*HP dv8 Owners Lounge*

When I get my brand new dv8t, I wanted to do a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium.

To begin with, read the 100 page document listed in this thread?

What about the drivers and other reqd software, free goodies etc. I don't want to miss anything when doing a fresh install. Is there a list that tells me the order of the installation (drivers and software) so that the install goes smooth?

Btw, if I don't select dual HDDs when placing my order, does the build still come with a second empty HDD bay and all I need is to get the bracketing kit from HP? to install a second HDD? Also, I'll be replacing the 500GB 7200rpm HDD with a 80 or 128GB SSD drive. To do this, do I still need the bracketing kit from HP?

Please help.

Thanks.

 

Two suggestions.. get at least windows 7 professional 64bit... why?... it will utilize all your ram..... Home edition win7 32 bit only uses 3.5 "approx" gig of ram.... Also 64bit is stinkin fast and utilizes the 64git architecture of your processor... why not?
I have no compatibility issues with any programs.

someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Second, unless you really need tons of hardrive space, the benefits of SSD are outstanding... you won't have to worry about vibration or your drive going bad because of abrupt shock "a real consideration with a movable computer such as a laptop"........

I guess the other angle is to get the HDD as you suggest for plenty of hardrive space and try to get a trim enabled SSD later and Ghost your stuff to your SSD and make it your primary... then format your HDD and make it your backup.

To my knowledge, you should still get the extra HD bay to add later even if you order one drive now... I would confirm that for sure with HP.. but I can't see why not.

A few thoughts of my own....
I"m hoping HP releases a firmware update for my Samsung SSD.. otherwise, I"m on the verge of buying another trim enabled SSD drive making it my primary and using my existing 256Gig as secondary "thats all the space I need".. that would mean I would have an extra 500gig HDD to sell.

Unless the firmware release finally happens to update the 256gig I have, I will simply run AS-cleaner from time to time to keep it fresh.... there will be very little use with it anyway since it will only be a backup drive.

 

As far as I know, the dv8 ships standard (aka, free!) with Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium, which recognizes, I believe 16GB or more of RAM, but other hdwe/sftwe components must be present for it to recognize more than 8GB, which I can personally attest this computer with Win 7 Home Premium fully recognizes. Hope this helps.

 

Let me do some digging.. recognizing the ram is there is different than utilizing it.

 

Good luck! Windstrings will have some comments for you as he did it and liked the result. I did it, too, but saw no benefit and restored my "cleaned up" HP install and it seems to run a bit faster than the clean install ...

Depends on what you already know... reading the last month provide the most useful info and may tell you all you can absorb.

Not that I know of but, ask questions when you get into it and you'll get a lot of responses when the exact context is clearer.

Yes.

You'll need one but one may come with the drive you buy. Hence, you'll need to ask the vendor you chose to provide the drive. I already have posted that HP provided me one with their Samsung 256gb SSD when I bought it in February.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

The base OS is indeed Win 7 Home Premium as of checking the HP site tonight.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Yes, HP sells these systems with W7 x64 home premium installed as the base OS. It will recognize and utilize all the ram you can currently stuff into it's two memory slots, so no problems there. No need to buy W7 Pro or Ultimate unless you want or need the extra features those versions provide. Home Premium is actually pretty full featured, imo, and there are 3rd party apps (mostly free) that can provide most of the additional stuff, if it's needed (such as OEM versions of Acronis or Macrium Reflect for backup, TrueCrypt for encryption, etc.). I only installed (correction . . . did an Anytime Upgrade to) Ultimate because I had a free key from being a Launch Party Host for it.

 

I selected this: Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. This should utilize the entire 8GB RAM. Right?

 

Win 7 Home Premium is limited to recognizing 16gb (no more!) and Win 7 Pro can recognize up to 192gb.
Neither presents a memory limit issue in the Dv8 at this time.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

See my previous post above yours.

 

Good for up to 16gb so you're all set! However, if you want to use the virtualization for XP Mode, you MUST have Win 7 Pro or Ultimate.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I consider the Win 7 Pro a good deal because it supports virtualization - XP Mode, for example is free from MS and allows a lot of older programs to run well that aren't happy under Win 7. MS also offers a variety of other virtualized OSs ...

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Phil,

I've always wondered, if you don't need the network security features, why would an individual need to upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to either Pro or Ultimate? Not asking for a list of every difference (seen the charts on MS site), but asking as a practical matter, what is the benefit to an individual user to upgrade? I thought I read that while Home Premium didn't used to support running XT it does now, so that reason would presumably be out the "Window."

Thanks,

Jeff

 

See my post just below yours, Jeff. In a word or two, I have used "XP Mode" under Win 7 Pro - XP Mode doesn't run under Win 7 Home Premium because Win 7 Home Premium doesn't support Virtualization. XP Mode can be used to do a bunch of stuff that Win 7 doesn't support. Like Hotsync a Palm Treo using a USB cord. While Win 7 made huge strides in its latest incarnation of "compatibility modes" for older OSes, XP Mode IS XP and works every time with NO fiddling around, etc.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

PMorgan,
Check your pm's. I sent you one, have a good one man.
wolfskinbjc

 

Thank you very much. I appreciate it and will do as you asked. Let me know if there's anything I can ever do in return.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

this isn't so much an issue between versions concerning ram as much as it is as to whether its 64bit verses 32bit.
Pro will utilize virtualization and handle compatibility mode for older programs... a big plus if you have lots of $ tied up in older word processors and expensive programs.


Here is an article concerning Vista 32 verses 64bit

I have 8 gig ram and right now I have 8181 total, 1741 cached, 6432 available, 4717 Free and reported in Task manager under the performance tab.

Sorry to upset the kiddy cart but
Here is a better article:

One last article:

Basically if your running a budget machine... 32 bit works fine and is compatible with 16bit programs...
But if your into max speed, 64bit is really primo, and Pro or better will give you better compatibility with the older stuff anyways.

Funny about these machines, they are fast enough, you really don't know what your missing till your missing it.

Now that the sting of my initial purchase is over, I regret not going further and getting the fastest processor available "even though it wasn't a bargain for the extra money".... Ram is an item you really shouldn't skimp on.. its cheap and it does so much... "unless your 32 bit".
8 gig of ram "two 4 gig sticks" is still the sweet spot.... pretty economical.. go more than that you'll pay and likely not use it on this machine.

Want instant opening and to feel like there is no lag?
Get SSD, 6+ gig Ram, 64bit OS...... Do the Firefox tweaks and your internet experience will almost be instant too.

I always used to thing the bottleneck was all on the internet.. wrong.... with this laptop, I now see that much of my bottleneck was on my end with my older computer in the past.

I can't wait till 64bit FF gets flash as its really really fast!.. especially with the tweaks.. but I can't live without flash... Tried Chrome, but not enough features.

 

Alan, I agree with you about the benefits of a 64-bit OS, particularly looking forward- most software is more efficient when written in x64. Generally faster but NOT always. Always able to do the 'heavy lifting' some complex applications now benefit from - PhotoShop, AutoCad, and MathCad - I use them all!

But, if you're writing to a prospective buyer of a new Dv8, it's moot now since the only OSes HP offers are the 64-bit OSes for it.

No question that you've nailed the basic new Dv8 system specifications with that SSD 6gb RAM, and 64-bit OS.

I too, use FireFox and REALLY look forward to 64-bit Flash for it.


Regards,
- - Phil

 

I think that, if you want or need XP Mode, you should just pay the upcharge to buy Win 7 Pro (and just download the free XP Mode from the MS site) over Win 7 Home Premium. The difference in price of $100 will save you a LOT of time that you'd spend pursuing the complex procedure to install it yourself into Win 7 Home Premium.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Btw, can somebody post the direct link to the dv8t guide? Which page to refer to get quick access to all the info?

Phil - Do you have a blog or a website that talks more about tweaks, hacks to the dv8t?

Also, does the BIOS on dv8t allow changing some of the settings (e.g) AHCI?

Thanks.

 

What kind of info? You talking user guide or service manual?

 

DV8 Service manual in PDF format: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01910942.pdf

 

I'm not sure what Dv8 guide you are looking for? Here's one that I found VERY useful:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01910942.pdf

No, I have no blog or website. I'm just a fellow enthusiast who learns a lot from this forum and tries to share what he has learned.

Presently, AFAICT, the Dv8t comes with an Insyde UEFI-based BIOS which offers only two minor options for changes. Very much locked down. If you want to learn more about how the BIOS is being "revised" to accept some changes, this may be worth some reading and study.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-compaq-voodoo-pc/393606-insyde-bios-modding-dv4-dv5-dv6-dv7-least.html

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I was referring to the tweaks guide posted here in this thread and not the user guide from HP. Since I'll be doing a fresh install, I saw a guide posted here that runs more than 100 pages. I was looking for a link to that guide.

 

I've never seen it or a link to it. I hope someone else has - If anyone posts a link, I'd be very interested in reading it also.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

These are the only 2 I can think of:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-compaq-voodoo-pc/432564-hp-laptop-out-box-guide-2-0-windows-7-a.html

And the drivers thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-drivers-software-forum/404164-drivers-hp-dv6-gen-2-dv7-gen-3-dv8-hdx16-hdx18-intel.html

 

Here's a list posted on another forum. Maybe it'll get new Dv8 owners get started and save the time of a clean install and chasing down usable drivers for everything in their laptop.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Peter, sorry about bringing this up so late, but could you be more specific about these tests you made and exactly what was going on with the HDD? I mean, before you perform all the tests, I believe something odd was happening, right?

Thanks!


P.S: If any of you guys could quickly show me how to add a signature, it would be great.

 

Hit user CP (upper left) then edit signature.

Keep it within the guidelines of the forum rules.

 

Excellent guys. This is all I need to the links.

Btw, any specific tweaks for HD editing?

 

Thanks, 2.0

Hope mine is ok.

 

Perfect. Enjoy.

 

Nothing odd was going on that I noticed. I just routinely check the Smart data that all (or almost all) HD's record. There are many apps that can access this data. On one of my drives, there were several of the Smart attributes that were worryingly high and one app gave a warning about some of the numbers. So I gave the drive a more in depth test with a free app from Seagate called "Seatools," and the drive in question failed the "Long Drive Self Test." This indicates the drive is about to fail, should be immediately replaced and is grounds for warranty replacement if the drive is still under warranty.

After an hour on the phone with a clueless support person who could only read from scripts so everything took 5 times longer than it should have, HP finally agreed to ship the refurbed replacement drive by one day FedEx with a return shipping label (ground) for the bad drive. It came with the required mounting hardware already attached. If I don't return the old drive within 15 days, they will charge my credit card for the replacement refurbished drive (probably would charge the same as a new drive knowing them). I guess this is the price one pays for buying a cheap computer.

Unfortunately, HP shipped me a factory refurb (Seagate) as a replacement for the failing one (which happened to be Hitachi) which I'm very unhappy about, but it's better than using a drive that is definitely in a failing status. The refurbed Seagate drive passes all the tests although it is throwing up a few funky Smart numbers but no warnings yet. It seems to be booting up a little faster than the drive it replaced. I hope it will give good service. I have a feeling there is no warranty on the refurbed Seagate beyond HP's one year warranty.

In the past I have generally had good luck with Hitachi laptop drives. This is only the second one that has failed out of at least 12 I've had. IBM shipped me a brand new replacement for the other one that failed but that was back in the days when IBM owned and made Thinkpads.

Cloning my old drive to the new one in an esata hard drive dock took about 20 minutes. Another 5 to swap in the new one. Now I'm in the process of wiping the old drive to the DOD spec (involves writing 1 or zeros to every sector 7 times which takes about 8 or 9 hours for a 500 GB drive even in the estata dock) before sending it back to HP. There are many apps that can do this for you.

 

Good news and bad news, Peter. Good news:I've had at least 7 Seagate 7200rpm (ST9500420AS) Momentus drives so far, including the ones in my Dv8 and 2-yr-old Toshiba Sat Pro L350 and none have given me any sign of a problem. If yours are that drive, you should make out pretty well. Plus they are a bit faster than others in that class so your perceptions are 'right-on'. Bad news:Online rep for these drives is terrible. Also, if you buy the drives from BestBuy, they come with a 5 year warranty so I've bought several of them there to ensure I'm covered if the HP-provided one ever acts up outside of its 1-yr warranty.

Cheers,
- - Phil

 

I'm OK with the Seagate. I'm not OK with getting a factory refurb. in exchange for a drive that was less than a month old.

 

Peter,
If it was me, I would buy a Western Digital or equiv. on the retail mkt for app $100 and be totally secure with quality and chalk it up to an extra "tax" on the dv8 for being an HP . I know, easy to say when it's not my money, but my personal philosophy is that if the cost is not a game changer, cut your losses, buy what you know you can trust, and consider yourself lucky not to have had a catastrophic failure. With your "disk farm" I would think you could make use of those surplus bare disks somehow.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Jeff

 

Hip, hip hooray to you! I would give you another Rep pt. but it won't let me because you were my last beneficiary . Seems I need to "spread the praise" first.

PS: Do you see any downside to leaving the HP stuff there? I'm thinking resale, and lots of people see it as part of the computer, may even think it's less functional, or harder to use without. We know better, and I suppose it can always be stored away and put back on, but I follow in your lead that the less moving stuff on/off and keeping track of drivers, etc., the better. So, other than HD space, are the HP Uselessware programs doing any harm?

Oh, also, you mentioned keeping the HP DVD software for blu ray. Are there free versions of that you are aware of. I have to say, there can be so many difficulties with blu ray and DRM and I have never had a problem with the current version of HP DVD player blu ray functionality.

Thanks again for your service to HP owner-kind!

Best,

Jeff

 

Well Jeff, I thought about doing something like that but I back up daily to a desktop drive as well as maintain a fairly recent laptop drive clone (although it has capacity smaller than 500 GB) of the OS drive, so even if this drive fails on me, it would not be catastrophic for me. I would just go about replacing it if/when it should ever fail, probably with an SSD anyway by that time, if not before. And once I do eventually get an SSD, this drive will probably just be used for backups images or clones. It just irks me to receive a factory refurb although I know that is a common practice in the industry these days. I wouldn't mind if it was for a part like the wireless adapter or ram memory etc., but for a hard drive I feel they should be replacing them with new ones.

Btw, for resale, I always securely wipe the drive and then restore it to the factory image anyway with all bloatware intact using the recovery disks that everyone should burn, so the purchaser gets the laptop just as it would have come from HP and my data can't ever be recovered even by sophisticated recovery methods.

 

I can't give you any encouragement on that aspect, Peter, but hope you make out okay with it anyway.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Yes, that's the idea...

I doubt that a backup of the original is useful if you have the HP restoration CDs. if you go to sell, I would just pop in the 500gb HDD, do a full "wipe" on it with "1's" and then, if the buyer indicates that it's his preference, proceed to recover to "like new" with the CDs.

There are several reasons to remove the bloatwares - 1) save disk space on SSD since free space extends its life and lets it run faster, 2) Windows has all sorts of lists and redundant copies of stuff that have to be read and displayed and updated under a wide range of situations and all the teaseware and bloatware add to these burdens and slow down your Dv8, and 3) I just shudder at how much time, bandwidth, and CPU clock cycles are wasted by bloatware searching periodically for updates to itself! This assumes you are not using them since they are slower and less efficient than not using them.

I do but not because I use it very much. I find VLC freeware works just great for playing almost anything. I use my BD-R/RW mostly for writing BD-R and the HP MediaSmart DVD plays no role. I'll probably delete all MediaSmart stuff eventually LOL.

You're too kind. Thanks.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I like "The KM Player" (free) lately for video playback of all kinds. Much better than VLC, imo. It is totally self contained like VLC but allows the option of using external codecs/filters etc., for advanced users.

I was blown away by the sound quality (and video quality if configured optimally) compared to MPC-HC or any other player I've used yet for video. It works great right out of the box with the default settings too, but I wanted to re-configure it to work with CoreAVC Pro for H264, AVC and MP4 files and, fortunately, that was quite easy to accomplish. It took a lot to lure me away from MPC-HC but this one did. In fact, I'm in the process of changing my program defaults over to the KM Player as I write this.

The only negative with the KM Player is that it is not updated very frequently (although they just did finally come out with an update a couple of days ago), but it works so well and has such advanced configuration options that that does not seem to be a problem.

 

Sorry, Peter. I just wrote a similar set of advice to Jeff since so many forget to do this with every HDD they sell or discard. I guess it can stand the repeating but it wasn't intentional as I hadn't read yours before starting to respond to LoveLaptops(Jeff).

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I have used VLC for several years as it plays a necessary role in my video transfers from my ReplayTV DVR to DVDs at 720p quality. I also consider myself a novice in such things and heartily recommend VLC to others on that basis as they may be casual users. It was a snap to install and use.

I'm always looking for something better to move myself to 'intermediate' level so I'll take a look at it, Peter.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Yeah, I think you'll be surprised as I was. I had tried the KM Player (KMP) a while back and thought it was good but I preferred MPC-HC because of the interface and how easy it was to use it with external codecs.

But after trying the latest version the other day again for the first time in a long time, The KM Player just sounded and looked a lot better to me, especially for playing HD movies, even out of the box and I was very pleased to discover I could even configure it to work with CoreAVC Pro which enables me to play my HD movies with our NVidia 230m's CUDA (assuming you are using a driver that supports CUDA). CUDA is very cool as it offloads most of the vidio processing from the CPU to the GPU which is optimized for it, makes use of hyperthreading, and provides excellent results on the DV8, imo. The DV8 just loafs along barely breaking a sweat using CUDA. I'm not sure whether the KM Player supports CUDA without using an external codec like CoreAVC Pro. I kind of doubt it.

Another free external codec that supports DXVA (another form of GPU hardware acceleration like CUDA) is MPC-HC's DXVA codec which is free and can also be utilized in The KM Player. Also the free DiVX codecs.

I did several back to back A/B comparisons between KMP and MPC-HC and the default audio was clearly superior on KMP to my custom configured MPC-HC which I had thought was pretty good, and the difference was significant. The video quality was about the same. The interface was about the same, although I'm slightly more familiar with MPC-HC having used it for a long time. I'm already getting pretty comfortable with KMP though and I'm finding its interface fairly intuitive to use. Configuration (which is optional since it works well on default settings) is a little tricky when you first attempt it, but once you work with it for a bit, it gets pretty straightforward and easy, imo.

There are a couple of sites that have explicit step by step instructions on how to configure KMP to use an external codec for GPU and multi-core hardware acceleration/processing for viewing appropriate HD video formats. Here's one: Make use of multi-core CPUs

Basically, it involves installing the external codec you want to use. Disabling KMP's internal codec for the format in question and enabling KMP to use the external codec/filter you want to use instead. Very easy really.

 

It looks nice... I recommended VLC to Jeff for playing BluRay Disks - have you found it better for playing them? I'll be trying it later on my latest BD - Weeds.... Will let you know.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I don't actually play any HD media directly from optical media. It's all BD rips for me.

I don't know how well KMP would do on BR disks in its default config, although I suspect that anything VLC can do KMP should be able to do with its default settings since it was similarly designed to be a complete all in one solution without need for external codecs. With its default settings, afaik, KMP does not use any system or outside codecs.

It's just nice that KMP allows us picky people who want to use specific external codecs for certain file types to do so. But I haven't touched its audio settings since I don't think I can improve on them.

 

I think that may make all the difference! VLC is a simpler program and plays DVD and BD media well without tweaking, etc. I have far less understanding of how it may play the material you choose and have never tried to import or apply any Codecs to it.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I would bet KMP is able to play everything with its default settings. As I said, it's intended to be a complete all in one solution just like VLC. The main difference is that it is more configurable for those who want that, but it is not required that one do any custom configuration of it. It should play everything fine with default settings, just like VLC.

 

Yeah, Peter...

I know how you feel about your "new" HDD. Well, I already had my share with HP when I bought my Dv8t. I got this pixel line (red) from top to bottom, right in the middle of screen. Had to send it back to US and all. Before sending them, my up arrow key fell. Just fell off the keyboard. I tried reattaching it with no luck. It was odd, because I hadn't even used it yet. HP USA told me it was result of bad usage and you can imagine how MAD one can get when reading this kind of thing.
But, yeah, after A LOT of talk, they agreed to replace screen and keyboard. I hope I don't have any more headaches apart from that.

I wish you luck with your HDD and you wish me luck with my new screen/keyboard. Hahahaha

Oh, regarding keyboards, is it common for you guys to get your fingers sligthly under the keys while typing fast (sorry, don't know/remember the english word for that "action")? I must say that this keyboard is not that bad, but it is certainly the worse notebook keyboard I've ever used.

 

I think you just need to get used to the keyboard. I know I did. I think it's fine though (aside from no backlight) once you get adjusted to it and learn how to avoid catching your fingers under the keys and things like that. I'm still getting used to the different location of certain keys like the delete key, compared to my old machine (Thinkpad, which had a fantastic keyboard, but they are known for that).

But, yeah, I wish you good luck with your new/repaired machine. What a bummer. That's much worse than my little issue with the hard drive, which is pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things.

I'm just about ready to pack up the old drive and find a FEDEX drop point to ship it back to HP, or maybe I can get FEDEX to come pick it up, even though it's a ground shipment.

I think the new DV8 about to become available, if not already available, will likely have the new so called "island" or
chicklet" style of keyboard. I think these new style keyboards are more robust, but not necessarily better feeling. But I haven't used one of the new style kbs long enough to get used to one of those and really get to know it. My initial impression of one I played with in a store for a few minutes was not bad but not amazing either.