Pavilion Laptop Issues - Advice

Greetings Forum Readers,

I purchased not one, but two HP Pavilion DV9205us laptop computers and have been just "so-so" satisfied with them (came from Dell products historically). What drew me to this model was price (of course), the built in 9-key and the built in web cam.

My problem is now two-fold on both units (coincidence?):

1) In the wast four weeks, the built-in web cam on both units works about 25% of the time. No rhyme or reason as to when it will work. Some days I turn it on and it works fine. Other days I can restart dozens of times an no dice. I searched this forum and seen a few others post issues as well, but I cannot find any indication this is a widespread issue, nor if there is a solution.

I called HP support on one of the laptops (the other had not yet exhibited symptoms) and they tried it all (reinstall driver, remove driver then fresh install driver) now they want me to back up the notebook and wipe it clean and recover from there.

I have very little user installed software on these machines, so my guess is one of the HP Updates or Windows Updates caused this (?). But I don't like the idea of a laptop running without the latest update from the manufacturer so I hope my assumption is wrong.

Any thoughts?

2) Also, the unit runs everything so slow. I'm growing tired of watching that blue vista circle spin and spin. I'm guessing 1MG of memory is too little for vista to run "well". But I'm having trouble navigating retailers site to figure out what memory is best to upgrade to 2MG. Again -- any advice.

Thanks in advance for any help, support or comments from this community.

Best Regards,

Webwbr

 

http://www.crucial.com/ This page has a memory selector based on your model and the prices are very cheap. Another poster in another forum stated that memory prices are slowly climbing back up so now would be a good time. I had 1gb when I got this machine and I really feel that 2gb should be the minimum for Vista. I had the same problem, got a new lappy, seemed slower than my last one, bought 2gb's ram, all is well.

Can't comment on the Webcam but I can say that driver or something may have gotten corrupted, you will probably get a few answers throughout the day on this, but I would at least try a reformat and fresh start. Install your stuff one by one and you may be able to narrow down the issue, also could be a hardware issue but sounds like they aren't taking it back until you do the reformat etc.

 

Thanks for the fast response: If you were me, which of these two memory options would you pick:

CRUCIAL:
$87.99
200-pin SODIMM, DDR2 PC2-5300 memory module
LINK

FRYS:
$69.98
Kingston 1GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Notebook Memory
LINK

 

I went with the PC2 5300. The Turion FSB is up to 1600mhz but the memory controller is integrated. Now I don't really know all the specifics about that but there is a difference between the clock speed matching the FSB and the latency of the memory. The higher the number (4200, 5300) the higher the latency but the clock speed is higher. I don't think it is going to make a noticeable difference. But if you do upgrade be sure to buy in pairs. I do know that if you have unmatched sticks, IE 667mhz and 533mhz then the 667 will downclock to match the slower stick. Hope this helps.

 

Noted... thanks!

 

For the webcam, remove the driver and maybe get something like driver cleaner that has a cab cleaner whcih will remove traces of the driver completely. dunno if it will work though. then get the latest driver and see. the cleaning should be done in safe mode (press F8 after HP logo at startup)

as for RAM, get the 667mhz pc5300, the difference is small but AMD systems (assuming urs is) rely on memory more than Intel systems and with the ondie memory controller, its more important now. just get two pairs of the same speed, corsair, crucial, kingston, pqi or any other reputable brand should be fine