*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 2*

Looks like it's my vid card. I put my win 7 drive in it from the dual core and it still had the solid color screens. Then boot in to safe mode, restart from there where it doesn't completely shut the power down and it boots just fine and works just fine all day, flight sim, recording, everything. HWinfo64 sees the card and gives the same info as it gives for the same vid card model in the dual core system. I have tried everything I can think of.

It's no huge deal because I just have to boot to safe mode once in the morning, but I think this may get worse. Come to think of it, I did see it needed 2 boots in to safe mode today one time, so safe mode doesn't 100 percent assure a normal boot,

Anyone ever seen anything like this?

 

Hey all!

I fired up my 8740w this week for the first or second time this year... it hasn't been used much lately, though it did partake in a LAN back in December. Anyway, it's under the weather, with symptoms of trying to start up, lighting up some of the volume/wiki/etc. lights, and then turning back off suddenly a second or two later. It will then try to start up again in five seconds or so, but with the same results. This continues until I disconnect its battery and power supply.

Every so often it makes it a little farther, and once it got far enough to inform me that the CMOS checksum was incorrect. So I'm thinking I should probably try to replace the CMOS battery, which as far as I know is original (I bought the 8740w second-hand five or six years ago), and see if that helps. But I've never disassembled this laptop, so I was wondering if anyone has a copy of the service manual? There's a link to it in the OP, but the link is dead, and my efforts to find it on HP's site have not been successful. I'm comfortable with assembling laptops in general, so it's more of knowing where there are plastic hooks to spudge around, and if there are any other model-specific surprises. I've already verified that I have compatible hex screwdrivers.

I'm also curious if anyone else has experienced this, and if so what the prognosis is. I've removed the hard drive and the easily-accessible stick of RAM, but with no change in the behavior.

My 8740w's configuration is i5 520M + ATi FirePro M7820, with the dual DIMM motherboard and non-DreamColor screen.

Thanks!

 

My EliteBook 8540w DC behaves very similarly, it restarts 3-4 times till Windows 10 start. I suspect EliteBook's nVidia Quadro FX 1800M not having proper drivers under Win 10 (infamous PowerMizer case), but I might be wrong when it comes to cold restarting:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...its-nvidia-quadro-fx-1800m-card.567981/page-2
And your card is ATI FirePro...
I have HP EliteBook 8740w Mobile Workstation Maintenance and Service Guide.pdf (second edition March 2011, Document Part Number: 592668-002) in 6 MB file (forum upload limit is 2 MB).

 

Interesting. It must be a different problem, as my laptop can't even get to Windows. My only nVIDIA laptops are either older (pre-PowerMizer), or much newer than the 8540w, so I haven't run into that specifically.

That sounds like the document I am looking for. Since it doesn't fit on the forums, I created a website via my e-mail provider, where you can upload it: http://nbr.aj.f-m.fm/ . IIRC the file size limit is 50 MB, so it should fit easily. I'll leave the site up for anyone else who is looking for the file in the future.