November 9th, 2009
Well, the cursed laptop is really and truly dead now. It's been two years of marginal performance, curious behaviour, frustrating crashes and other unpredictable failures to do what it should, and now it no longer works at all.
And, despite the irritation of having to buy a new one, I am glad it's dead.
The computer was an HP Pavilion DV9644CA.
This time it's the graphics chipset that died, and, short of replacing the whole motherboard, there's no simple repair for it. This is an extremely common problem, it turns out, and there have been threats of class action lawsuits and demands for the systems to be recalled, etc. But HP has refused to do more than acknowledge there's a problem. HP already has a reputation for dreadful customer support, and the fact that they don't care that a whole bunch of their computers are expiring early—typically between 18 and 24 months—is the final "fuck you" from them.
I plan to never ever EVER buy another HP product. If you ever asked me, I would recommend that you never ever EVER buy one of their products too.
Just for interest's sake, I am going to list the problems I've had with my HP Pavilion DV9644CA computer:
Approximate Date Problem Hardware or Software Description Severity (Minor, Major, Critical, Fatal) November, 2007 Networking AutoTuning Hardware and Software Impaired or stopped network performance for all my computers on the network (including some Win2K and XP boxes). I had to turn AutoTuning off Major November, 2007 IPv.6 stack not compatible Hardware and Software Parts of the new IPv.6 stack were not compatible with my network and brought performance down. I had to disable IPv.6 Minor November, 2007 User Access Control Software Hobbled my ability to run multiple configurations of some software. Furthermore, the constant steady stream of popup boxes was tedious and workflow-impairing. (I had to confirm a file copy-and-replace operation three times, even as Administrator!) Major December, 2007 Desktop and Start Menu Shortcuts Software Some of the inexplicably stopped working, I could never figure out why, just had to perform a System Restore. Minor December, 2007 Windows Installer Software Got corrupted—a (well) known issue with Vista. A new Windows Installer was not available for download for a several months. I had no way at the time to fix it except for a dump and reload of the OS. Major December, 2007 DRM Software Playing music on my Vista machine slowed my network down (DRM) so much that file copying going on between two completely different machines stopped working. Major Continual Software incompatibility Software UAC made it so that some software could only be run under a single configuration. Major April, 2008 No network file copy Hardware and Software Vista simply Would Not Copy files over the network, no matter how I configure, bribe, plead, or threaten. I've tried everything I've found online about it, and still no file copy. I now use my USB thumb-drive to copy files from a system to another, when one of them is Vista (all others work: Win2K, XP)—yes, "sneaker-net" is back. For brevity, here is a very brief summary of the things I've tried with no success: Turning off IPv6, including: Eventually I had to buy a new network router to get this working. Not just time consuming, expensive too.
- TCP/IP "Receive Window Auto-Tuning"
- Turning off Remote Differential Compression
- Changing NIC settings such as throughput speed and duplex settings
- Disabling anti-virus software Installing two different hotfixes
Critical May, 2008 Both the keyboard and mouse stopped working Hardware(?) and Software Never figured out why—I could sort of use the USB mouse and "type" with the on-screen keyboard option, but driver reload, System Restore, nothing at all seemed to work. Finally I dumped and reloaded the whole OS. It took all fucking weekend. Critical December, 2008 Corrupted registry Software Windows Updates suddenly stopped working, and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually I was able to track it back to the fact that the logging service wasn't started. The update couldn't finish because the service could update the log, so it would roll back. I further traced this to a corrupted registry. I fixed that and—lo and behold—the updates started working again. Major July, 2009 Power connector broke off the motherboard Hardware My daughter used it to climb up my lap, so we can blame me for leaving it where a toddler could wreck it ... except that the problem is a common one, and HP refuses to make the connectors stronger, despite repeated reports of them breaking. Critical November, 2009 Graphics chipsets Hardware The chipset died after only 2 years. There is no repair or mitigation. This is the fatal blow to my computer. Fatal OK, this is all in a home computer, something grandma and grandpa might buy so they can see videos of their grandkids and send emails to their bridge club members. Is it even slightly reasonable to expect such non-technical people to have the number and type of problems mentioned in the above list? No, of course not!
This HP Pavilion DV9644CA was, quite simply, the most frustrating computer I've ever had. I spent so much time just keeping it running, that it's a wonder there aren't more class action suits. It has completely turned me off of HP, that's for sure.
Now I'm saddled with the task of buying a new laptop computer. Time to do my Reliability Research—I most definitely do not want to get another lemon like this DV9644CA.
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