Laptop HDD upgrade

Francois,

I have a similar specced DV6. i7, 6gb, 1TB, ATI5650 etc. I have NO issues with video at all. I use Media player classic and have watched quite a lot of HD content as well. Something must be wrong on your notebook. I would start with benchmarking to see if something show up. One more thing, you need to keep that i7 cool, or it will slow down itself to cool down. Ensure that the air can be taken in from the bottom of the notebook. Thus, NEVER put it on a bed or some other soft surface.

francoislr said:
I do not have Graphics properties or Configure Switchable Graphics on that selection, only Catalyst Control Center. Opened it up and searched long and wide, but there is no options of the sort. Display Adapters only have the ATI listed under it. I have installed and tried Far Cry 2 on the lowest graphics settings in the game itself, and it just loads and loads. With that game while loading the thing got extremely hot! That was a few months ago though.
Click to expand...

I think it is only some of the i5 processors that are switchable. Not the i7 cpu.
 
zamicro said:
Francois,

I have a similar specced DV6. i7, 6gb, 1TB, ATI5650 etc. I have NO issues with video at all. I use Media player classic and have watched quite a lot of HD content as well. Something must be wrong on your notebook. I would start with benchmarking to see if something show up. One more thing, you need to keep that i7 cool, or it will slow down itself to cool down. Ensure that the air can be taken in from the bottom of the notebook. Thus, NEVER put it on a bed or some other soft surface.



I think it is only some of the i5 processors that are switchable. Not the i7 cpu.
Click to expand...

I have a laptop cooling pad. Some cheapie that provides circulation. Does not make a huge difference though. This thing gets hot at the top. Very hot! I sometimes sit outside at night and it still gets as hot as inside. The fans work nicely enough at the bottom, but I think I would need an industrial fan to keep this thing at an acceptable temperature!

I have Ubuntu on as well. I used it to watch 2 HD movies the last week as Windows is useless in this regard. It works much better, but I found that about halfway through both Tangled and Tron the thing starts stuttering. I have to close the media player and open the file again and then skip to the middle and watch on. Maybe Linux is just a bit more resilient but the laptop is just damaged goods out of the box that not even Mark Shuttleworth can do anything about.
 
I can feel it, but it's not exactly hot....did a bios update a few months ago and I keep up with them, whenever I look for new drivers.
 
Okay, a temperature measuring tool tells me my 4 cores are in the region of 70-72C, and I understand those are acceptable temperatures. This is getting very frustrating. Time to back up my TB and warranty I guess:-l
 
You got 6Gb of ram,maybe try turning page filing off & see if any differance - yep under 80 temps is fine - mine will go into 80's gaming & its not a stock CPU
 
Just remember to give it a reboot after you change it
 
No luck. Did the pagefile thing. Rebooted pc instantly last night. Used it all day. Still the same.
 
Eureka! I have found the solution! Today at band we were recording a headbangin' tune, and we had such issues! Somewhere along the line I realized something: Whenever the power of my laptop was plugged out (in other words, when using the laptop battery) none of these problems occurred. The recording went fine, and everything went smooth. Every time I plug in the problem comes back. Now no laptop should be like this, it should be the other way around if at all! So I did a bit of ninja google work and found the following 2 things might be the cause:
1. Earthing problem - Could make sense, but I would need to send in the darn thing to find out if it is that.
2. HP 3D Driveguard being enabled - I looked, but I did not have it installed. If you have it installed, under Windows Mobility Center there will be a section called Customized by Hewlett Packard, and it will be there.
So I figured since I don't have it, and I have removed all the HP crapware, I should re-install it. I did so, and the Customized by Hewlett Packard section appeared. Hard drive protection was listed, and I disabled it. Silly that I had to install it to disable it, but it's sorted now:-)

So far so good! It seems to be all better now! Now I want to let the world know! Thanks to everyone for your ideas, it was highly appreciated! :-)
 
You sure the reinstall hasn't just changed your power settings back to both being "balanced"
In your "Power Options" the default setting on battery would have been "balanced"
If you had the "Plugged in' setting on "high performance" might be why it was behaving on battery but not on mains power - maybe.
 
That is an odd problem for a machine like that. I would bump up the OS to SP1 for Windows 7 64bit and then make sure there aren't any driver glitches. In fact test for driver glitches first. Download the latest graphics driver for your equipment and then install it or re-install the driver currently on the system... Bad drivers can cause this...
 
BTW if you want to test if a laptop is running too hot, hold your hands over the keyboard near the air vent. If it become uncomfortable in less than 10 seconds you have a problem with heating.
 
Be aware you may have a potential problem with the charging IC on your lappy
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all the late help guys but as I said in my last post, the problem is sorted. It has run with no problems all day. It was HP's 3D Driveguard or whatever crap that was causing it. Was like that when I got the laptop, and after I formatted. But turning it off fixed it. The 3D drive protection is supposed to protect the hard drive if it gets bumped or such. Guess for some reason the computer was constantly under the impression it was getting bumped. Turned it off, and I am happy now. HD playing smooth, Far Cry 2 actually runs now, and loads in reasonable time. ALL IS WELL! Thanks!
 
Stuttering like that (which did not occur immediately after a format) sounds like some serious fragmentation. (or a buggered machine)

Do you install/uninstall/copy/delete lots of stuff/times?
If yes, then your drive is seriously fragmented.

All the new HP's run hot.
They'll blue-screen or shut down when running too hot.


To test if your machine suffers from "thrashing":

Install the OS from scratch, create the partition manually, with 8K allocation units (or bigger).
* The bigger the allocation unit, the faster the partition performs but the more space you waste (with 8KB units - when saving a 1K file, you waste 7K)
The default is 4KB.

When OS installation is done:
First install your games & then your other apps.
Auto defrag your swop file with each startup as well, this will improve things.

test.

And automate your normal defrags (at least once a week if you install/uninstall/copy/move/delete a lot)

I'd get a hybrid drive if I was you.
Seagate Momentus XT 500GB 7200RPM SATA 2.5" Solid State Hybrid.
 
@bubbatentoe

Did nobody tell you the iPad competition is over? :D
 
@ francoislr

I have exact laptop with exact same symptoms. your solution worked. Genius, thanks a lot. I almost sold the piece of @%234

cheers
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X