Hewlett Packard DV6000, DV9000 series wireless card problem / defect which leads to a bad motherboard
HP Pavilion dv2000/dv6000/dv9000 and Compaq Presario v3000/v6000 Series Notebook PCs
Hello, I recently came across a mixture of six DVxxxx series laptops that utilized an AMD Turion X2 processor and a Broadcom wireless card/chipset.
ALL six laptops exuded symptoms of:
· Laptop turns on with lights turning on as well but no display on the LCD.
· Laptop turns on with lights turning on as well but no display on the LCD and no display with an external monitor hooked up to it.
· Laptop turns on momentarily with the lights flashing briefly for roughly two seconds and then the lights and the entire laptop shuts off.
Prior to these things occurring you may encounter the following:
· Wireless no longer works.
· Wireless device is no longer listed in device manager.
· Wireless device works but sometimes drops out and then disappears completely.
If you are experiencing ANY of these symptoms, I highly recommend contacting HP right away. There is a manufacturer’s defect with what seems to be attributed to the wireless Broadcom card and the motherboard’s chipset. I haven’t confirmed this but this is what seems to be the consensus.
The good news is, even if you’re warranty with HP has expired, you will be covered as they have extended the warranty for an additional 24 months while they repair and replace these defective computers.
What amazes me is not many people know about this. I didn’t even know about this. Prior to finding out about the recall I kept seeing more and more of the same exact laptop come through the shop only to suffer from the same exact symptoms (symptoms are listed above).
I felt sick at the fact that HP seemed to have made these laptops just roughly one year and a few months and then it dies. It seemed to me like they put in a pre-made time bomb so that people would be forced to have to buy a new HP laptop after their warranty ran out.
I’m happy that HP is making good on their error and are extending the warranty for an additional 24 months.
Here is the contact information you need:
To contact HP in North America call 1-866-671-7362 from 6:00 am to 11:00 pm MST, 7 days a week.
Here is a link to a very large thread in the HP support forum. Please be aware that this thread can take a few minutes to actually load on your computer, even if you have an updated/super fast/mighty computer.
I am very disappointed in the product as well. I have a dv6255ea (model for Europe). Intel 5500 and 2 harddrives.
LCD Display stopped functioning. Monitor port gave bad picture on external monitor.
BIOS update to F.2C seemed to solve the problem but one day later, the display stopped again. There is some faint light at the lcd display, so i am convinced there is a problem in the VGA chip on the motherboard. (inverter is ok)
Only sometimes the product will boot in Safe Mode Vista on the external monitor.
I’m now fed up with it. A shame for HP. I have the product for 18 months, so no warranty. The machine has cost € 1600,- (about 2000 $).
Well I just spent a wasted day with HP Tech Support trying to restore wireless functionality that stopped funtioning on an 8 week old Pavilion dv6436nr Notebook PC. I was assured that this is a very unusual problem and we’d need to walk through a series of diagnostic steps including installing a new BIOS and restoring the factory settings.
During the 3rd Chat Session of the day, I made mention that this problem appears to be quite common according to many Notebook Forum blogs. Then I get a magical notice from HP indicating their extended warranty and acknowledging problems with wireless and overheating with 6000 series notebooks…
Same issue as Mike Heffernan. TX 1000 Wireless light staying on Red. Wireless device has disappeared out of Device Manager. Windows Vista and BIOS cannot see the hardware. Nothing seems to want to recover it.
HP better cover this….
HOPELESS pieces of dung. NEVER BUY HP LAPTOPS AGAIN! My machine was a dv9000 bought it back in oct 06 with an AMD processor and nvidia card.
Let me give you the run down, first your wireless card dies… you read the forums… decide to not go through the hassle… buys a wireless card for it… works for a while…then your display gets distorted… then your the possessed ic boards starts to continuously reboot itself.
Then you go the hp support spends 3 hours explaining what is going….. they give you a box to send it in… you send it in 2-3 weeks later you get the machine back.
BUT WAIT! It came back in EXACT SAME CONDITION! How in the world does a company let a “repaired product” out their door without testing it first? Then you spend another 2 hours talking to the hp representative and after another 2-3 weeks you get the computer back.
You spend 2 days installing everything you need again and in the mist of running a resource intensive program it keeps quitting saying “memory allocation error.” What good is a laptop that can’t run programs and runs so hot that you feel like your hands are lying on top of a stove and your pants might melt with the laptop well… sitting on top of your lap!
If you currently have a dv6000 or dv9000 and has not had any problems yet I recommend you backing up your data every week, a quick search on the internet reveals the widespread lemon problem. HP machines may look better than a dell or a lot of other competitors, but what they give you inside is cow dung. They never checked if the system and its components are compatible with each other, they never test to see if everything works together. Never again HP will you take my hard earned money never again.
THANK YOU!!! IF I HAVEN’T FOUND THIS I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WOULD DO. MY WIRELESS CARD JUST STOPPED WORKING AND I WAS PISSED, B/C USUSALLY I CAN FIX ANYTHING BUT THIS WAS A WHOLE DIFFRENT STORY. NOW HP IS SENDING ME A SHIPPING BOX AND I WILL SHIP THEM THE LAPTOP AND THEY WILL FIX IT FOR FREE. BY THE WAY I HAVE HP PAVILION DV9008NR. GREAT LAPTOP BUT VISTA IS CRAP HATE IT.
Originally the HP recall was for:
“NOTE: This service enhancement program is available in North America for 12 months after your original standard limited warranty expires. ”
Then they extended it for 24 months, as on this blog
Now I just checked the website and it states:
“NOTE: This service enhancement program is available in North America for 24 months after the start of your original standard limited warranty for issues listed below; otherwise your current standard limited warranty applies. Customers who already have a 24 month or longer warranty period will be covered under their existing standard HP Limited Warranty. ”
Thats really confusing I thought I had 24 months after my original warranty expires, now it turns out that HP never intended to extend this warranty at all. I just called up HP hopefully they can see that the text used in their warranty enhancement was changed in a way that could make many people believe that the warranty was for 24 months after the expiration date of the original warranty expires and still fix those machines that are most likely gone bad due to a bad motherboard/ Nividia GPU or whatever is causing these machines to fail.
I just called HP hopefully they can fix this.
Des
Woke up and tried getting online. NOTHING!!! I can’t find my router, I can’t find my neighbor’s routers. After spending ALL DAY on the phone with HP, I just realized that I got a bigger problem on my hand than originally thought.
Problem:
The blue wireless light is on. “No Wireless Found”, Computer gets online when plugged in with a LAN wire. (Device Manager) shows the wireless card as “Working Fine”
No noticable problem with the Motherboard (YET).
After 3 different Technicians, I’ve spend approx 7hrs on a Saturday with HP. No help!!!
Computer is out of warranty.
Anybody got a solution? I seem to hear a lot of “different” suggestions. Should I change the Wireless Mini Card? Change my Motherboard? Change what?
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Ken
Your motherboard is probably going to die sometime in the next month. So just constantly back up your data for the next month or two. What model is your computer? I got them to replace my Tx1000′s motherboard for free even if it was 1 year out of warranty already and it wasn’t under their ‘fix for free’ list.
Update on my HP issue from last year. I finally got a replacement laptop from HP after they had my orginal laptop for over 2 months, can’t rememeber who I actually spoke to, but he was here in the US I think, after I spent hours and hours complaining to the *customer service dept* all Indian I think, and very hard to understand, but they finally admitted they dropped the ball, and sent me a brand new custom built machine, albeit the same model, just an upgraded version. Anyway, they told me my old laptop would be going to recycling, but lo and behold, we ended up getting it back about a week after I got my new laptop, saying the motherboard had been replaced. Guess what…still had the same issue! So my husband, who is pretty ballsy, took it back to Staples, where we orginally bought it, because it was still under the original warranty as it was only about 4 months old at this point. The techs there figured out that it was the HARD DRIVE that was bad, which HP tech support had me test at least 3 times, and Staples replaced it for free, after submitting it to HP under warranty. I figured that HP would catch on to the serial number and refuse to fix it, because we never should have gotten it back in the first place, as they had sent me a new one. They never did, the hard drive was fixed, and we got a free laptop! By that time, I had earned it though, after all the trouble I went to. So, keep on bugging them, and do you research on the web about this series of laptops, DV2000, DV6000, DV9000, as there are tons of forums out there on the web about these laptops. Have all this available, and keep calling, at least once a day. The squeaky wheel does seem to get the oil after a while, and ask to speak to a supervisior if you get BS when talking to tech support. Dunno if you will get a new laptop, and your old one back like I did, but hey…worth a try right? At least you might get some type of compensation!
Lori Smith
Damn, Lori, thats just plain dishonest.
Some people still have their original dud machine! Still I guess it helps to be persistent.
Most likely most of these machines are bound to fail sooner or later, luckily my wifes DV6000 ran WindowsXP MCE so it lasted a little longer that those HPs which ran Windows Vista.
Im guessing that the cause is unltimately related to faulty NVIDIA chips combined with a power hungry OS (Vista) which caused most of these things to fail due to heat related issues.
NVIDIA should cough up the cash, and everyone should just get new PC replacements with full 1 year warrantys. 90 days warranty on a replacement is just not sufficient when it seems like the replacement parts are also faulty.
Fingers crossed HP will fix my machine!