*HP ENVY 17 & 17 3D (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

[mobilezila]

Ok, since the majority of us are still waiting for our laptops to arrive, I propose we open some interesting discussions on how we each plan to 'personalize' our laptops when they arrive?

For example, For me, when my laptop arrives, I plan to install a 1TB WD 12.5mm drive in the secondary bay, and add 4 more GBs of RAM. I aslo plan to do a clean install of the OS, but at this moment am not too certain what steps to go about accomplishing the fresh OS install.

I have looked at some other threads where they teach you how to back up the windows activation key and create a Win 7 install disk. I plan to follow accordingly.

Since I have never owned an SSD before, and my laptop will be coming with a 160GB SSD with the Windows 7 OS already pre-installed on it, do I treat the SSD like an ordinary mechanical HDD and reformat it before I do a clean Windows install? I am assuming I would be given the option to do the reformat of the SSD during the install process of windows 7. Is it safe to do a reformat of a SSD? I thought I read somewhere that it is not advisable to do a format for an SSD, or maybe I read wrong.

After I do the re-install of the Win 7 OS, I will go ahead and install all programs on the SSD. I also plan to move/point the 'My Documents' system folder to the secondary HDD. This way, all pictures, music, data files, movies and storage stuff would be saved by default into the secondary HDD. However, I have never moved the 'My Documents' system folder to a different drive other than the default C drive before and am alittle uncertain how to do it. I think it should not be too difficult.

These are the first few immediate things I will be doing for my ENVY 17 setup, not sure how the rest of you plan to do it.

If you have ay advise regarding any of my questions/uncertainties mentioned above, do feel free to chime in. Thanks!

[nevian]

i've been purhcasing laptops and pcs for a very long time and generally the plan is the install a clean OS. having said that, i don't plan to do that with this envy 17. reasons:
1. bloatware is relatively small nowadays and easily removed (my beats limited edition envy had just a little bloatware)
2. the benefit from clean isnstall is small, the hope is that you have less programs running and that damage from having removed programs is not an issue. modern OSes do an excellent job of removing programs without damaging things like registry or dependencies. also, in the past, memory was a huge issue and we did everything to avoid programs taking memory...today that is not a big problem - CPUs are strong, memory is available.
3. most manufacturer's tweak system settings to optimzie user experience on systems. my touchpad on envy beats limited edition was better out of the box then after a clean install, for instance. battery saving configuration was almost perfect out of the box. things like that.
4. sometimes, finding drivers can be a problem during a clean install (i'm sure most of you have run into this problem) and "settling" for a less than perfect driver is not optimal. most manufacturers provide relatively up to date drivers that have been tested for stability. maybe people complaining about weird sounds from their speakers, or weird flickering have brought this on themselves by getting ahead of themselves with newer drivers which are not always better or more stable. out of the box, you are at least guaranteed to have what the manufacturer tested on.

most users don't have any business doing "clean installs" and get themselves into bigger trouble by taking the advice of "veteran" users. enjoy your laptop as is, remove what you don't like and do yourself a favor...enjoy what a $1500+ laptop is...enjoy it the way the manufacturer inteded you to enjoy it and if you don't like it then....go ahead and do what you want but come on...day 1: clean install. give me a break. most of you get "clean isntalls" from torrents anyway - great way to start off a clean install.

i'm not against personalizing your pc but it seems, from my experience, that many people who have problems with laptops right away are the very people who are making all these suggestions about tweaking, replacing, reformatting, etc. im' sure it works out for a lot of you, it does for me, but don't suggest it to people, don't recommend it above taking a laptop "out of the box"

personally, i have an SSD that i used with beats limited edition...i'm going to put it in my envy 17. do i recommend you do it? not unless you've done it before and know what you're doing. i'm sticking another 4gb of ram in the envy, do i reocmmend you do it? no, not unless you've done it before. do i recommend you keep your envy as is out of the box? yes, initially, i think you should experience your laptop out of the box the way it was intended to and you remove the features you do not like as soon as you relalize you don't like them.

i'm sorry if i sound angry...i read through the envy 15 beats owner's lounge and it seems a lot of people just got themselves into trouble and then blamed HP.


i'm also pissed my laptop got delayed, oh well.


nevian

[nevian]

btw, i dug up an old post about deliver time on a laptop from CN...it went like this:


Jun 29, 2007

9:14 AM
Delivered
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA

7:49 AM
On FedEx vehicle for delivery
ONTARIO, CA

6:56 AM
At local FedEx facility
ONTARIO, CA


Jun 28, 2007
4:41 PM
Departed FedEx location
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

4:00 AM
Int'l shipment release
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

3:08 AM
In transit
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

12:09 AM
Arrived at FedEx location
INDIANAPOLIS, IN




Jun 27, 2007

2:15 PM
Departed FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

1:29 PM
Arrived at FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

9:27 PM
In transit
SHANGHAI CN



Jun 26, 2007
11:32 AM
Left origin
SHANGHAI CN

11:31 AM
Picked up
SHANGHAI CN

[jaxxy]

I would do a clean install too but I don't have the original windows discs (Envy17 doesn't come with them). I agree that turning stuff off that you don't need is almost the same as a clean install. For example, disabling HP QuickWeb and the HP auto updating software.) Some of the bloatware is actually good software, e.g. the HP Webcam software comes with a plethora of effects and features, Corel PaintShopPro and VideoStudio are preinstalled and are good enough programs for general stuff, it's not Photoshop but it does the job.

Regarding my current high pitched morsecode/noise issue. HP are sending a tech out to my house to confirm the issue...seems they don't trust my diagnosis over the phone. I have discovered that I can reproduce the issue, if I open up my browser the noise is mostly gone, if I close browser and just have desktop open the sound comes back. Pretty weird, can anyone explain it???

[nohm]

@mobilezila Good idea. I am planning on a clean install too and a 500gb second drive, among other things. The drive might have to wait depending on the bracket issue...

As far as the clean Win7 install goes, I think it's safe to do a reformat. I think what someone said NOT to do though was to defragment the drive as that is specifically for HDD tech and not SSD. This will be the first time I'm using a SSD as well, and I want to start off using it correctly too. If anyone has any procedures to follow for me to optimize SSD usage, please let us know.

Redirecting the My Documents folder is pretty easy (link), and Win7 also lets you link folders containing specific media with the respective Videos, Music, Documents folders (..forgot the name of this feature), so that'll make file cataloging between two drives easier to manage as well.

Regarding my current high pitched morsecode/noise issue. HP are sending a tech out to my house to confirm the issue...seems they don't trust my diagnosis over the phone. I have discovered that I can reproduce the issue, if I open up my browser the noise is mostly gone, if I close browser and just have desktop open the sound comes back. Pretty weird, can anyone explain it???

I never got that noise to go away on my Envy15. I think it depends on our hearing tolerance as well. The tech who is going to come to your place, depending on his age and hearing acuity, might not be able to hear the sound even when you can clearly hear it. For all we know, we might have super sensitive ears while others aren't as much. Just so you can raise your chances of getting maintenance/replacement, you should isolate a pattern that will make the noise sound the highest. Do whatever it takes to make them believe you, because I know this problem exists. Good luck jaxxy.

[InOverMyHead]

nevian's post reminds me of people I've met who's function keys, wifi and native resolution(among other things) aren't working like they should be. I later find out that "some guy" fixed it for them by doing a clean install of the OS and didn't install the proper drivers. Usually this is a result of those friends of mine not creating recovery cds when they should have. I love/hate the look I get from people when I ask them "Where are your recovery discs?" I don't even bother asking people where their back-up is, that's just a waste of breath. Having said that, I've done a clean install on all of my computers at some point (specifically when Windows 7 came out, which I got for free for taking computer science courses at my University thank you very much) and have had little to no problems. My advice for those who haven't done it before is to do your research before you start. I'd also advise waiting until a few people have already mucked it up and began useful forum threads so that you can learn from their mistakes. Just make those recovery discs (5 DVDs I think Jaxxy said) and don't delete the back-up partition just in case you need to get back to something that works.

[jaxxy]

I never got that noise to go away on my Envy15. I think it depends on our hearing tolerance as well. The tech who is going to come to your place, depending on his age and hearing acuity, might not be able to hear the sound even when you can clearly hear it. For all we know, we might have super sensitive ears while others aren't as much. Just so you can raise your chances of getting maintenance/replacement, you should isolate a pattern that will make the noise sound the highest. Do whatever it takes to make them believe you, because I know this problem exists. Good luck jaxxy.

Thanks nohm. I didn't consider the age of the tech and their auditory acuity...hopefully they are young and have good hearing...my wife can't hear it and is getting sick of me making her try, lol. I am glad I have found a way to reproduce it, it will increase my chances. I will also try to get the kids out of the house when the tech gets here...any other suggestions?

[InOverMyHead]

Jaxxy, because you mentioned that the web browser causes the noise to stop I would guess that it has something to do with your wifi card. I wonder if turning off wifi or just bluetooth or using a wired internet connection could isolate the problem. I had a similar issue with my HP tx2510us and it only happened when the screen was not at full brightness and the wifi was on or something weird. But because I almost always use full brightness it doesn't bother me much.

[kiwi_style]

I remember something like this from the Envy 15 forum. Turned out that the rubber feet were not properly seated and that removing/reapplying fixed it. May be a different issue in the 17 tho.

Oh really. Well the service centre have said HP have instructed them to replace the entire bottom case, so they're waiting on the part to arrive. So they say it won't be back until Tuesday. At least I can go down the road and get it instead of waiting for a courier.

[nohm]

nevian's post reminds me of people I've met who's function keys, wifi and native resolution(among other things) aren't working like they should be. I later find out that "some guy" fixed it for them by doing a clean install of the OS and didn't install the proper drivers. Usually this is a result of those friends of mine not creating recovery cds when they should have. I love/hate the look I get from people when I ask them "Where are your recovery discs?" I don't even bother asking people where their back-up is, that's just a waste of breath. Having said that, I've done a clean install on all of my computers at some point (specifically when Windows 7 came out, which I got for free for taking computer science courses at my University thank you very much) and have had little to no problems. My advice for those who haven't done it before is to do your research before you start. I'd also advise waiting until a few people have already mucked it up and began useful forum threads so that you can learn from their mistakes. Just make those recovery discs (5 DVDs I think Jaxxy said) and don't delete the back-up partition just in case you need to get back to something that works.

That's so true. Most people just don't know what they're doing with their PC. It's always a good thing to try and learn from mistakes though... so long as people keep it real and take responsibility for the consequences (ever tried baking f-ed up nvidia GPUs, or reballing a BGA? ;]). I realized that there's no sense in talking down on people that don't use their computers properly or know anything about troubleshooting. Computer skills and "common sense" are relative to exposure and usage habits. Something most of use here can do comfortably might be rocket science for many others. I doubt we'll be edified much from the simple users, but at the same time, we should be nice about it and try to help out with what we learned from our own troubling experiences. But yeah, "some guy" will never touch my computer. I don't let anyone use my computers unless I acknowledge their skills as on par or higher than mine.

Anyway, back on topic...

Thanks nohm. I didn't consider the age of the tech and their auditory acuity...hopefully they are young and have good hearing...my wife can't hear it and is getting sick of me making her try, lol. I am glad I have found a way to reproduce it, it will increase my chances. I will also try to get the kids out of the house when the tech gets here...any other suggestions?

Yeah, I also had a phase where I was trying to make everyone hear the noise too, without success. What a way to look like a nut . Just make sure to have a quiet workstation with very minimal ambient noise. I think you should first have the guy sit down and put his ear close to the notebook. Have him listen to the entire boot process, samples of idle and loading activity, and then shutdown. You'll definitely know when the noise kicks in, so cue him when it starts and describe how the pattern sounds at the time. You can also try comparing the noise level in different rooms, with the notebook on vs off. YOU will hear the difference, so if you found a room that makes it particularly obvious, try to demonstrate that to the tech. The bathroom would be the most obvious place IMO, but you just might get strange looks from the guy if he can't hear it there, haha.