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Problems with new dv8140

post #1 of 8
3/15/06 at 5:06pm
Thread Starter 
Hello... hoping for some advice or at least sympathy :-/

I bought a dv8140 last week and it has been nothing but trouble. At first it would boot up, and then freeze over a span of about five minutes. First I would find myself unable to click on icons (eg. I would try to start up IE and nothing would happen) then icons would disappear from the Start Menu (at first it would have all the usual factory installed stuff, then all the submenus would show as [empty] and then the menus would be [empty]. After a few minutes I would not even be able to get into the start menu to reboot, or get a response from Ctrl-Alt-Del, and I would have to pull the plug to turn it off.

The first customer support agent I spoke to wanted me to reinstall the drivers from the driver disk. This made no difference so I called support again. The second CS agent had me repair XP using the OS disk. This also made no difference. A third rep told me to nuke the OS partition and reinstall everything from the ground up. For a few days this seemed to have worked, but now I'm having problems again. Occasionally the laptop will spontaneously reboot. Sometimes programs will not open (I'll click on an icon, either on the desktop or in the Start menu, and nothing will happen). Sometimes I will get out of memory error messages when I try to open a program. True, I can now go several hours (rather than only a few minutes) before things start to go haywire, but I don't think I'm unreasonable in thinking that unacceptable in a brand new $2000 piece of hardware.

At this point I am so sick of this laptop individually and HP tech support collectively, that I just want to send it back and get a different model. What do other people here think? Is it worth going another round with the support people? Better to give up and start again?

Feeling really grumpy about the whole deal...

Elizabeth
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post #2 of 8
3/15/06 at 5:45pm
If it worked for a few days after the new OS installation, it sounds like a software issue. Are you running any antivirus or firewall programs. Did you perform virus scans and spyware scans? Is your Operating System up to date?
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post #3 of 8
3/15/06 at 6:07pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the reply.

Everything is uptodate, according to HP update and Windows Update. I have Norton Internet Security and Windows Defender, neither of which see anything wrong.

It is possible that things were not right immediately after the hard disk wipe/OS reinstall. The primary problem I am having is spontaneous reboots, and it was only after a few days that I decided that they were definitely not my fault. At first I thought I must have somehow accidentally rebooted, or my son had, or something of that sort. I can't pinpoint the exact time the problems re-emerged after the reinstall.

What will happen is that I'll be working away, and then I'll get an error message about memory allocation and the system will reboot. I can't detail the error message as it disappears too quickly. Does that sound like the symptom of any known and easily fixed problem?

My previous laptop was also an HP -- a ze2000 Best Buy loss-leader which cost $500 AR -- and it has been a perfectly well-behaved and reliable little machine, so I thought I would go with an HP again. I feel very disappointed by this second HP experience, and want to give them a second chance, but I'm really feeling pretty fed up!

Elizabeth
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post #4 of 8
3/15/06 at 7:01pm
My wife and I experienced this on a dv8000z. We never traced the problem, but we managed to reduce it to a minimum. I reinstalled the OS just as you did but for naught because it eventually did it again. I moved away form WXP Home to the Corporate edition, and installed only the hardware drivers that satisfied the device manager. We left off all ancilliary HP software. We ran for a week without any problems. We eventually returned the unit in favor of the dv8000t with a slightly better video card. I am sorry that I can not provide a solution. My advice would be to install a minimum of the HP foot print and if you do need those programs install them one at a time over the course of several days and maybe you can isolate the issue. The spontaneous reboots are typical of software issues but the question is it a driver-driver, driver-app, or app-app conflict that is causing the crash.
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post #5 of 8
3/16/06 at 5:43pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks very much for the followups. I'm not sure whether it is more reassuring or worrisome that I'm not the only one to have had this problem with the same machine!

I've decided to send it back. My decision was helped along by a customer service experience survey which a) gave me a chance to vent and b) got me a 10% off coupon. I'm going for a dv8000t with all the bells and whistles except for memory (I have 2 Transcend 1GB DDR2 533 notebook sticks which should work, and if they don't it would still be cheaper to buy the memory elsewhere).

Can anyone tell me how accurate HP's projected shipping dates are? I have never bought a configure-to-order notebook before. Are they usually spot on, early or late?

Elizabeth
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post #6 of 8
3/16/06 at 6:39pm
Projected dates in the past have been very conservative on their part. They usually over-estimate, but with this being a new model I am not sure......I usually get my notebooks from HP/Compaq 2-3 days early. With that said my current t is due on the 20th and we are awfully close to that date and I don't even have a tracking number yet. I will let you know how it unfolds.
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post #7 of 8
9/15/06 at 8:21am

Problems with HP DV8140

I'm from Brazil and bought a DV82140 in NY. After 3 months it began to present problems like this one described in this thread. The first one was a freeze and I had to boot to unfreeze. But at this time Windows has presented problems and neither the reinstall was possible. Some time after this I have discovered a problem in one of the memories (1Gb) and took away the damaged memory. I could reinstall Windows and work for 3 or 4 months. after this it presented same problem again, but at this time I hadn't another memory to take away. So I've sent it to an authorized assistance here in Brazil that said me that the problem was in the motherboard because the notebook was tested with another memorys and reseted again but nothings happens.
Now, I have to send it to NY to fix a problem that HP should knows, wait about 3 months to have my computer again, waste US$200 of freight and get a risk of lost my personal data if HP don't do a backup up like I ask!
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post #8 of 8
9/19/06 at 5:11pm

That is unacceptable

Quote:
Originally Posted by aluluei
Hello... hoping for some advice or at least sympathy :-/

I bought a dv8140 last week and it has been nothing but trouble. At first it would boot up, and then freeze over a span of about five minutes. First I would find myself unable to click on icons (eg. I would try to start up IE and nothing would happen) then icons would disappear from the Start Menu (at first it would have all the usual factory installed stuff, then all the submenus would show as [empty] and then the menus would be [empty]. After a few minutes I would not even be able to get into the start menu to reboot, or get a response from Ctrl-Alt-Del, and I would have to pull the plug to turn it off.

The first customer support agent I spoke to wanted me to reinstall the drivers from the driver disk. This made no difference so I called support again. The second CS agent had me repair XP using the OS disk. This also made no difference. A third rep told me to nuke the OS partition and reinstall everything from the ground up. For a few days this seemed to have worked, but now I'm having problems again. Occasionally the laptop will spontaneously reboot. Sometimes programs will not open (I'll click on an icon, either on the desktop or in the Start menu, and nothing will happen). Sometimes I will get out of memory error messages when I try to open a program. True, I can now go several hours (rather than only a few minutes) before things start to go haywire, but I don't think I'm unreasonable in thinking that unacceptable in a brand new $2000 piece of hardware.

At this point I am so sick of this laptop individually and HP tech support collectively, that I just want to send it back and get a different model. What do other people here think? Is it worth going another round with the support people? Better to give up and start again?

Feeling really grumpy about the whole deal...

Elizabeth

Sorry to hear yours is not doing well. I would say that is completely unacceptable for a $2000 piece of hardware. Go another round with tech support and insist on a return for repair/replacement. It's probably just bad memory or something, but let them support it...that's what warranties are for.
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