*HP dv8 Owners Lounge*

I used to use hibernation alot... now this computer is so fast I simply shut it down as it comes back up so fast its about as fast as coming out of hibernation.

The only reason to use hibernation is if your really trying to preserve your desktop screen as to whats open etc so you have it all back as you were last working on it.

The beauty of hibernation verses sleep is that sleep uses battery life "if your not plugged in" whereas hibernation creates a temporary file that stores all your stuff so you get it back when you wake it up.

That being said.... everything opens nearly instantly and the computer can to a complete startup so fast its a non issue for me to worry about it.

 

Thanks Alan and Peter. To be completely honest, I've never ever actually used sleep before . I might give it a crack.

I agree Peter - the machine is so fast that shutting down and starting up again is really a non-issue. In my defense though, I like to put my new toys thru their paces and play around with things (hopefully without breaking them!)

Cheers,
Richard

BTW, the silicon keyboard cover arrived yesterday. It's not completely transparent (more a milky color), but it fits the keys perfectly and dramatically cuts down the noise while typing (much to the wife's relief when she is trying to sleep and I am tapping away furiously...). The keys would be easier to see at night with the cover on if they were backlit...but then that's a whole different conversation...

 

I think if you try sleep/standby you will find it's considerably more convenient than hibernation. The very slight parasitic current drain is a non issue if you are on AC most of the time. It's a lot faster than shutting down and restarting or resuming from hibernation for those of us who don't yet have an SSD.

 

Anyone have any idea what the new F.25 BIOS fixes?

 

Hello!

I just bought a dv8 1090ev, it is less than a month old and it has been giving me an annoying problem lately.

When i play games where the ac adapter is not plugged in it shuts down after around 10 minutes, it completely goes dead(like i`m holding the power button down for 4 sec). I play games like supreme commander 2, heroes of newerth and heroes of might and magic 5.
It does it in all 3 games, there is absolutely no problem if i am just surfing or playing movies.
It ONLY does it if the ac adapter is not plugged in, i can play for hours and hours if i am plugged in no problems.

I would appreciate any help

Thank you!

 

Probably you are running out of battery power. The machine may be set to shut down, sleep or hibernate, when the battery runs down to a certain level, such as 2, 5 or 10%. You can check this in Power options, change plan settings, change advanced power settings, battery, and check the various settings found under the "battery" section. The machine will probably shut down anyway when the remaining battery power is depleted below a critical level and the battery's protection circuits kick in to prevent over discharge. But it is not healthy for the battery to run it down to the level where the protection circuits activate.

Games usually suck a lot of power and the battery of the DV8 does not have sufficient capacity to power the machine for very long even when doing low power operations.

Imo, it is probably not advisable to play games that demand a lot of power while operating only on battery power. You will not get very long runtime and are simply going to cause excessive wear and tear (i.e., loss of capacity) on your battery. In fact, your battery may already be basically worn out if you have been using it this way for very long. If the battery is already shot and the machine is less than a year old, it's possible the battery may still be covered by a warranty and HP might replace it.

 

It supposedly fixes an issue apparently experienced by some involving an intermittent failure to boot up into Windows. I've never experienced such a problem on the DV8 myself, but I went ahead and installed the F.25 bios update anyway. It might be my imagination or the placebo effect but my impression is that my machine is booting up slightly faster after updating the Bios than it did before.

 

Funny you said that...... I was thinking that too!

 

timed my reboot..... starting from windows, it takes exactly 27 seconds to get the fingerprint reader screen.... I swipe immediately and 2 seconds later I can open anything I want." Even though I do see activity on the processor it doesn't affect performance of anything I open.

Quite a delight with this machine.. I run Nod32 Antivirus 64bit version and the load screen "popup" for Nod is up and gone in less than one second.....

This machine is rediculously fast compared to anything else I've ever ran.

And yes you can allow your system to "sleep" if your going to be back and forth every so often, but for shutting down to go to bed or leave the house, I shut down... I can deal with a 22 second startup!

 

Thank you for your input; But my laptop is less than 1 month old, to be exact it is 22 days old.

Running out of battery power has never been the case. If the battery is at 100% it still does it still goes off after around 10 min depending on the game. When i turn it on again after 1 min, there is still lots of battery power.

The problem which i stated was that it shuts down if the ac adapter is not plugged in, when gaming.

 

Then it is likely that the games are drawing more power than the battery can supply w/o the AC adapter being connected.

 

Is it not suppose to be able to handle any kind of game? after all it is a gaming laptop.

 

Does anybody know if a new dv8 might come out soon with the silvery-finish of the new dv7's?

Secondly, it looks like the dv7 is 7.99lbs and dv8t is 8.77lbs....is it really only 3/4lb heavier for a 1.1" increase in screen size? If that's correct then it seems that the dv8 might better utilize it's size/weight compared to the dv7?

Also, how is the keyboard on this? I have a thinkpad and I love the keyboard and I have heard that HP's aren't as responsive (key's don't bounce back and click as nicely)....what do you guys think?

Finally, does anybody know of any coupons for this laptop or the dv7?

Thank you!

 

I agree, Alan, and the SSD sure plays a role in that quickness. I only use hibernation because, since my battery is out of my Dv8 most of the time, there's no power to run the "sleep" mode if I unplug it. Plus, the power brick gets really warm and so I don't like to leave it plugged in unless I'm actually using the Dv8.

I second that speed comment - mine goes from powered off to logged in in 30 seconds!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

For those of us who have an SSD, Peter, the sleep mode is still convenient but I prefer to unplug when I shut down since my power brick gets so hot.

Besides, on the issue to hibernate or not, I get to where I have half dozen FF tabs open as well as several other apps and like everything to come back up "where I left it" so I can resume my work.

When I've had trouble getting hibernation to work on older XP PCs, I have worked to fix that problem rather than switch to sleep mode. The fix has usually been to run "OS repair" and then re-install all the security updates. Voila' - then hibernate works again.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Enjoy... I haven't ever had that issue so it seems unnecessary. I'll PASS!

My F.06 is working just fine and I have no issues that I know of with my Dv8. Everything works and, except for being unable install Office 2010 without removing Office 2003 (probably an MS issue), all my software plays well with the hardware. No changes needed!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

It sounds to me that, like Peter suggested, your power plan settings limit your use of battery power. Have you checked those battery "power plan" settings? If it has any short duration settings for shutting off display, shutting off hard drive, or hibernation, adjusting them may extend the time you can continue running on battery AND this may NOT depend on SoC of the battery (it could be at 100% and still have these settings shut it off).

Hope this helps!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I checked all the power plans and there is no such setting which would shut it off.

 

The battery has a built in protection circuit that, among other things, limits the maximum rate of discharge of the battery to a safe level. Li-Ion batteries can overheat, catch fire and explode if they are subjected to excessively high rates of discharge. That's one reason why there is protection circuitry to prevent that. It's possible that power hungry games could be demanding more power than the battery can safely deliver. If this is happening, the protection circuitry built into the battery would cut off the power and the notebook would have to shut down. This is just a theory of mine based on what I know about Li-Ion batteries and the kind of power requirements certain games have (although I'm not familiar with the specific games in question here).

Btw, the DV8 is not specifically designed or marketed as a "gaming" notebook. It does a pretty good job of playing games but it is really marketed as an "entertainment" notebook. To me that includes playing games, but most real gaming notebooks are quite a bit more expensive and have better GPUs than the DV8.

Imo, it's not reasonable to expect any machine, gaming or otherwise, to game especially well on battery power. The battery simply is neither able nor designed to deliver the same sustained levels of power that a 120 watt AC adapter can deliver. And subjecting the battery to this kind of use (some might call it abuse) is likely to shorten the useful life of the battery.

 

would sure be curious to see if you get faster bootup with the latest bios. Your system is faster than mine "faster processor" and I get into windows in about 22 seconds.. a complete reboot is about 32 - 35 seconds flat.... including logging in with the fingerprint scanner... "set to high".

Funny you brought up office 2010.
I have office 2003 but it has a funky bug in my 64bit machine where it may crash if attempting to copy and paste a row from an excel file to another section of that same file.

Anyway.. tried 2007 and discovered they removed the ability to scan images directly into word from the scanner... you have to first scan it to a .tif file or similar then import it into word... multiple scans get pretty confusing unless you go to the trouble to properly label them.
I use and need that function almost daily for work.

Importing them into the clip manager is another option which again is a hassle... and I hate wizard mentality that wants to put everything in a hidden organizer that clutters things up.
So I studied 2010, and appears it has the same deficit, seems MS likes to dictate what our needs are rather than listen to the customer.

So, I'm now running Open office 3.2.1 and quite happy with it so far.. seems to work perfect.. no bugs, no glitches and I can again scan straight into a write document. "and its free"

I estimate once I"m past the learning curve of playing with something new I will most likely like it better.
I figure I had the learning curve no matter what.. since 2007 is so much different than 2003, and 2010 is different again.... so I figured I had nothing to lose to try.... so far, it was a good choice.

 

I'm using Office 2010. It has a really cool program in it called "OneNote" which is like a tabbed notebook that one can pretty much dump anything in freeform, even handwriting with a tablet, scans, copy and paste whole webpages with images and formatting preserved. Or just type and it magically seems to format stuff appropriately most of the time. It even does calculations if you, for example type 2 + 2 = (it will fill in the answer for you, in this case "4"). I use OneNote now to keep all kinds of memos, notes, info, logs, records (such as scanned receipts), etc. etc. It's really been polished in 2010 and has become an amazing app, imo.

 

That's very nice but doesn't address my problem (if it were so intended).

I know it's great improvement over Office 2007.... I ran the beta for quite a while. Unfortunately, I am not willing to remove Office 2003 to install the RTM version and its install program chokes when it "discovers" Office 2003 is installed and will not continue with the install of Office 2010.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

The setting option IS definitely there!

I can't tell from how you phrased your response if you're just saying you reviewed the settings and none are set in such a way as to turn off anything on battery in 10 minutes, etc., or just disagreeing with me that such a setting option is there ....

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Have a look at this, it may help: Upgrade Office 2003 to 2010 on XP or Run them Side by Side - How-To Geek

 

I don't think Ofc 2010 can be installed alongside a prior version (Edit: Didn't see the above post when I posted this). I had to remove all traces of prior versions when I installed it on my machine. I'm sure you must have your reasons but I'm not understanding why you would want to keep the older version if you have the option of installing the latest version.

 

+1 for OneNote. Using both 2007 and 2010 on different machines. It's even more amazing on tablets which I mostly run OneNote on.

 

Thanks, 2.0. Sure looks like it addresses the issue. I can't recall if my attempts ever got far enough to choose between "upgrade" and "customize" but it's worth a try!

Regards,
- - Phil

Edit: After trying it - it works and 2010 is installed without any problems. Runs xxx 2003 in window next to yyy 2010 apps. Many thanks to you, 2.0 !

 

I'll give 2.0's reference a try. I know from others that it can be done under XP but maybe Win7 has issues.

I want to keep the older version of Office 2003 since it contains Access and my new version, Office 2010, doesn't. If I remove 2003, I loose Access 2003. Understand?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Yes, I understand now.

 

I guess you're in for a long wait, Alan. Until a BIOS offers something I feel justifies the risks of installing it, and I have no issues that suggest a BIOS issue, I'll stay at F.06.

Fortunately, Alan, mine doesn't do that! Was it doing it before you updated the BIOS from F.15?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Also, Peter, note Alan's comment in his post. He gave another reason...

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I like the theory. But still is the battery not suppose to be able to do anything the ac adapter plugged in can do? Should it not be able to handle anything the ac adapter can handle?

Hi again Phil

What i meant was none of the settings are set so it would turn off anything after 10 min, in any kind of way..

I´m confused

I would be grateful for any more help

Thanks in advance

 

You've got me stumped too. I agree that the battery and AC should run the same apps under the same levels of energy required ....

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I"m wondering if it was one of the wonderful updates of late... .... it worked for quite a while until recently.... Not sure if it was SP3 or one of the other windows update that could have fouled it..... anyway.. I did reinstall and fully updated before testing.

I was going to uninstall and not do the updates this time but decided to try Open office instead... I do like the idea of receiving free updates and staying current without having to spend 500.00 every few years to do it.

 

while my computer feels as fast as it ever was... my performance score has dropped.....
My major changes have been the recent firmware update and the latest graphics driver.

Has anyone else noticed a drop in the graphics area after the latest driver update?
Here are my results:

Before updates:
Processor 6.9
Memory Ram 7.4
Graphics 6.3
Gaming graphics 6.3
Primary Hard disk 6.8

F.25 bios and 257.21 graphic
Processor 6.9
Memory Ram 7.4
Graphics 5.7
Gaming graphics 6.2
Primary Hard disk 6.8

 

If you're still using the oem install of win 7, go to HP Total Care and run the battery check. See if if the battery passes. Sounds like you have a bad one....

If you don't have HP Total Care installed, this is a pretty good program:

PassMark BatteryMon - UPS & laptop computer battery monitoring software

There is a 30 Day trial, so good enough for what you want to test...

If your battery shows either 0% or it shuts off even though the battery is reporting a high percentage, then you need a new battery imo....

HP will most certainly replace it under warranty...

 

I already did that battery check, it shows that it is in perfect health.

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

If anyone with the dv8 could do a simple test where they unplug the ac adapter and run prime95 for around 10-15 min.
This is where my laptop also fails, like it does in gaming.. Anything that uses a lot of power is where it goes off only when the ac adapter is not plugged in.

Thanks

 

While I have updated my nVidia driver to 257.21, Alan, I haven't updated my BIOS from the original F.06. I will run the WEI and let you know what I get.

Regards,
- - Phil

Edit; My scores are unchanged since 257.21.
F.06 bios and 257.21 nVidia driver:
Processor 6.9
Memory Ram 7.4
Graphics 6.4
Gaming graphics 6.4
Primary Hard disk 6.8

 

Just got my new DV8 Monday.
Runs Great after removing some software.
Got this one off ebay.
Boy, it took me 4 day to read all 400+ pages and that was the shipping time for my system.
My system came with F24 bios install.

 

Welcome to the club. Personally, I think the DV8 is one of the most under appreciated and best values available among current laptops.

 

My graphics scores are 6.3 after installing 257.xx but before updating the Bios to F.25. I'll run it again when I have a chance but that won't be for a while as I've got a lot of other stuff going on atm.

 

I up dated the video driver to 257.21 when I first got the new system this week.
The score with bios F24 is 6.4

 

Congrats! Glad you like its performance so far.

Glad you used your time productively while waiting for it to arrive ... You should be pretty smart, now!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I already did that battery check, it shows that it is in perfect health.

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

If anyone with the dv8 could do a simple test where they unplug the ac adapter and run prime95 for around 10-15 min.
This is where my laptop also fails, like it does in gaming.. Anything that uses a lot of power is where it goes off only when the ac adapter is not plugged in.

Thanks

 

Scores are identical for me (the graphics scores went up from 5.9 after updating - not sure why it was so low in the first place). The only exception for me is the Primary Hard Disk, which came in at 5.9...but then I am running 'old' technology 7200rpm drives (SSDs still cost a fortune here in NZ).

Updating the BIOS to F25 didn't make any noticeable improvement to the startup time of 42 secs for me. I am going to delay the startup of some programs or remove them entirely from startup and see how much further I can improve t.

Cheers,
Richard

 

Re: all the recent discussion about MS Office installs:

My question is not dv8 related, but my wife has a dv4 with 4GB DDR3 RAM and a barely 1/3 full 320GB 7200 rpm HDD. She was using Open Office (because I set her up that way!) and found she was having some compatability problems downloading MS Word attachments. So I went to the cupboard, where I had a couple of Office Student and Sm Business with a couple of installs left on them and installed it in her machine. It installed fine, but every time I try to run it I get a message saying I have insufficient memory and disk space (note: the file sizes in the installed programs show that the full program did install fine.

I have Googled and been all over the MS sites, but cannot find a solution that works. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

With the items you've already checked, Jeff, how about running CHKDSK on her PC? If it finds anything to fix, it may relate to a faulty memory available calculation, etc., and that may block loading and running.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Thanks Phil, will try it - the all-purpose fixit program! (I think you've nailed it on this one though. Site is quiet today. Where'd everyone go? Best, Jeff

 

Hope it resolves for you, Jeff. Maybe even a conflict between Open Office and H&S Office.

Don't know ... maybe everyone is travelling out of town for weekend?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

I use MediaSmart to watch my movies. How do I stop it from automatically playing a movie after inserting the dvd into the dvd drive. I went to the settings menu in MediaSmart DVD but it has very little in the options department.