Help desperately needed!

Hello. I've come here in the hope that someone might be able to assist me with some problems I've been having with my HP Pavillion dv9000 machine, running Windows Vista Ultimate.

I bought this machine from HP a few months ago, and until recently, it was working perfectly. However. I've since had some major problems.

For starters, the second hard drive has recorded a number of SMART events and appears to be on the verge of failure. The problem is that I live in Asia now, and HP will not assist me as far as hardware replacement. So, no big deal -- I'll have to replace the drive out of my own pocket. That's where we get to problem #1.

PROBLEM #1

In an effort to rescue the contents of the second drive prior to failure, I went out today here in China and purchased a Samsung HM250JI 250GB external USB storage device. It's supposed to be plug & play, but when I plugged it in, Vista was unable to install the driver. The message indicated that it did find the driver, but that the requested device registry key does not exist. I checked on-line, and there's no driver to download for this device. I don't know what to do.

PROBLEM #2

My SD card reader has stopped working. When I insert the SD card, it doesn't "see" the card. I went to the device manager in Vista, and under Disk Drives, the SD Card Reader had a yellow exclamation point next to it. I went to Properties, and the message it gave me was: "Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged (Code 19)."

I chatted with one of HP's customer service reps, who gave me download links to a new flash device driver, a new chipset driver and a new Phoenix WinPhlash BIOS driver. The chipset and flash drivers installed fine, but the BIOS driver got an error and would not update (error 1450).

The two drivers that did install properly did not fix the problem. This card reader was working fine until a few days ago.

My frustration with HP is that their tech support reps are barely trained. They excel at looking things up in manuals, but don't appear to be true tecchies. They suggested that I mail my machine in for repair, which is impossible, since I'm in Asia. I feel like I've purchased a $2,000 paperweight. I don't know what to do here. I can live with the SD card reader problem, since I have a back-up laptop that I can use for that purpose, but for the life of me, I can't get it to install the driver for this USB hard drive.

I'm also extremely frustrated by the fact that the Phoenix BIOS updater records an error and won't update the BIOS.

Does anyone have any suggestions here? I'm at my wit's end. Thanks!

 

Outside of the dying second HD it sounds like you're having software problems, obscure enough to warrant a clean Vista install (see the stickied thread in this forum for how to do that). Or... try updating to Vista SP1, after you've backed up any critical documents. I've seen all sorts of obscure Windows brain damage get overwritten by service pack updates. I installed SP1 on my dv9000z (64-bit Vista Home Premium) without incident.

Anyone have any better ideas?

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking about doing that. I'll try it now.

 

no, not really any other ideas ...........

what model is your dv9000?

are you running 32or 64 bit vista, just curious.........

is it the Ricoh 5-in-1 card reader?

you might try scanning your system w/ one of the numerous free trial drivers scanning programs like driver detcetive and see if it shows any problems. I think you can run pc pitstop optimize 2 and it will show you all the problems it finds- if you want it to fix them you have to buy it. If you want to fix them, you have some good information.

it's worth a shot b4 reinstalling..........

 

Hi. I'm running the 64-bit version of Vista Ultimate on a dv9500.

Yes, it's the Ricoh reader. I'll try the programs you mentioned and see if that fixes anything. Thanks!

 

Well, SP1 doesn't appear to be available yet for the 64-bit version of Vista Ultimate. Bleh...

 

it is if you download the standalone version!!!!!!!!!!