Sooo... the other day my hard drive got fried. tried to boot up and it wouldnt... bios said the hdd's were bad after some messing with linux, it suddenly "resumes windows" :/ half the data is corrupt... luckily scan disc saved most of it. My conclusion after fiddling with the drives was that the heat killed them... so hot you cant even hold a finger on them. since the frackers were still running somehow (very slow with hangups every now and then) i plan the new drive purchase when i get to Estonia... for now, im thinking i could just do a "quick" cleanup for the fan... or so i thought 23:42 one wrecked casing... really really poor design on these things... it has cracks all over the place no way to get close outside so it begins still no way to get close and the ******* is rather hard to take apart suprise suprise… the fan was the very last component to come out of the case /duh look at those dust bunnies unlike regular bunnies, these were as thick as the stuff under chair legs to keep the floor intact… and all openings were covered with them 00:40 The “little” cleanup that should have been done ages ago took me an hour… who the hell designed a crappy case like this… all you needed was to attach the “mesh” under the fan with screws… the fan would be clean in 5 minutes. Next time it needs cleanup, il open it with a vertical grinder!!! The funny thing is that my gf has been pissed at me for a year since my pc sounds like a jet plane taking off… after this cleanup its tottally quiet and even runs way cooler then usual.
Next time, look at the Latitude E series. 1x screw (attached) bottom panel. Unscrew it, and slide the panel downwards (like remote battery cover), and you have FULL access to the system. This means, you can change the CPU, motherboard, wireless card, bluetooth, these internet on the go card, heatsink, fan, CMOS battery and RAM. The only thing you can't remove is the GPU but that is soldered in to the motherboard (as expected). Laptop base, panel, speaker grid and screen lid is in metal, the rest (screen frame, palm rest. keyboard, mouse, etc... is in plastic). This means, it's not going to be like the Lenovo where you toss around and won't show a scratch, but it won't scratch because you used a soft cloth (that is why I HATE glossy plastic, anything will scratch them) This is probably the easiest laptop to access every produced, and that will be produced. In case you don't believe me (full service manual): http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/late6400/en/sm/html/index.htm
Heh i did a job for a customer on that same pos chassis around a month ago. Same problem. But **** it I like em to keep it that way then people dont get tempted to do it themselves
hehe, luckily enough thats just a bit of water from the table... cleaned it before starting to work. also, a little tip for hp owners... dont crab the laptop with one hand when taking it out of the bag/moving it/carrying it... ive got a nice dark spot now right in the middle of the screen
They are crap laptops build wise, friend has one after a while it kills HDD's. The HDD heat is trapped inside its caddy and just gets hotter and hotter! My 4 year old Acer Aspire, two screws, pop panel off, ooooooooo fan super clean! lol! Depending on usage i clean it once every month if its been on every day.
those are the crappiest laptops ever made. at work this summer we had a pile of dead laptops that customers had left in our store, and all of the ones new enough to have PCI-e wireless cards were HP. also, if i ended up having to replace parts in a laptop to get it working again, there was probably a 60% chance that it was one of those. they just have totally ineffective cooling. i don't understand how they got out of the design phase.
QFT. I had three Pavilion series laptops. Each developed problems within first three monts, one was DOA right after I bought it. Replacement seppuku'ed itself but worked fine after a visit to the repair center.
made me think i might give the eee a clean out. i have the same model as you have you tried cleaning it yet? easy?
Can you confirm that the audio / IR module at the front of the laptop is connected by one cable? I've just recently bought a second hand HP DV2630EA and the remote doesn't work. I've faffed around with drivers and I've confirmed that the remote is sending a signal (using my digital camera I can see the IR), so its most likely an IR sensor hardware problem. Its really annoying, but I don't really want to disassemble the laptop for such a small problem. Cheers.
i actually had 3 missing @ oasked thats a really solid connection, dont see how it could be malfunctioning... actually, when the audio works then it cant be "badly connected" and a ripped wire aint big of a chanse either. im pretty sure its a driver problem... ive ran xp / wista /win 7 on it and i kind of remember having hell of a problem getting it to work on one of those... now on win 7 only the audio keys on the remote are working... with the drivers and software installed planning to build some extra cooling for the ****er soon.
Everyone talking about these laptops as crap, there's actually a genuine reason. I work in a computer repair shop, and these models (dv2000, dv6000, dv9000, and some Compaq models) have dodgy GPUs I think, or the graphics card part of the trip goes belly-up without warning, partly to do with overheating (they released a BIOS update that just speeds the fan up). We have a pile of these laptops dead in our shop. However, they did offer a free 'warranty service enhancement', giving you an extra year on top of the free warranty (1 --> 2 yrs total). See here for more info, and I just hope if any of you have one that's dead, that it's less than two years old
Yeah, its the nVidia 8400GS / 8600GT chip that's rubbish. It performs well enough but it has terrible manufacturing issues (like the Xbox 360). After too much heat stress it just breaks. Thanks for the pics and explanation equilerex!
+1 for the dodgy G84/G86 GPUs, we've warrantied most of the ones we sold. The ones we haven't, didn't buy the warranty.
Talking to me? No idea. I havent taken mine apart (yet) except doing the very simple HDD cooling mod. But I'd imagine that it would be easy with normal precautions. You should get very far by checking out Eeeuser.com forums.
i've had nothing but horrible hp consumer laptops. they're not durable, they feel like crap when you're using them, they run hot, and they're pretty much dead after a year (which is also when the warranty expires) however, if you think that case is bad, have a look at the older ibooks. want to take out the hdd? gotta take out the logic board first.
This is why you don't buy consumer products. As soon as you upgrade to business models everything gets much easier. (And you don't have to deal with those damn glossy screens!)
We owned two HP laptops, the less hot one pretty much melts anything plastic left within a few inches of the single vent, and the hotter one just shuts itself off after an hour of use. I posted a thread about how tough the hotter one was (it survived a fall off my SUV at 25mph), but it really is a POS.. Will only buy Dell or Acer from now on, Toshiba isn't bad either.
