Seriously considering returning my dv6500t

I've had it for four days now and its caused me nothing but grief. Any music I have, downloaded or on a cd, refuses to play. At a friends house, network manager wouldn't turn on. The effing screen blinks every time a program opens and for the most part, it's driven me insane.

The laptop looks nice. The keys feel nice. If only it came loaded with XP, then I think I'd be a lot happier.

 

it blinks?

 

fix for one problem:
go to control panel
click classic view
click on user accounts
turn off user accounts control
next go to security center
click on change the way security center alerts me
choose the bottom one
reboot
this will fix the screen blink (dimming) problem
jim

 

music problem: how about reinstalling the sound drivers?

 

Have you trie installing something like Winamp to play music?

Not sure about the network manager.

As for the screen blinking...have you tried disabling UAC? I know this gets in the way of doing stuff!

 

As a last effort to fix your computer, I would back up every important file you and go for a fresh re-install of vista (with the included factory bloatware).. I believe there is a large partition of the HD for doing that, although I have a older HP computer. Since you stated that the sounds worked fine in one of your previous posts, I think there was some conflict between certain drivers.

 

could that have been the case? I hadn't installed anything different; perhaps aim, and I fail to see how AIM could influence the sound. I went to HP's website and downloaded the sound drivers which didn't help anything at all. Winamp shows the mp3s but doesn't play it. Something is affecting how the files are read and it stumps me.

 

well it does not sound like it is a hardware problem, just a problem with drivers and vista. the first thing you should do when installing vista is turn off UAC "dont know why microsoft even decided to include it, its not like there are allot of slow people" anyway that could be bothersome, and the network manager or do you mean "Network and Sharing Center" which allows you to share files between computers that are on the same network, well first you have to turn on network discovery, which is a light yellow bar that shows up when you click on network, which is right under computer. and then you have to go to control panel then network sharing center and there are a few options for your computer or how your computer interacts with other computers on the network, suck as file sharing, public folder sharing, printer sharing, media sharing, ect. it sounds confusing but it really isn't.

 

Have you tried updating your drivers?

 

Sorry to hear you have problems. The Pavilions are generally well regarded and I have a model from the previous line and like it alot.

By "refuses to play" do you mean no songs play at all in any of the players on your laptop?

Or do you mean there is no sound at all?

If you use networking, you need to enable network discovery and file sharing, both of which are disabled by default to help protect you from nosy people on the net.

You can do this by right-clicking the network icon beside the time in the system tray and select "Network and Sharing Center", then enable the two options in the list. You need to click the little down arrows on the right side of the list to see the available options. Once you go through the settings for what you want, it's done - you don't have to do it for that connection anymore as Vista will remember network settings for each network if you use more than one.

That sounds like User Account Control (UAC) which is helping to protect your laptop from nosy people on the net. It's part of the security package for Vista and it's only annoying when you first start using Vista. After you've installed and setup your programs, you see less and less blocks from UAC and it begins to function quite smoothly.

For some very old programs, UAC may block it each time you run it with a popup, but you get used to it quickly. The benefits of Vista will soon overcome the few slight annoyances. I didn't like Vista at first either, but after using it for a couple of weeks, you probably won't like going back to XP.

Vista is different, but for the most part it is better. I don't like XP anymore and find it very annoying to use.



As someone else mentioned, you may want to consider doing a clean install of Vista if you have access to an install or Anytime Upgrade disc (recovery discs put the laptop back to factory settings and programs with all the bloatware).

A clean install runs much better and you can still selectively install drivers and programs from the original installation if you backup the SWSetup folder before doing a clean install. That folder contains all the original drivers and programs for your laptop.

Read Orev's POLL thread near the top of the HP forum for details on doing a clean install and not having the hassle of activation.

 

thats not a problem. it is a security feature from keeping inexperienced users from messing things up. if he had called it by what it is...UAC I would have told him to turn it off. Telling someone to turn off one of the best security features in vista isnt the best idea when they dont know what it is themselves.