run at each boot up, I am not aware of anywhere to apply a setting that will run Scandisk at bootup once a week. Perhaps a calendar program could flash a reminder weekly?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Windows has a built in task scheduler. (Start, search, type "scheduler", hit enter.) Perhaps that could be used to run scandisk on a schedule, (although I think running it once in a while whenever the mood strikes or when you are having a particular problem you are trying to diagnose or fix is sufficient.)

 

Is there a fix for the fingerprint reader not working out of sleep mode?

 

Right on,Peter! I didn't think of that. I just went and set it up on mine and will see how it works tomorrow. It's easier to set up if you keep your machine turned on as you do (but I don't). It'll be interesting to see how it goes when I start it up tomorrow.

I notice that Microsoft recommends running it weekly so it will be handy if it can do it automatically from now on.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I remember scandisk from the old days... what was it win95 or somewhere around there... maybe earlier.

So since I can't find "scandisk" in win7 in the search.. is scandisk the same as chkdsk?

Seems when you to to your drive, then properties, then tools the way that one behaves it appears to be chkdsk.

 

Actually, I find the system file checker to be a more useful command to run: sfc /scannow. For more info see: SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker - Windows 7 Forums

 

Again, I guess it relative to what you consider "instantaneous".. if your system is that fast with a physical drive... imagine a drive that doesn't have to have an arm to wakeup or find the exact location on the disk.... just electronic and instant!

It always amazes me to think of how I can type an ip address into firefox and instantly the exact computer wherever in the world is found and negotiated with as if its in the next room.... even though various proxy servers may be in between... its just mind boggling!
How fast can it be within a 2.5 inch SSD drive!

Don't fell like the dummy.... we all are dummies until we know what to do!

Seems this computer stuff is like knowing a hidden trail through the woods to a secret hideout... you can't go the wrong direction and get there but often there are many ways to get there... just some take more time.

Once you know the way its easy... almost like you almost knew it from birth.. but until you know it, it feels like its impossible to find!

I know I'm rambling... but maybe its just the way my head works....

When there is a dark thundercloud over and you can't see the edge, it feels like it will rain forever and never stop.. but when the sun is shining, it feels like it will never rain!

Getting to know the tweaks and tricks to these computers are the same way... once you know, you feel like you really know something cool and its easy to feel like everybody else already knows it too, but then when the next challenge is faced, you are once again humbled to realize you don't know everything.

I really appreciate all the knowledge of this thread...I look forward to seeing whats up on it every day.... lots of interest and personalities that make the soup interesting.
Seems that just removing one personality would ruin the whole thing.....

Lets face it.. when ghosting a drive, or even pulling up your web page.. unless you are a programming expert, you really don't have a clue as to what just happened, but just pleased it worked!

Getting a new drive is basically first ghosting your existing system to a backup that you can access when your primary is later removed and totally blank.

The ghost backup will format, create the partition, and copy all your files, configurations etc as if nothing ever happened... the only main prerequisite is that your bios be able to read the new hardrive you put in.
You will most likely boot to a usb device or CD that you have already proven true that your bios will boot successfully to .. from there your run your ghost program from that platform thats remote and off the grid "so to speak" from your new hardrive.

That platform can see all drives, yet not be a part of them.


From that bootable platform, you access the location of your image file you created "usually on your backup drive" and direct it to copy to your new drive and let it do its magic.

Once the process is done, you reboot, change your bios back to normal so it boots from the primary drive instead of the usb or whatever you were using to do the ghost "unless you remove that usb or whatever drive its a non issue" and watch windows come up as if nothing ever happened.

Its quite exhilarating and exciting to do... especially if you were around back when that operation was considered impossible and realize the complexity of what its doing.

 

I've often wondered if thats like a mini system restore to the system critical files.

If you run it, does it put the "original" files in place of anything corrupted or the latest version?

If the latest version, how does it know those aren't corrupted?

Just asking because I hate to have all these windows updates, latest drivers etc, only to be taking some critical slices of that and replacing them with old non updated stuff.

I guess if it only does it if the file is corrupted, that would be the lesser of two evils in any case.

 

It only does it if the file(s) in question is/are corrupted or missing and it doesn't undo any windows updates or mess with any drivers. If it can't repair the corrupt system files, it tells you that and directs you to a log file for more specifics. If you've never run it, you ought to just to see how it works. It usually only takes a couple of minutes, (probably less on your SSD) to complete and iirc doesn't even require a reboot if no problems are found. Best to run it from an elevated command prompt i.e., as administrator.

 

Chkdsk and scandisk are the same.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

It depends on what you're trying to fix, doesn't it! Certainly more comprehensive but it probably takes a lot more time to run than chkdsk. I find chkdsk can recover files in marginal sectors or mark them against future use - particularly useful on HDDs.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

No the complete chkdsk takes a lot longer. The SFC only takes about 5 minutes to run on a normal HD, ime.

But the relative utility of each process does depend on what the problem is. Obviously, they are designed to address very different things.

 

Alan, Windows keeps a list (and copies) of all installed files and updates. If it finds a damaged file, it offers to restore a good copy of the latest (i.e., current) version or asks for CDs if all of saved versions on the disk are damaged.

It's all the other files (configurations, etc) that chkdsk repairs that I find routinely more useful when problems develop 'out of nowhere".

Regards,
- - Phil

 

It really depends on how much stuff is on your HDD, cluster sizes, etc., YMMV.... As well as how much it finds to fix. When I run it weekly, it doesn't take very long (certainly less than 5 minutes!) but part of that may be because I'm running it on the SSD.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Peter, I agree that running it now and then is a good idea if you're having any issues that might involve system files. Chkdsk is broader and addresses application files as well as data files, etc. That's why I run chkdsk weekly whether I have problems or not.

If in doubt, run them both. {I sometimes get tunnel vision on what I use and how specifically they are targeted. It's part of my NetAdmin mentality. }

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Well said. This thread is a pleasure to read. Excellent knowledge base and reference.

 

It must be nice having an SSD. Chkdsk (with repair option enabled) takes about 45 minutes to run on each of my 500 GB regular old drives. I know because I had to run it just the other day to correct an error that was causing my backup program to have errors.

 

Ouch! You have my empathy, Peter!

I think running it more often would reduce the time required. My second drive is a 500gb 7200rpm Seagate (less than 1/3 full) and fortunately has never required 45 minutes to complete chkdsk/F ... normally 10-15 minutes. The SSD is smaller and, for obvious reasons, faster and takes only a few minutes.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Phil, Phil, I was just joking about having some pages that didn't talk about SSDs! I mean, if you don't have one, nor are just about to get one, all the minutiae of installing, etc, are just "enrichment," but please don't think I am suggesting for a moment to suppress the content of discussions on this awesome thread.

@2.0
Of course I know that every time the disk i/o light is on the HD is reading or writing. As for upgrading every PC, I own 4 notebooks (more info would be on my sig line, but you made me shorten it to a few details of just one computer; can't imagine why you would discourage people from listing all their gear) and I don't need for every one to be lightning fast;

 

The I/O light bit was just a segue to discuss the benefits of an SSD. Not meant as a lesson about what the I/O light means.

As for the sig line, I didn't make you shorten it to a few details of just one computer. I informed you that your sig didn't conform to the rules. I also supplied a link to the rules and a suggestion which would have given you 2 more lines to add info. Going so far as suggesting the use of bold and italic to make certain aspects stand out. Remember? All in the PM.

8 lines, smallest font or 4 lines, regular font. All in the rules.
(Rules: Gotta have 'em otherwise chaos ensues. Chaos = bad for everyone = bad for site.)

How one sorts it out is their choice. Lots of creative ways. Some really nice looking sigs out there I must say.

Oh, and in your user profile you can list more. Click user CP and then edit profile. Last box under "current notebook." Anyone who clicks your user name will see your profile. (In case you didn't know.)

Lastly, yes, you don't need for every one to be lightning fast. That's why I said:

*emphasis added.

I have 5 notebooks BTW. 4 of which have SSDs.

Anyway, in the immortal words of the Joker... "why so serious?"

 

I responded to what you wrote, Jeff, and that's what you wrote... if you're joking, the original message may have been a better place to make that clearer (as opposed to waiting till after the responses). I agreed with you that the dialog about SSDs had been attracting lengthy and somewhat heated responses from several others and I didn't want to offend anyone by overly adding to that by discussing it when some were complaining.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I see why you have a favorable opinion of SSDs! Nothing speaks louder than buying choices that show what you think.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

The first SSD, which was a thank you gift from a friend on this forum, was an epiphany. Then I got religion and bought more.

 

I hope someone can help with this. I'm unable to change the disk space allocation for System Restore Point files on my Windows 7 system.

First, somewhat off the primary issue but confusing to me, under the Contol Panel-System program, on the "System Protection" tab of the "System Properties" page, there are 2 seemingly superfluous drives listed, both indicate "(C) (Missing)" and I don't understand where they came from or where they went. Both indicate that Protection is On. Perhaps, they are artifacts from the days when my primary drive was an HDD???

Second, and to the principal issue, I select the HDD under available drives, Data and Installation (F , which shows Protection is "on" and press "Configure" and move the "Max Usage" slider to a new value and press "Apply" and I encounter a message box which says "Could not apply the settings for the following reason: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect. (0x8007007B)". I then press OK and encounter a second message box which says "There was an unexpected error in the property page: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect. (0x8007007B) Please close the property page and try again"

Anyone run into this before? Any ideas why it would provide such a response and NOT let me change the space allocation for System Restore Point files???

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I learned about them back in the early 2000's when we bought one (obscenely expensive then) for our server files (in the days of NT Server) shared across the entire network. It was very fast and held up really well (still had to do backups continuously nwith Backup Exec across the network).

Regards,
- - Phil

 

On system restore, what I would recommend trying is to first disconnect all the drives possible to easily disconnect that you don't want system restore to monitor or create restore points for and then turn off system restore (which will cause all the current restore points to be deleted), reboot, and reactivate system restore and you should be able to adjust the amount of disk space to allocate to system restore and select which drives you want to use System Restore on. Not 100% sure the reboot is necessary but it might help. Then you can reconnect any drives you may have disconnected. See if that solves it. If it does, create a restore point since you won't have any at this point.

Ironically, this also might be a situation where sfc /scannow might be worthwhile to run (as administrator).

 

Thanks for the suggestions, Peter. It's a bit disruptive )) to my system so I shall undertake it when I'm not using it.

As far as sfc, I had run my weekly Chkdsk/f this morning (clean) and SFC (clean) before trying to set up System Restore - does that affect your suggestions?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

No need to run SFC again then.

 

Thanks... Since you couldn't know I already ran Chkdsk and SFC today, I figured that part was recommended without knowing that. I had no plan to run them again.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

This part of the recommended procedure worked (BTW, rebooting was unnecessary), and now the Restore Points and space allocations have been set to my satisfaction.

There was no need to disconnect any drives, tho. Turning off System Restore on local primary drive (C cleared everything out and caused the restore points for the two ghost C: partitions to vanish. Everything could be turned back on after that and settings saved.

Thanks for the suggestions, Peter.


Regards,
- - Phil

 

I don't know how the new Ghost version is but I used to have to do a chkdsk /f on my drive before I attempted a ghost or ghost could quite possibly find something it didn't like and abort the ghost.

Does the new version take care of that on the fly or is it still a good idea to run chkdsk before ghosting?

 

Chkdsk /f runs pretty fast.... chkdsk /r takes a bit.

 

Ime, all backup, drive image type apps are rather sensitive to any file system errors, (i.e., the kind of stuff that chkdsk fixes. I usually run it with the /r modifier.)

Phil, I found once that system restore would not let me selectively turn it off for certain removable USB drives unless I took them out of the system before re-activating it. Hence my recommendation, which proved to be an unnecessary step in your particular situation.

 

To Chkdsk or not to Chkdsk?

First, Alan, Ghost v.11 doesn't check the source before beginning to copy and will stop if it encounters a read error. So I usually chkdsk entire HDD or SSD before performing a clone operation.

If I'm just cloning a partition with "Ghost32 -ntexact" command (as I did today with my HP_Tools FAT partition), I'll decide based on its size since Ghost cloning is pretty fast (less than a minute or two) when cloning a partition smaller than 15gb.
Regards.
- - Phil

 

I've found that chkdsk /F has always fixed any issue I've ever had and its fast.....

Just for fun I'm running chkdsk /r on my 500gb HDD drive.. its ridiculously slow.....
..Already 25 mins into it and only 30 percent done.
I only have 50gb of info on it too.....

Unless there is a real reason for doing so, I don't find it practical to run the /R option just for grins.

But the /F option is never a bad idea.

 

Peter, I usually run Chkdsk when the expected duration of time to clone is large ... I skip the chkdsk and take my chances/risks that I might have to do it again when copying small partitions ...

I understand that might be necessary with removable drives like you mention. I guess that wasn't an issue since I didn't have any of those. Maybe if the system restore is turned off first on the local C: drive, the unconnecting of USB drives wouldn't be necessary, either?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Me. too.

JUST FOR FUN -?? You have too much idle time on your hands!

30% in 25 minutes? That's really slow. I did my weekly run on my 500gb 7200rpm Seagate this morning with 100 gb on it and it was all done in 30 minutes. When was the last time you did it? Was it highly fragmented? (I always defragment before running Chkdsk).
Regards,
- - Phil

 

Been an hour and a half now....only 93%...... no fragments.. I ran defrag two days ago "for fun!".....

Humm... don't think I'll be running /r again!.. "for fun, at least!"

for some dumb reason I had my indexing turned of on my D drive "HDD"... must have done it when I was experimenting "for fun" and forgot to put it back.. maybe thats why its so slow?

------------Edit... maybe chkdsk has it suspended.. I notice when I went to d drive properites "while my chkdsk is running" it shows zero bytes on disk..... "I sure hope thats not right!"

 

Yep.. nevermind... thats what was happening... once chkdsk finished.. I showed everything right again.. "including" the fact that I do still have indexing enabled on that drive.

Total time to run was 1 hours 40 min... thats crazy.... regular chkdsk /F takes about 10 seconds... LOL!.. too funny!

 

My admittedly limited understanding is that chkdsk /f doesn't check for bad sectors while chkdsk /r does. Hence, to repair errors without scanning the volume for bad sectors, one would use chkdsk /f.

To repair errors, locate bad sectors, and recover readable information, one would use chkdsk /r.

 

I think it does check peter... Open an elevated cmd window and run it on your secondary drive so you can watch what all it does....
if you have an error that the /F switch wouldn't fix, then you could run it again with the /r switch.. but i've never had to do that.

As you know, running it on your primary will force a reboot.

I ran:
chkdsk d: /f

 

Ok, at first it wasn't bothering me, but now I feel like I'm going deaf pretty soon.

IDT Audio is the main controller of my PC sounds, as it seems. But when I'm listening to music (or any continuous sound) kinda loud, the sound behaves as it's coming in at lower and higher waves. I don't know if I can make myself clearer, but it's sort of this: imagine you're listening to a music and another person keeps turning the volume up and down, slightly. Whenever I turn off the SRS Powered Sound, it gets MUCH better, but far from perfect. Looks to me as if the bass (and low tune sounds) are always too damn high/perceptible.
On the keyboard access, I've already lowered my bass to the minimum and treble to maximum (and tried all combos) with no success.

Do you guys know how to solve this? Should I uninstall IDT drivers and get new ones? If so, which drivers? Or is there an easier way to solve this?

Thanks everyone!

Edit: and one other thing...whenever I try to install the Chipset update 9.1.2.1027, even using the -overall parameter, all I get is 9.1.1.1022 installed (the same as before). What am I doing wrong?