Hp envy 14 battery functions screwing up

I am getting increasingly fustrated with my month and a bit old Hp Envy 14 as it's battery life absolutely sucks (2:41 from full charge doing normal web activity) and now icons are gradually dissapearing from my system task tray, and it's peeing me off.

My battery functions, especially are being ridiculous. When changing power plan options, instead of both the 'on battery' and 'plugged in' settings being shown, there is just one for sleep/dimming display etc. In advanced power options, all the options for what happens when the lid is shut and when the laptop is on battery for cpu usage etc are missing. It's like the laptop's forgotten it's a laptop.

I don't know if it's no longer registering that it has a battery and a lid or something, even though both seem to be working fine, but it's all just being mean to me.

Battery bar is (sort of) working, but is screwy as ever, showing the same stupid 2:41 time regardless of whether I'm using full brightness or not, and wireless/bluetooth or not. (Even after a couple hours of each setting, it won't change). I once had a shown 4:15 hours left where the 'full lifetime' remained at 2:51.

I haven't done a timed battery run-down for a while, but power seems to be going out more or less as the full lifetime predicts it to be, though the numbers shown jump around a lot.

ANYWAY. I'm also missing various icons from the system tray including the beats control panel as well as the default windows or hp battery logo.

I've tried to fix the normal battery icon from the 'turning system icons on or off' area, but the option to turn on the icon is greyed out.

I still can't find out how to get back the beats icon or any of the others back. Pressing on the < button on the taskbar only shows a single icon for Norton, where there used to be 7 or so (including norton).

I'm really stuck here, and it's really fustrating for me going into uni. I'd REALLY like some help with this ASAP or if someone could direct me to a better forum or such.

THANK YOU

 

And I've also lost the ability to find and change the graphics card I'm using, so it's forever stuck on my ATI Radeon 5650.. grrrr

 

Have you tried doing a system restore to a point in time that this wasn't happening. Any battery questions can be answered reading the battery life log thread. what drivers have you updated? Some updates can cause things like switchable graphics to not work. I don't have any quick answers to your problems but fortunately for you this is the best forum around for your computer.

 

Sounds like your OS is getting pretty screwy. I suggest doing a fresh reinstall of windows and avoid any of that "HP media smart" bloatware.

 

Hey thanks for the quick responses guys.

Yeah, I've been considering the fresh install, though there's a few bloatware items I still want to retain from HP.

I was thinking to use the HP software support, but I'm not sure whether it'll be the same.
I could always just have a software backup as well as a full disk backup and try putting back certain programs from that, but I don't know if they'll install in full working condition. -I may just need help with that.

First I just wanna try fixing these problems one at a time, and see if I can restore my computer manually. The reinstall'll probably be a last resort for me.

 

May I ask, did you install W7 SP1?

I ask because I did as well, and after I did I noticed that I had icons that would not show up in the notification tray, even if I set them to "show always". If you did install SP1, I would suggest uninstalling it. However if you didn't install SP1 then yes I would re-install the OS.

 

I installed SP1 and have had no problemsm with icons in the system tray so far.