Older HP dv6000: Couple of questions

I've received as a hand me down an old HP dv6000. It's mostly in working shape except for the following:

1.) The battery seems to charge very slowly (or sometimes not all as per Vista's battery meter tooltip) and runs out quickly. For this age, I'm fine leaving it plugged in most of the time so this isn't a bother. From what I've read, the battery is a common trouble spot on this model. Are there any tips to increase battery life (aside from the usual power settings, dimming screen, etc...)?

2.) The fan runs constantly and very loudly even when the CPU is near idle. I think this may be tied to charging the battery. Does charging the battery cause the computer to run hot and therefore require more cooling?

3.) I want to upgrade the hard drive. Would something like this work? I think it should, I just want to confirm the size and to make sure it's not too big for the computer to recognize.

Amazon.com: Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive: Computers & Accessories

4.) I see the option to burn recovery DVDs (but only once). Could I use those recovery DVDs on the new hard drive even though it's not original and doesn't have the recovery partition? I'm not sure if there are some HP checks in there.

 

1) Older batteries are problems for all laptops. If you need the battery, it's best to invest in a new one. You can find bargains on eBay.

2) No, this is likely caused by dust inside the computer. See if you can blow some out with compressed air. This may require taking the computer at least partially apart.

3) It should, but look up the model number on hp.com to make sure.

4) The discs can only legally be burned once. You could use some cloning software to clone the system to the new drive.

 

Thanks all for the replies. I've gotten the fan issue resolved after the laptop kept turning off due to overheating - it was getting to 110C! I took it apart and cleaned the fan out. Now it idles around 55-65C, while still warm is far lower than before.

My main concern is what hard drive to get. I want to get a 2.5" 7200 RPM laptop drive, but is there a limit as to how big a hard drive I can get? Like, can the computer only recognize drives up to a certain capacity? I see a 320GB drive and a 750GB drive about $20 apart, which I would spend to get the much larger size, but if the 750GB won't work, I should get the smaller drive.

 

Answer is yes,this question has been asked many times on HP forums. HP employees say yes too. It will work. It doesn't primarily detect based on the HDD. I believe it's more so to do with the UEFI and such for verification.

Also if you'd like temps to go lower, use thermal pastes to repaste the system. I believe the stock paste has dried up by now.

If you wanna sort of prevent collateral damage caused by overheating to the mobo, CPU and GPU (because of shared heat sink), you can consider turning Intel Turboboost off. There's no such option in a HP BIOS but you can "trick" the system to turn off turboboost.

Go to your power settings, change "Maximum processor state" of the plan you're currently on from 100% to 99%. In this case even if your application requests for P0 (highest processor state), it's only granted 99%. Turboboost only turns on when clock speed reaches the 100%.

The problem with turboboost is that for that incremental amount of speed increases (lets say 20%), it tremendously heats up the system and that may cause collateral damage to the hardware. Sad to say this is mostly the case for laptops. Turboboost isn't well implemented on laptops.