*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 2*

[landsome]

I'm getting really, really sad. This 8740w seems to be a faulty design. I've been having most issues I have read about. HP changed my mainboard and graphics card. It only slightly changed symptoms. The least unstable way seems to be the oldest Nvidia driver, it keeps the resume from sleep BSODs to a minimum. I think all 8740ws have these defects but only a few people actually realize or notice. Maybe for most it's just how computers are. For me it's the first computer ever to run unstable generally. A lot has probably to do with Win7 64 as it seems, but there's no alternative since XP doesn't support all the RAM. Reading that someone has similar issues with ATI graphics confirms it must be the system that is faulty. I thought it is Nvidia since most issues seemed to at least change when I tried different graphics driver versions. Maybe it is Win7 generally? I have no experience but run XP for months without reboots and BSODs.

I have some more feedback with recovery from sleep & booting on battery problems, both of which seemed M7820-related and induced partly similar behavior.

While testing without AMD drivers installed, and encountering no problems whatsoever, I realized that the GPU was running at maximum speed. It was a serendipitous finding: I noticed the fan was spinning faster more often, so I checked with GPUz, which reported max speed on both memory and processor (as expected, in fact).

So I thought it might be a good idea to install the driver but try to disable Powerplay in CCC and see if I keep getting the annoying boot-on-battery and sleep issues. So far, after one day and a half, everything has been running smoothly. I will test for a few more days - I actually prefer to run with Powerplay enabled because I use the notebook hooked to the brick most of the time, and can do without sleep - and then I will report back.

But 36 hours of problem-free booting-on-batt & sleep strongly suggests this was the issue here, and for those who prefer to run the videocard at full speed but have sleep enabled and be able to boot off the adapter this might be a worthy trade-off.

[oltsa555]

For those of you with an SSD on your 8740w, how long does it take for you to boot? And what are you getting for CrystalDiskMark scores?

I recently installed a Crucial M4 256GB. According to others on the SSD board, my scores look fine for a SATA II laptop.


But my boot time is ~42 seconds. This seems petty long for an SSD.

I made a clone of my HDD with Acronis, which I was really happy with how easy that process was. I've since tried all the normal tweaks suggested for SSD owners (though most people say these tweaks are no longer needed on a modern SSD in Windows 7). So it appears maybe I should install a fresh image of Win7 on the SSD and go through the painful process of loading my programs manually then recovering my data from a backup. But before I do that, I want to know that I will see a large benefit in boot time and maybe some benefit in read/write speeds.

I have OCZ-Vertex2 240GB in my 8740W, haven't done any tweaks that I know of. Should I? What do these figures even mean or more importantly, what are the most meaningful ones?




I also used Acronis to make a clone of my factory-installed HD and transferred it onto the SSD.

Boot time is ~25 seconds FWIW.

Just for fun, I ran a test for my 7.2k factory-installed spinner, too:

[knight427]

Boot time is ~25 seconds FWIW.

I wish I knew why my boot time is so slow.

[jet757f]

For those of you with an SSD on your 8740w, how long does it take for you to boot? And what are you getting for CrystalDiskMark scores?

I recently installed a Crucial M4 256GB. According to others on the SSD board, my scores look fine for a SATA II laptop.


But my boot time is ~42 seconds. This seems petty long for an SSD.

I made a clone of my HDD with Acronis, which I was really happy with how easy that process was. I've since tried all the normal tweaks suggested for SSD owners (though most people say these tweaks are no longer needed on a modern SSD in Windows 7). So it appears maybe I should install a fresh image of Win7 on the SSD and go through the painful process of loading my programs manually then recovering my data from a backup. But before I do that, I want to know that I will see a large benefit in boot time and maybe some benefit in read/write speeds.

I have the Samsung 256 SSD. Mine takes 15 seconds to boot. This is with new install of Windows 7.

[jet757f]

Anyone know how you can make the backlit keyboard lights stay on all the time?

[landsome]

Anyone know how you can make the backlit keyboard lights stay on all the time?

You have a bios option telling it to never turn off.

[landsome]

Does the 8740w fan suck air from below or from above (through the keyboard, which has small holes in the area covering the fan)?

Does anyone (especially those using a dock w/ external monitor and closed lid) have any experience with how using a closed lid influences the thermals of the notebook?

[jet757f]

You have a bios option telling it to never turn off.

Thanks worked great.

[jet757f]

Well this is frustrating. The backlit keyboard was working fine after I enabled them to stay on all the time. Today they just went out. Now I can't get them to come on again. The computer was just sitting stationary on the desk when it happened. I have been back and forth in BIOS to try and get them to work but no luck.

Anyone know what could cause this or how I could fix it?

[landsome]

cause could be
- the thin-band connector for the lights got disconnected (check under keyboard)
- smb pressed fn+space and shut the lights off (press fn+space and hold for 1 sec. to check )
- keyboard / lights malfunction (change keyboard)