HP Envy 15 BIOS Drama

By Jeremy Hilts on April 17, 2010

So. I gotta say. I love(d) this laptop. It did remind me, however, why I haven’t owned a laptop in nearly 8 years; nor have I purchased a commercial computer in nearly 12.

Being a computer professional, hobbyist and general enthusiast, I have always built my own machines. If something goes wrong, I only have myself to blame. When something goes wrong with a commercial computer, all that lies ahead is drama. Drama, drama, drama.

Some of you may remember The HP Envy 15 Driver Nightmare — some of you may still be dealing with it (albeit, it’s much easier now than when I had to go through it). HP technical support seems to be ineffective at best. But more on that later.

Getting to the point… a few days ago, HP released BIOS version F.24 promising better fan operation. I figure, since it’s getting warmer, this isn’t a bad thing to have. Well, it bricked my laptop. Without warning or chance for recovery. That’s right, kids: no Envy for me; just a blank screen. Many had this same problem when F.1B came out. I did not have issue with F.1B, and I will explain why.

Negligence. Complete and utter negligence on HP’s part. I have a 15t-1100 CTO (customized) Envy using hardware configuration 1522. When you extract the softpaqs, then extract the Winflash.exe, you find 2 files ending in .fd.

  • F.1B contained hardware configurations: 1522 and 7009.
  • F.24 contained hardware configurations: 147D and 7009.

Ah ha. So that’s why I didn’t have any problems with F.1B — because it was supported. There was no warning, however, that 1522 was not packaged with the F.24 BIOS. Not only is this esoteric to an end-user, but it is provided on the support page for 15t-1100 CTO laptops with no indication within the documentation that you should check your hardware configuration — or any indication of which it supports, for that matter. That also explains why a handful of people had problems with F.1B when it installed just fine for me.

So I’m a fairly forgiving guy. In an attempt to recover this on my own using the Insyde BIOS emergency recovery method, I was unable to find the correct filename to put on my thumb drive. I did, however, find many accounts of harddrives being wiped and laptops being damaged by the HP service center. Sure, they’ll repair the problem for free; but they might damage it and you’ll have to start over from scratch.

I contacted HP’s technical support in an attempt to find a reasonable solution; and yet, none was to be had. It is their TotalCare practice to restore harddrives to their original factory state during repair. It was nice of them to offer to fix any damage incurred during repair for free… but who has that kind of time?

One technician said that, for only $49, I could have the service center perform a backup limited to My Music, My Pictures, My Videos and My Documents. Uh, thanks but no thanks — those of us in the computing biz have important things outside of those directories. And I have to pay for it?! No sir.

I was able to get in contact with an HP TotalCare supervisor who asked me to cooperate. He asked that I perform my own backup by removing the harddrive and placing it in an SATA capable computer. He also recommended that I erase the harddrive before shipping it to them. Great, so I have to take it apart before I send it to be taken apart. I would much rather fix the whole thing myself if that’s the case. Basically, I have to: find another computer with SATA and a large harddrive, disassemble the laptop, remove the harddrive, make a backup, erase the harddrive, send it to a service center, get it back, take it apart, put the harddrive back in the other computer, restore the backup, then put it back together.

So far, unacceptable. I purchased the laptop for work and often use it for work purposes. This is hindering my ability to do business. There is important information on that harddrive pertaining to business that I cannot lose. A newly-barred lawyer could win that case.

Has anyone else had problems with HP TotalCare, or more specifically, with this BIOS issue? Has anyone figured out the magic behind the Insyde BIOS emergency recovery? Are you a lawyer who specializes in IT matters and would like to take on a class action lawsuit? Do you have proper documentation and would like to join a class action lawsuit? Leave a comment with some contact info. (first name and e-mail address should be sufficient — these are default comment fields and invisible to end-users)

Another weekend spent arguing with HP TotalCare. Just what I wanted for Christmas.

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The Envy 15 Driver Nightmare

By Jeremy Hilts on February 28, 2010

After the failure of my 10-year-old P4 system, I was recently motivated to purchase an HP Envy 15 1100 custom laptop. Normally, this wouldn’t be a noteworthy occasion; however, it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. Luckally, I found solutions.

I desired a clean install, free of all of the junk and partitioning that comes with a commercial PC. Hewlett-Packard made two bold moves with the new Envy’s:

  1. It has a USB 3.0 Host Controller
  2. It’s using a cutting-edge ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5830

A clean install of Windows 7 Professional 64bit yielded a very cryptic error message: “Required cd/dvd drive device driver is missing”. The Envy has no internal optical drives, but came with an external USB drive. After a few days of pulling my hair out, it turns out that the bootstrap OS for Windows 7 did not have drivers for the USB 3.0 Host Controller. The BIOS did; and thus, after the bootstrapper loaded the OS into memory, the computer no longer knew how to use anything attached to USB. After a lot of hunting, I finally found the drivers and I was able to install Windows 7 successfully.

This was not the end of my headaches; the video card would also provide many hours of frustration. As it turns out, the Mobility Radeon HD 5830 is so new that not even ATI has released WHQL-certified drivers. I contacted HP support, but they referred me to a driver download to the Mobility Radeon HD 4830. That simply did not work.

In a desperate attempt, I put the official HP recovery discs into my external DVD drive in hopes that I could undo what I did. No such luck. They didn’t support the USB 3.0 Host Controller, nor did it give you an opportunity to load them. This was made all-the-more frustrating by the fact that HP charged me to have the recovery discs in the first place.

It took many hours of google searches and forum reading to find all of these solutions. So, dear readers, I will save you a weekend of frustration.

I hope that someone will find this helpful.

Update

HP has officially released both the Radeon and USB 3 drivers. Both can be found on the Latest Drivers link above or on the HP support website.

Update II

It seems as though the installation package for the USB 3 Host Controller is lacking the inf files necessary for installing Windows 7. I’ve made a package for the x86 and 64bit versions of the drivers; you can download them here: NEC USB 3.0 Drivers***.

*** – I offer no warranty and hold no liability regarding the validity of these files; though, they were extracted from a legitimate package. If you are in doubt, please do not download them.

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DC Winter Wonderland

By Jeremy Hilts on February 7, 2010

It seems that the great Snowpocalypse of 2010 ended up being a lot more fun than everyone first believed.

In the beginning, we were supposed to get 12-20 inches of snow. Then 18-24 inches of snow. Then 20-30 inches of snow. A rumor dropped that it may actually end up being a full 36 inches.

Now, I’m not sure how many inches we actually got. About knee high. 20 inches maybe? Regardless, I saw far less panic after it actually happened than I did shortly before. Saturday afternoon, toward the end of the wind and snowfall, I decided to investigate the aftermath with my camera.

Unfortunately, my neighborhood wasn’t plowed. I had to hop-skip-and-jump from the sidewalk, to the curb, and out into the road. Luckily, there were very few people out driving. I made my way to Stadium Armory metro and commuted out to Smithsonian station. I was surprised at how many people had shown up on the National Mall to enjoy the snow. There were plenty of people having snowball fights, playing football, or just goofing around with their friends. There were only a few narrow paths to traverse. Every time someone fell, it would hold up everyone behind them. It was a good thing that everyone was of good spirit and no one seemed to mind.

I made it all the way out to Lincoln Memorial, past the buried World War II Memorial and frozen reflecting pool, and then around Constitution Gardens. Around Constitution Gardens, as the sun began to set, the cold had sapped the charge from both of my batteries. I wasn’t done yet; I warmed my batteries as best I could. I was able to finish the trip before my batteries gave up entirely. It was a good thing, too — some of the best shots came out in the dusk light over the snow. It was dark by the time I got home.

In lieu of adding the photos to my photography site, I’ve created a public facebook photo album.

Visit “DC Winter Wonderland” album on facebook

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The Yoda Pattern

By Jeremy Hilts on December 28, 2009

I made this joke at work and some people thought it was funny. Others wanted my head.

try {
	if($do) {
		do();
	} else {
		doNot();
	}
} catch {
	die("there is no try");
}

The Yoda Pattern: An instance where an exception is unrecoverable.

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More Mandelbrot

By Jeremy Hilts on December 20, 2009

Some more Mandelbrot sets. These are, mostly, renderings of locations found within the default QuickMAN log files. There’s always something interesting to be found…

mandel2 mandel3 mandel4 mandel5 mandel6 mandel7 mandel8 mandel9 mandel10

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Have You Ever Made a Just Man?

By Jeremy Hilts on December 16, 2009

“Have you ever made a just man?”
“Oh, I have made three,” answered God,
“But two of them are dead,
And the third –
Listen! Listen!
And you will hear the thud of his defeat.”

- Stephen Crane

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A Man Said to the Universe

By Jeremy Hilts on December 16, 2009

A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

- Stephen Crane

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In the Desert

By Jeremy Hilts on December 16, 2009

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter”, he answered,
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

- Stephen Crane

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Flashy Flash

By Jeremy Hilts on December 15, 2009

Recently, my business had a need for some Flash development and I had just come off of a rather demanding project that, today, finally went live (yay!). Now, I’d never done any Flash to any degree of seriousness in the past; however, there was a need to be filled and I’m not afraid of a challenge. In a couple of days I was able to write a pre-loader that could be configured to play multiple videos in a time line for set intervals. For those of you out there on the Flash scene, that’s a rather minor accomplishment… but I’m pretty pleased with it, having never done such a thing before.

I’ve never been a big fan of Flash for general purposes. It’s too heavy for my liking. I like the web to be neat, structured and nicely degradable. Now, I never said that I don’t like it. I believe that there is a purpose for it; that purpose just happens to be its nom de plume. Should you want it flashy, so shall you do with Flash. Hey, all-in-all, it’s a neat trick.

Well, it used to be just a “neat trick” back in the archaic days of ActionScript. ActionScript 3 is, actually, quite respectable. After writing my pre-loader, having abstracted my objects to levels that made me happy, I took on a whole new respect for the use of Flash. Sure, ActionScript 3 is practically Javascript with a shiny coat… but I’ve also come to respect well-written Javascript a heck-of-a-lot more than I used to. Key word being: well-written. I guess that’s two words…

After writing a few things in ActionScript 3, I started thinking of the possibilities… Oh, the games I could write… Oh, the fun little effects I could accomplish. I still don’t think it should be used as the multi-purpose happy-web-solution that it’s often hyped to be; but I can definitely think of a number of things that I’d use it for.

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Mandelbrot Dragon

By Jeremy Hilts on December 12, 2009

Recently I’ve been a bit obsessed with Mandelbrot sets. It turns out, there are a bunch of programs out there on different platforms for generating Mandelbrot sets. One of the better optimized that I’ve found so far is called QuickMAN (get it here). Here’s a pretty high-quality image that I generated using QuickMAN:

Mandelbrot Dragon

Kinda looks like a dragon, no?

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