AHCI controller for 17-E049WM

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

All you have to do is remove the old drive from it caddy, swap in the new one, connect the connector to it.

No jumpers to fool with.

Yes, then you can download the available software from your notebook's support page.

You may want to review the service manual beforehand to look at how to R & R the memory, hard drive and wifi adapter.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04069163

[me101963]

Thanks...I did that review recently as well as checking the antennas to make sure there were two. That is the great thing about HP... Always easy to access upgradeable components. 

I'm almost done with the creation media as well. Thanks for that link. I hope anyone out there finds this thread if they need help with this model. You have been awesome!! 

Now I just need the mailman to be awesome... Lol

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

You may want to test booting from the completed installation media, and then cancel out of the installation.

Sometimes you need to change some BIOS settings when booting from a DVD or USB flash drive.

Le me know if you run into any issues with booting from the W10 installer.

We had no mail delivery on Monday due to the higher than normal amount of snow we got in the St. Louis metro area.

I can't believe that I wasn't anxiously waiting for something to be delivered on Monday.  LOL!

[me101963]

I hear you... I used to be fanatical back in the day. First it was the CD ROM, then the 2x, then the 4x, 8x, 16x.... I would get the latest and fastest, never realizing that those few milliseconds when I loaded a CD up never added up to the cost of the latest one to come out. One day I'm out in the garage looking at all these file folder boxes full of CD drives, ram, hdd's and none of them really worth anything anymore... Lol it was fun though and I even turned a few of them old CD roms into CD player out by the pool and deck. I'm closing in on 60 now and I'm far from needing to go too fast. By the time I get my glasses on my laptop is booted anyway. And I have a Nexus 10 so I can go on the web and order groceries... What more does a guy need at my age. Lol

I moved from Florida to Mississippi about 6 years ago.. That's plenty cold for me.. And plenty slow as well. GO DAWGS!!

and hurry up my rural mail carrier... Lol

[me101963]

Hey Paul,

Well, I got the new drive in, Samsung EVO 860, got through the clean install and downloaded their magician software to run some benchmarks. My first drive into stated I had a SATA II Controller and the AHCI was on. I know you told me that the AHCI may report wrong.

I update their firmware and the next test showed SATA III... Great.... And the benchmark was up. After the next reboot it was back to SATA II...aaargh...I turned on RAPID and still showed SATA II, but perfomance was up on sequential read/write, random was low, about the same as all the other tests.

I also installed the hw64 utility and it gave me SATA II consistently each time. The funny thing is the and chip set/controller is showing 2015, but the driver for the actual Samsung drive is an MS one from 2006 and it doesn't want to let me update it. I found nothing in the way of a driver on their website.

Could the old driver be holding me back?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I'm glad you got it running.

Unfortunately, I don't know what to do about that problem.

I also use the HWINFO utility, and if the report shows Drive Controller: Serial ATA 6Gb/s @ 3Gb/s, then it probably is a SATA II controller your notebook has, though I am surprised by that.  I figured it was a new enough chipset to have a SATA III controller.

The actual driver for the hard drive is correct...all of mine (SATA III drives, SATA III controllers) report the driver is from 6/21/2006.

I have that driver on my PC's that had SATA 3 controllers, and the HWINFO utility reports Drive Controller: Serial ATA 6Gb/s @ 6Gb/s

Still...the SSD will be much faster than the mechanical hard drive.

Heck I even had one in an old notebook with a SATA I controller and was impressed by its responsiveness.

[me101963]

You can win them all I suppose... Still a good computer and I really didn't lose anything. I did get that read on the hwinfo, 6@3...

How about a soldering iron?? Lol

The ram and the wireless card will be in I think by Friday so that will help.

Can't ever go wrong with HP products though... Six years old and still looks brand new... Nice 17" HD display and the 3.0 USB ports that I just discovered were on it a few months back. Old man like me don't need much to shop online and make a grocery list.

I have a LaserJet m401n I saw sitting on the sidewalk in front of a business one day with some towers. I swung around and loaded them up. That printer even had the toner still in it. That was 6 years ago too and it is still working without a single hiccup! Why anyone would setout for the garbage man a  workhorse like that simply makes no sense. It has a good home now!

I'll let you know if I get anything figured out.

Thanks again

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Yes, some of those old HP laser printers were workhorses that never died.

We had some in our office for years and they got a lot of use.

I forgot to remind you...before you install the new wifi card that's coming, uninstall the Realtek 8188EE wifi adapter and driver in the device manager.

Right click on it, select uninstall, check the uninstall driver box.

Shut down the PC, remove the A/C adapter and battery, and install your Broadcom wifi adapter.

W10 should automatically install the drivers, but in case it doesn't, here are the links to the wifi and bluetooth drivers for the BCM AC wifi card...

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp78001-78500/sp78044.exe

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp75001-75500/sp75330.exe

Once you are connected to the internet, I think W10 will update the wifi driver from .351 to .352.

[me101963]

Thank you for the advice. I had figured on that route since it is a direct connection and not through a mounted port. I got wore out on it last night and just laid it aside. After six years there was a lot of clutter and stray files so I'm taking my time. I'm almost 60 and a single parent to a nine year old. I'm disabled and haven't worked in 2 1\2 years so financially I'm a wreck. My son, only child I ever had, is already using a computer at school so he really need one now. I can't afford a new one, but I got blessed with a little Christmas money so I'm putting into this laptop for him. As good as HP products have been to me, I would bet this one will take him through high school..... Including that print!

I think the car and ram will be here on Friday so I'm working on it later today. I forgot with a new OS all the comfort creatures like extra large pointer, wallpaper, etc have to be done. I'm old school so I need desktop icons for things like the control panel etc for ease... At least to me!

You are awesome and it's good to see another that is HP committed. Hopefully I won't break this as I haven't told my son yet, but I think he knows... He certainly knows I can't buy another one.... Lol

Talk at you later today!

[me101963]

Hey Paul,

I got the ram and the card today. I deleted the WiFi driver, shutdown, installed the new card and the new ram. It came back up, saw the ram and it took a minute but it did catch the Bluetooth.

It seemed to be processing really fast and the card definitely improved the download time. I started magician and it said SATA 3!! I had to shutdown and when I came back and booted up, it was back to SATA 2!!! LOL who knows, right! I'm going to try and play with it more maybe tonight. Having trouble with my vision right now so we'll have to see.

Either way, have a great weekend!