Phenom II X2 P650/G62-407DX/RAM?

Hey everyone, my father bought the G62-407DX from BestBuy last Tuesday and I had it over my place all week because he bought a ton of crap the jerks at BestBuy sold him (he's never owned a computer before... ever). So I got him to take back Kaspersky, the ask a Geeksquad garbage, and a router he bought (he already has one from ATT U-verse). They also wanted to charge him $100 to reinstall Win 7 to get rid of the HP bloatware.

Anyways, I had him take back all of that crap since I told him I'd do it all for free. I bought this for his laptop with the money saved:

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-8GBSQ

First, let me say that I had no clue HP doesn't have the decency of sending you a recovery DVD with drivers/OS on it. That really sucked. I ended up just using my Win 7 DVD and calling in the OEM key which allowed me to authenticate his version. The laptop boots twice as fast now. The thing is, I can't find drivers for the chipset at all and even HP doesn't have them in the download section for the drivers. I haven't used AMD stuff since 2003 and every Intel laptop/desktop I've built has had drivers. Is there something somewhere I'm missing? The laptop is working great but I wanted to be sure.

Second, My Computer --> Properties is only showing 4gb of RAM installed. I noticed this last night after authenticating Win 7. I swapped out the sticks and the same problem, I took out one stick and checked, then swapped the stick for the other and checked, and each time I'm getting 4gb (64 bit). I'm 99% certain this laptop can handle 8, and haven't had time to run MemTest yet, but what would cause this? I'm really hoping it isn't hardware related to the laptop because it was a ridiculous pain to get the HDD swapped. They had so many freakin screws in there, for the sleeve alone it was nuts.

Just to note as well, that laptop had the worst touchpad I've ever seen in my life. All in all it was a good buy for $400 with tax and he'll be able to use iTunes and Netflix with the HDMI out to his TV. I just haven't had a scenario where RAM isn't being read all the way when swapping sticks causes the laptop to run fine but only half of it is being recognized.

Thanks!

 

I'm actually surprised that HP is no longer providing a driver disc for their machines. I know that years ago they eliminated the recovery disc and you can make your own from the recovery function, but I didn't know they took away the separate drivers disc. If it isn't on their site, I would contact HP support to see if they can provide you with the exact driver you need, just to be sure it is the proper one.

As for the memory, what version of Windows 7 is your OEM? Is it the 32 bit version? The only thing I can think of is that it is a 32 bit version which won't read over that 4GB threshold. Also, when it comes stock I assume that it has a 2GB and 1 GB dimm installed to get the memory to 3GB. If you use those sticks does it read as 3? If not, it might be a bad slot.

 

I'm going to have to try calling HP then, I can't find any chipset driver and I've never heard of a computer not having any.

The laptop did read 3gb and that was from both sockets as you said. I am using 64bit. Curious if that could be from a chipset driver?

Had to not work on it a bit due to time but I'm going to figure it out today I hope.

Thanks, and any more feedback is much appreciated. This thing gets sketchy wireless reception too which is weird. All of my devices where I'm at on the second floor in my office get good reception but this laptop is missing a bar.

 

I'm glad I read this. Awhile back, when I bought my first laptop, Dell provided a recovery OS cd, so I was fine and even re-installed a couple times just to give it a fresh start. I'm not used to anyone not sending a recov disk. I need to remember to save up for one now.

Does this mean I'd have to buy the drivers disk separate also? I've had luck with websites that have certain drivers for free, but sometimes companies make theirs "special" just to screw with us.

 

HP bundles all the softwares and drivers installed on the laptop under the SWProgram directory. Copy this directory to a USB drive or external hard drive for safe keeping. HP doesn't provide a recovery disc but you have to burn one before starting anything. Also the HDD has a separate recovery partition and is activated when f11 is pressed during start up. I usually don't fresh install anymore and just use Revo Uninstaller to uninstall unwanted programs. Sometimes there are special drivers and programs that's included which is not in the SW directory.

 

now days almost every manufacturer doesnt provide the Recovery Disks..HP stop shippiong laptops with the recovery disks around 05-06