*HP EliteBook 8740w Owners Lounge - PART 2*

ok the only way to tell if its a bad one.

is to turn your soundcard up all the way, and then let the computer idle.

no internet connection/nothing!

if you can hear the PSU's buzzing through the soundcard, get it replaced.

our psu's rectifier circuits do produce a bit of noise sadly, but if you can hear it through the soundcard = bad ground line.

@rampageII

old 230w PSU: 535592-001 (you can't buy this one anymore, it's been pulled)

one we got as a replacement (and is on all of our machines now, including my own 8740w): 613159-001

New 200W PSU number: 608431-002/609945-001

if your psu is old (5xxxxxx) its a previous run. however, not all of these were bad!

 

My 8740w came with the new 200W model: 608431-001. Thanks for the info.

I have not had any of the startup issues others have mentioned, like the "boot to black" issue. I did have an instance where I clicked "Shut Down" and the computer shut off but immediately turned back on. Now I unplug my USB mouse prior to the computer shutting down and don't have this problem. HP notebooks with UEFI are very sensitive to having USB devices plugged in during startup/shut down.

 

I checked my PSU Part Numbers. Both are 608431-002 (200W). However there is a chance I ran this machine off the PSU I sent back with my 2nd 8740w and I have no way of knowing what part number that one had.

However I think I am still the only one to have the insta-crash issue (everything goes black and computer reboots itself automatically).

Siorah, do any of your FX500M machines have the battery boot problem (will not boot with battery installed)?

 

I have the same 200W PS and my laptop is actually one of the early ones.
It doesn't have the normal constant humming though. Instead, it seems to follow the same chirping pattern coming from the CPU.

Interesting.
I could see that happening if you put it on standby and you accidentally move the mouse. But not if you click shutdown.

The mouse receiver is always on my laptop.
Only thing I've noticed is that if I have the receiver on any of the usb 2.0 ports and I put it on standby, moving the mouse will wake up the computer as expected.
But if the receiver is on any of the usb 3.0 ports, it won't wake up.
I have the power button setup for standby (to avoid accidental shutdowns) so I have to press that to wake up the laptop.

 

Same here. However, if I unplug the PSU, the CPU chirpling only gets stronger.
Also, the sound card noise is present with and without the PSU... *scratches his head*

 

yea, the sound card chirps when it's in power save mode. thats normal

the fact is, the old psu's buzzing with the soundcard is an ollllldddd bug which is long fixed. they changed the psu's.

@knight

ALL of our 5000M machines have the battery boot issue. it was fixed when we rolled out F.09, but within 24 hours it was rolled back to F.08

I'm the only one in the office still on F.09 out of 14 laptops.

hope this helps mate.

@ usb issue

yea i have that on my machine where the usb can wake up the machine - there is a setting somewhere. maybe bios, i'll check it when the machines have finished rendering. I'm on my POS asus atm with its nice missing keystrokes keyboard.

 

is that 608431-001 or 608431-002 for the psu's?

the first model i had which was a bit iffy was 001

the usb 3 sockets won't work because the extra chip doesn't talk to the internal intel chipset. they are outside the 'wake up' bubble sadly.

the psu shouldn't be making noises that are anything like the machine. it should be just a quiet humming sound. anything else is a bad earth line.

 

My PS has two part#'s.
HP part No: 608431-001 AND Replace with HP spare: 609945-001

Yeah, I figured the reason why it won't wake up when it's on usb 3.0 was due to the driver not being active while on standby. After all, USB 3.0 does not have native support.

 

i dunno about you guys, but i've not had a good evening.

at work 3/5 of our 5000M machines blackscreened and rebooted during a render. at the same time hasn't occured since however.

then i get back home and fancy a run on everquest 2, to which i have had a flurry of BSODs.

stop 0x116
stop 0x117
stop 0x122
stop 0x124 within about 30 minutes. however, if i load up anything work wise, the machine is fine.

comments/ideas?

 

Finally, someone else with the same problem. It's odd that they happened at the same time. Was it really synchronized, like they all went black at the same exact moment?

EDIT: Had my fourth one this week tonight.

Less play, more work.

 

I placed my 8740w order on Nov. 5th and didn't get an order confirmation until Nov.9th...which did NOT include an estimated ship date.

On Nov.15th I got a "We regret to inform you that your order 29xxxxx has encountered a delay due to a temporary material shortage" message...but still no estimated ship date.

I called HP customer support the same day and, an hour later, they e-mailed me the on-line link where I can check the status of my order...which showed an estimated ship date of Dec.14th.

Based on your individual experiences, are these "We regret to inform you" messages standard operating procedure for most orders and does the estimated ship date change much as the factory proceeds with production?

I thought turnaround time for delivery of new orders was ~3 weeks? Looks more like 6 weeks as it stands now. I would appreciate your feedback.

 

hiya wiz, our machines with a XM processor took longer to arrive than the ones without it. it was ~3 weeks for the QM's but ~7 weeks for the ones with XM's in. we are still waiting for 2 more XM based ones to arrive we ordered on nov 2nd, eta is Dec 16th.

@ knight yea they died at the same time according to the server. they disconnected within 0.04seconds of each other. really weird.

no idea why, just blackscreened and rebooted.

 

I think this could be because of an hidden scheduling process. Sorry, I can't explain it beteer. Hope you get what I mean.

@ Wizman I ordered mine trough a rep (in Spain) on Oct. 26 and the eta atm is Nov 30, 5 weeks.

 

@Wizman I also received the "temporary material shortage" message as have several other people in this forum. My turnaround time was still ~3 weeks.

 

I placed an order through my company's primary HP reseller (ePlus), for a XT910UT (740, WUXGA, 500GB, 3800M), and was told everything was in stock (3 extra 4GB DIMMs, and 230W docking station), and that it would ship Monday.

We'll see if that holds true.

Question, I was going to install ESXi 4.1 bare metal, and then p2v my corporate desktop as vm1 (running w7), install a personal copy of w7 as vm2, ubuntu as vm3 to start.

The problem, as I'm sure you guys know, is that this won't really work as I can't really get to the vms via the local console.

Are you guys running w7 as the host OS on this hardware and then VMware Player from there?

Are there any bare metal hypervisor solutions available that will let me access the VMs from the local console, running a mix of w7 and linux?

Also, any way to have 2 wired network connections (one to corporate for my corporate vm, and one to an open network for stuff IT won't allow me to do on their LAN)?

I'm coming from an Asus W2P, btw.

Thanks

 

I received my notebook about a week ago. Ordered it w/840QM CPU, 5000M nVidea GPU, 2GB ram and a basic 230W docking station. It took about 3 weeks from ordering to get here. I never got any notification about shortages.

I have the 200w PSU ending in 608431-001. It makes some increasing and then decreasing buzzing in a stepping way when I plug it into the notebook and the battery is charging; it's barely audible. When the notebook is powered on it makes occasional chirps in tandem with the CPU but otherwise is silent. When the battery is charged and the PSU is plugged in the buzzing doesn't step and is quieter. I hope this is all normal. I haven't had a problem booting from battery alone or while the PSU is plugged in.

The docking station comes with a 230W PSU p/n 608432-003.

I got the back-lit keyboard. There's a slight raise about 2 inches from the top upper left on the KB, but it's barely noticeable only when I look for it. There is some flexing in that area if you apply any significant pressure, but I rarely do. I don't consider myself to be a keyboard aficionado, so it's not hard to understand why this might bother others more than it does me. The keys are a bit "thin" compared to the ones from my 6 year old HP NC8000, which probably has dura-keys. The back of the KB is not as solid as my old HP. The lack of sturdiness for the back-lighting seems to be reasonable trade off for me.

I've ghosted all the drives and will soon be testing the screen for dead/stuck pixels. Then I'll move to an Intel 160 G2 SSD instead. I'm going to see if WinXP x86 will work with the 5000M GPU, since I've put Win 7 on my parents machines I wasn't all that enamored with it - though it has a lot of eye-candy like a Mac.

As an aside I noticed today from HP's CTO that 8GB Dimms are now available for only $2,174 each. I Think I'll stick with aftermarket 4x4GB dimms for a few years instead....

 

Yup --- I didn't explicitly notice the raised bump in the keyboard until Aikimox pointed it out, but it's definitely there. I'm pretty sensitive to keyboard flex, and I wouldn't say there's any appreciable flex in my backlit keyboard, but there is something "thin" and not quite substantial about it. I don't know, but if it had a plate over it with the keys coming through like a standard chicklet keyboard maybe it would seem better...

Ok that's fine...please just send me your 4 unused 8GB DIMMS. I'll be glad to put them in my 8740w.

 

32GB RAM only $9071....plus $794 in tax. Sign me up!


Bad news. My laptop suddenly shut down today and now it won't turn on at all.
All I was doing was watching a video just before it shut down.

I've noticed that the green LED light on the PSU turns off every time I plug it into the laptop. The only way it turns back on is to disconnect/reconnect from the wall outlet.

Looks like a short circuit..... my motherboard is toast.

Temperatures were normal, nothing out of the ordinary really. It simply shut down without a warning.

 

thats your PSU failing mate. your laptop should be ok.

thats happened to me before in the office here. we ordered a new psu and our 8740w still worked, but you may not be so lucky.

i ordered 32gb ram here, was about $2100 for the 4 sticks.

 

You can use this PSU for the laptop only (I think) and check out if there is any difference.

 

I got a 8740w on order with the 3800 GPU and 230W advanced docking station.

I was assuming that the 2 DVI-D connectors on the docking station were dual-link, but now I'm not sure. Can anyone confirm that I can run a pair of 2560x1600 displays from this docking station?

If not, am I stuck only being able to run a single 2560x1600 display via the displayport? If so, does anyone know of a displayport to DVI cable 3 or 6 foot long? I'd rather not spoil my desk with an unsightly displayport to dvi dongle right next to my 8740w...

Thanks!

 

If it was just the PSU then it would work with the battery by itself.
I have an extra 180W PSU and it's doing the same thing.
As soon as I plug it into the laptop the PSU LED turns off. This indicates a short circuit is tripping the safety feature on the PSU.

At the very least this machine will require a new motherboard and possibly a PSU.

 

ohh, thats bad

yea new motherboard - if i was you - try your HDD in another machine/caddy. with a board replacement, you'll not get your hdd back.

yea, we had a psu that did that, but the machine started up by itself on battery.

you may need a replacement machine mate, i am sorry for your loss

 

all those troubles, are there any users without problems at all?

 

there are lots of people without problems. don't mistake 1 or two issues, for the general populous!

we have 14 machines in our office running nicely. apart from the odd niggle once or twice

 

I was using my own SSD instead of the original HDD. The HDD hardly gets any use.
I'm still curious as to what caused the problem.
I take good care of my equipment so it was certainly not from physical abuse. I've never spilled a single drop of liquid in it.
As I mentioned before, I was just watching an episode of "The Walking Dead" when it happened. Maybe that's why.

 

yea, i am sad to hear about that. sounds like the regulators failed.

what did hp say about it?

 

I haven't had any technical issues in the two weeks I have been using it. I did have the backlit keyboard replaced with the standard one because I didn't like the feel (I did not order the BL keyboard for that reason yet it came with it anyway). The standard one feels a lot nicer.

 

It's inevitable that the majority of posts you see here will be discussing problems more than anything else -- I think that's to be expected in this type of forum. I seriously doubt that it's representative of the overall population of these systems.

That said, I've been pleased to have a system that hasn't had any of the "black screen" or "spontaneous shutdown" types of issues at all. I'd like to have full 10-bpc video operating the way it's supposed to, but I think that's more of a software/firmware thing than a true hardware problem. It will be fixed in time.

 

You also have to remember this thread is populated by super-obsessive notebook geeks.