HP laptop issue

Discussion in 'Technical' started by Wild Trapper, Feb 15, 2008.


  1. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    Yesterday morning I woke up to a very dim image on my laptop. I tested it with another monitor and had the same problem. I called HP, got the usual run around. After talking to the fourth person I couldn't understand, I finally got one that said they would send me a box to ship it to them for replacement of the video card. What I thought was strange was they finally agreed to fix it free of charge. I've had it over a year and thought it was out of warranty. When my wife came home I asked her if she knew where the paper work was because I thought I'd paid for the extended warranty. It turns out I had, but it wasn't with HP it was with Sam's Club. So I called them, they checked on it for me and told me it was an HP issue as it was a recall.

    So, has anyone else had issues with HP? If so what can I expect from them? Does anyone know if this is something that is all that hard to replace myself? I've changed video card, added other stuff to desktops before but only added ram to a laptop.

    Anyone here build their own desktop or laptop? If so where do you buy your parts to assemble them? I may have to save my laptop for travels and build myself a small desktop. I've also had issues with my Dell desktop. The mother board went out of it less than a year after buying it. Service was quite fast on getting that fixed though.
     
  2. Blackjack

    Blackjack Monkey+++

    No experience with HP, but as far as buying parts to build your own.... www.newegg.com

    Great prices, great service, fast shipping.
     
  3. Quigley_Sharps

    Quigley_Sharps The Badministrator Administrator Founding Member

    PM Conhager he builds them daily
     
  4. Seacowboys

    Seacowboys Senior Member Founding Member

    I bought one a few years ago with all the bells and whistles and it stayed in and out of the shop so much that I finally gave up on the POS, I got so frustrated. I will never buy another HP laptop again, ever, even if they were giving them away.
     
  5. hartage

    hartage Monkey+++

    Laptops usually have two bad things going in the case of replacement parts. 1. everything is on-board meaning soldered into the motherboard esp video card. 2 they have no expansion slots for much of anything beyond memory inside the case. 3. everything is so proprietary that it will be hard to find a motherboard that will fit in your particular case.

    You could jerry rig it by using a usb to vga dongle. It's basicly a video "card" that uses the usb port. You will have to also lug around an external monitor.


    Before you call the video card a total loss why don't you try one last step ? Uninstall the video drivers and reinstall using the latest drivers off the net. Also try logging on as a guest or a different user. Both these steps would be to see if hopefully your issue are somehow corrupt video drivers or registry setting. Save for that and the usb video dongle can't think of much else to tell ya. Good luck.
     
  6. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    The initial trial with another monitor was pretty definitive. However, Hartage's suggestion has the added assurance, and is WAY less expensive in terms of time and hassle as added confirmation. Go to the HP website and see if there is an available update for the driver.

    [winkthumb]
     
  7. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    Although I can't prove it, (can't even see anything on it), I was concerned that HP auto downloaded an update to the driver that auto installed and blitzed my video... It's already on it's way to the HP repair shop as I got the box to send it in on Friday and took it to the pickup location that afternoon. Anyway it's supposed to be a recall, wonder what else was recalled I wasn't informed about?

    Since I don't do any high end stuff like gaming, I may look into building a setup and giving Linux a go. I do download a lot of TV and movies for viewing, is Linux compatible with utorrent? Also, does Linux software run .avi movies? I'm already using Firefox thanks to you folks here, and I know there is a version for Linux if I want to go with it. I'm not sure Linux will even run on my HP laptop, as I tried to load Windows XP Pro and it wouldn't except it because it was not designed for Pro???? Still can figure that out.
     
  8. hartage

    hartage Monkey+++

    If you really don't know much about computers I suggest you stay away from linux unless you are willing to learn unix command lines which linux uses.

    There are no effective differences between the "regular xp" (xp home, xp media edition) and xp pro beyond the ability to connect to a domain and local security policies. In layman's terms if you get xp home you are getting a system that cannot be a domain member and has no local security policy. Basicly a guy in a prison shower bent over picking up the dropped soap. Xp media edition is a little better in that it does have local security policy and can be moderately secured. But it still can't be a domain member (at least not easily) and to make common security changes you have to go into safe mode. (just to make it harder to work with) XP pro has no such imposed limitations. It has local security policy, it can be a domain member and you can make security policy changes without first having to go into safe mode.

    Under the shell they are all the same and if hardware will work on any xp version it will work on the others also.
     
  9. hartage

    hartage Monkey+++


    In your place I would have gone into safe mode. Which by the way uses standerdized drivers for everything including video and loads minimal systems. That will eliminate driver issues since you are running standard vga drivers at that point. From there if the screen looks ok you know it was a driver issue. If not you know it is a hardware issue.
     
  10. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    Received email receipt from HP today. My computer is being held hostage until approximately the middle of next week.

    I'm looking at Linux Ubuntu and Mist as per Melbo's post here in the tech pages. I've already looked at the documentation for Ubuntu and am downloading Mist right now. When that's done, I'll give a look at the documentation for it and probably try the boot from the disk just to see what it's all about.

    It took me a long time to convert to windows from DOS, I still try to revert at times. I even have GWBasic and Quickbasic on my computers. I used to write my own programs. That was back before Al Gore invented the internet.

    I've looked at Blackjack's link to - www.newegg.com Looks like I could get what I need there to put together a good desktop, save the HP laptop for travels.
     
  11. melbo

    melbo Hunter Gatherer Administrator Founding Member

    If you try linuxmint.com you'll find it already preloaded with FF and thunderbird. VLC player will play anything a/v that you toss at it and it works on Linux or XP. The newer and friendlier Linux versions require no code or command line stuff if you are just a casual user.

    You can use utorrent, azureous and bittorrent.

    As far as your HP and ubuntu or mint, unless it's not too exotic, it will run.
    Here is the torrent for the live CD and installer. You can boot from the CD and it will load LinuxMint without doing anything to your PC untill you tell it to install. It will run slow because the entire OS is running from the CD.
    http://www.lintelligence.de/getdownload/0e6733346bb64d5/1203395179/614
     
  12. Blackjack

    Blackjack Monkey+++

    I've built 4 computers completely from components I bought from newegg over the years. Never had a bad experience with them.
     
  13. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    Checked on the progress of my laptop today and the order still says "Not yet shipped." Supposed date of return was today. May be time to call and see what the hold up is. Even though this was supposed to be a recall they'll probably hold it hostage until they get some money out of me.
     
  14. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    Got my laptop back from the HP pit yesterday. While they did fix the video, now I get an error when it boots saying a cable is not connected. It does continue to boot up and run windows in normal state, (not safe mode). They did me the honor of blitzing most of my programs and deleting my FireFox bookmarks.

    However, since I've cleaned out all the bloat I didn't want in the first place, added the programs I own and use, I did try Linux on it. First problem was when I tried to boot in Mint, I had to select safe mode to get it to finish booting up at all. So, I took that disc out and tried to boot with Ubuntu. It locked in regular and safe mode at the hardware check. Never would go further.

    Back to Mint. I booted it up in safe mode with the intention of installing it as a duel boot system. I hit install and got as far as step 3 of 7. This is the step where the hard drive gets partitioned. About 2AM I left it in that step and went to bed, thinking it might take a while. This morning at 6AM it was still in step 3. I went back to bed and at 8 my wife called me and said I had to get up. It was still stuck there, so I canceled the operation.

    As for the burn I got on the discs, I know they are both good, as they both ran good in regular mode on the Dell desktop, in fact they ran great, well enough I would have liked to seen either work on my laptop, but neither will. What is it with HP? Should I partition the hard drive with another program and then try to load it on a pre-formated partition? I have about 75 gigs of HD free that I can use to partition off 25-30 gigs for Linux. Actually I could delete the restore files and the already partitioned off restore drive that HP puts on their computers, probably free up another 20 gigs or so. I don't need to have all this space for these files on my laptop, as I have a set of discs with the full build on them, cost me extra to get them, but something I had to do to restore a really corrupt computer due to Spyware Doctor blitzing it for me. Any ideas about how I can get Linux to work on this computer?
     
  15. miluns

    miluns Monkey+++

    Wild Trapper,

    I am not sure about Mint, but in Ubuntu you can use Gparted from the liveCD to partition your hard drive. This was the easiest way for me.

    There is a web site with good video tutorials on how to do this. I will see if I can find it and post a link.


    Mike

    PS: 1st post woohoo!!
     
  16. miluns

    miluns Monkey+++

    Ok, that didn't take long

    Here is the link www.linux.com/feature/114157 . There is a missing video but the ones there should give you what you need to install Linux for a dual-boot.


    I wish I would have found this before I did my 1st Linux install, would have been a lot less painful.taser1


    Mike
     
  17. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    Thanks, If I really screw things up I can always start all over with my backup discs.[beer][beat]
     
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