New DV3 owner seeking a bit of help.

I recently purchased a DV3 (specs in sig) and overall I'm really quite pleased with it.
That said, there are a few little niggles that I'm hoping to be able to get sorted.


First up, it froze on me today, twice.
No idea why but it's both worrying and frustrating.

Both times, I'd had to nip away from it for a while and it had gone to sleep or whatever exactly it does and when I've gone back to it, it's been unresponsive. Not completely unresponsive mind, but bad enough that I had press and hold the power button.
The first time, the cursor still responded when I moved my Orochi but Firefox was stuck on the screen and nothing I clicked on or pressed on the keyboard got any response. The second time was similar except the cursor wouldn't respond to my Orochi, only the trackpad.

If anyone has any idea what might be causing this or, alternatively, how can diagnose the issue, I'd really appreciate it.


A few other points:

• Is it possible to change the functionality of the touch-sensitive wireless button so that it only switches wi-fi on and off and not the bluetooth as well?
  
  
• When my laptop goes to sleep and re-wakes, the trackpad always re-activates, even though it was switched off before going to sleep and the LED is still orange - to switch it off again, I have to press the button once so the LED goes blue and a second time for it to go orange again and the trackpad to switch off.
  
  
• The touch sensitive volume controls - I can raise and lower the volume ok but the volume bar never changes, also the mute button works but the LED never changes colour.
  The first issue was present when the laptop had Vista on it, the second seems to have come about since I swapped the HDD for an SSD and installed Win7.

Any help anyone can offer on any of these subjects will, of course, be greatly appreciated.
And if anyone has any general tips for me or advice, I'll be happy to hear that too.

 

1. Did you install the HP wireless assistant when you went windows 7? It will let you separate the on/off controls for the wi-fi and bluetooth, such that you can keep the bluetooth off and use the wireless button just to turn on/off your wi-fi. (On HP wireless assistant, go to properties, and put a mark on "independent controls on wireless devices")

2. You can try to uninstall your touchpad software (thru control panel > programs and features), then get and install the latest one posted on the HP's driver page for your dv3.

3. Check your Programs and Features if there is an "HP Quick Launch Button". If its present, uninstall it, then go to your HP driver page online and download and re-install the HP quick launch button.

 

No, I didn't install that.
Thanks for the tip though, I'll get that sorted ASAP.

Ok, I'll give that a shot.

I manually downloaded and installed the HP Quick Launch software the other day and I'm getting the behaviour I described.
Just to clarify: when I installed Win7, I installed it from scratch using the download links here, so there are no pre-existing versions of the HP software on the laptop.

 

That didn't work.

Well, rather, it didn't achieve what I want - I wasn't to be able to leave bluetooth on all the time and just use the button on the keyboard to control the wi-fi connection.

 

Nope, that's not achievable. The radio switch turns off both bluetooth and wifi and there's no way you can change it.

As for the freezes, there seems to be a problem with your sleep mode. If you still have all the HP junk on it, clean install is the way to go.

 

I don't suppose any of you happen to know whether the radio switch can be picked up using a key-logger?
I'd investigate myself but I'm at work just now. If no-one knows, that's fine, I can look into it when I get home.


As for the freezing, it seems to have stopped for now.
It froze the first time it went to sleep this morning but after that it's been ok - the only thing I changed was I un-ticked 'Auto-hide the taskbar'.
It's probably a coincidence, so I'm going to switch that back on and see if there's any change.

 

Annoying, to answer my own question, the wireless button doesn't register on Scankey, which will make trying to re-map it rather difficult.

 

It does register but you have to know how to do it. How do you think they put in Linux support if it didn't register?

But what you need to know about it is that it turns ALL radio off regardless how you call it, it maps as a single keycode. That's because AFAIK the wireless and bluetooth modules are on the same card, and calling the wifi turn off routine shuts down the card entirely to save battery.

 

The fact that they're on the same card is inconsequential.
The HP Wireless Assistant program allows you to manually switch off either the wi-fi or bluetooth whilst leaving the other connected, so if the key can be re-mapped, it must be possible to map it to control only one and not the other.

If it can be mapped, do you know the scancode?
Because I can't get Scankey to pick it up.



As for the other issues, the trackpad seems to now remember whether it is enabled or disabled since installing the synpatics download from HP's site.
I still have issues with the mute light not switching from blue to red and the bars between the volume up and volume down touch-sensitive keys don't move as the volume changes ( can someone confirm whether or not they're supposed to, as they behaved the same way when I was using Vista that the laptop shipped with).

The freezing seems to have stopped, no issues today at least but it's very much still a matter of fingers crossed...

 

If the mute light doesn't switch you don't have the right audio driver. As for the bars between the volume keys, they're printed into the panel, that's why they don't move.

HP Wireless Assistant works at a higher level, the switch simply turns off the whole card (it's a logic switch controlling a hardware switch). Regardless, if you want the scancode, you can get it with Linux, or you can uninstall HP Wireless Assistant and then it should show up in your favorite keylogger.

 

Oddly, that solved it.
Thank you.

Thanks.
Seriously though, are the bars meant to turn on and off to reflect the current volume level or are they just there to represent the fact that you can run your finger along them to change the volume?

Even after uninstalling the HP Wireless Assistant, it refuses to register in Scankey.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

I'd say it's just the latter. They're too cheap to slap a controller in there anyway, and i think they don't make LEDs as small as those bars are.

 

Ok, thanks.
I can stop worrying about that not working then.

 

Hi Step666,

My dv3 mute light doesn't work as well, so I'm just wondering how you fixed yours? what audio driver did u install??

 

I installed this driver but depending on your particular variant and the OS you're using, it may not be the correct driver for yourself.



Back on the subject of my own laptop, I'm still getting issues with the laptop freezing up if it's left and Win7 tries to go into Sleep mode.
If I close the lid and force it to sleep that way, it's fine but if it does it itself due to a period of inactivity, the laptop freezes. It's not a complete freeze as if I close the lid, leave it about 30 seconds, then re-open it, it eventually comes back to life.
Really annoying though.

Also, I'm having a few issues trying to source a larger battery for the DV3-2140ea and I'm still trying to find a way to change the functionality of the wireless key.

So any help on any of those points would be greatly appreciated.

 

I have DV3 same problem as you
please help me fix it
dv3 2165ee upgrade from vista to seven


1.my mute lamp always white even i turned(touch) it into mute mode (the sound can turn into mute,but the light didn't turn into orange).
the raise low volume and mute button work as well,but the abnormal is the light lamp (stuck on white even in mute mode)

2.when i turn on my notebook,the touchpad lamp was orange(it supposed to be off mode),but the touch pad can work to move the pointer.when i click the touchpad mode button (orange to white light) it getting back to normal as it suppose to be(orange light indicate touchpad off,white light indicate touchpad on)


please tell me how to fix it,thankyu

 

Have you installed the relevant drivers from HP's site?

They fixed those problems with my laptop.

 

wich driver?

sound driver?
quick launch driver?
touchpad driver?

 

If you read through the whole thread, you'll see that to fix the issues with the touchpad, you install you touchpad drivers and to fix the issue with the mute button you install the audio driver.

 

i've reinstall twice of these driver,now it's work well
thankyu

now,i would like to ask about the scroll touchpad,i can't use the rightest side of the touchpad to scroll up and down the page,how to make it can scroll up and down the page?