On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 04:06:05 GMT, Brian wrote:
> Bought a Pavilion m7470n a month ago and practically since plugging it in,
> it spontaneously shuts down/restarts. It almost always happens when using
> the mouse (especially dragging)
>
> . . .
>
> Lately, I've been getting messages from MS that this problem is due to the
> video device driver. (the video card is an onboard ATI Radeon Express 200)
>
> The proposed solutions are:
>
> 1.) update the device driver, or,
>
> 2.) click off the Enable Write Combining box and turn off Hardware
> Acceleration in the Display/Settings/Advanced/Troubleshooting window.
>
> When I try to make any changes in the hardware acceleration settings, the
> system shuts down immediately.
>
>
>
> Has anyone out there experienced this problem, and if so, any suggestions?
Mine arrived only 3 days ago so my experience with it isn't
extensive, but I've seen no problems, other than with the utility
that creates system recovery DVDs. The entire window contents
weren't visible, possibly because the program assumed that the
monitor's resolution would have been lower. But it worked
eventually, and without any errors or error messages.
> There are other problems as well:
>
> * Rhapsody songs skip about 50% of the way through.
>
> * The Media Center DVD player and TV viewer won't work properly.
>
> * It also is also constantly accessing the hard drive every 2 seconds (the
> HD light blinks with the crackling access noise).
I haven't tried any of that software yet, but the computer is
extremely quiet, and there has been no unusual disk activity.
> One HP tech thought that the OS or Media Center may have become corrupted.
It's possible, but it seems like a "grasping for straws" opinion,
and from the tech's point of view, better that than a hardware
problem that HP might have to deal with.
> It looks as if I may have to reformat the drive or even ship the box back to
> HP.
>
> Any suggestions/solutions would be appreciated.
If you haven't yet created the recovery DVDs and recovery tools
disk, do so immediately. It might help to first switch the monitor
to a generic setting, eliminating the driver for the onboard ATI
chips. If you can reformat and reinstall the original setup and the
problems disappear, then the odds are very good that you don't have
some kind of hardware problem, and you can then start reinstalling
drivers and software. But do it slowly, one at a time, with testing
after each addition (maybe for a day or two), so that if problems
reoccur, you'll know which one is likely to have caused the problem.
If you can't reinstall the OS, either the recovery DVDs weren't
created successfully (but there was extensive verification during
the creation of them, so they should be good) or there's a hardware
problem. In either of these two cases you'd be advised to return
the computer to HP. Before doing that, I'd first try fiddling with
the DDR memory. Just remove and reseat the memory in their sockets.
Sometimes just jiggling them slightly without completely removing
them would be enough to improve the contact. One nice thing about
the m7470n was that even though the store salesmen obviously didn't
know what they were talking about, they said that the 2GB of the
computer's memory completely filled the m7470n's 4 sockets. But it
turned out that two 1GB DDRs were used, so if I ever want to upgrade
to 4GB, I won't have to throw out or try to sell the original 2GB.
BTW, if you don't want to reformat/reinstall, try to find another
OS that you can't boot from to test the computer's basic hardware.
It may not test all of it, but if it fails, it's would be a further
confirmation of hardware, rather than a software or driver failure.
As the computer has no floppies, forget about digging up an old DOS
boot disk. But there are other bootable OS's, such as the Knoppix
version of Linux, which supposedly installs nothing on the hard
drive and boots competely from the CD/DVD. I've seen them
occasionally bundled with the odd Linux magazine, the last time
being a couple of months ago in the magazine section of a local
Borders bookstore.
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