Problem with Pavilion dv8 top slider bar (treble/bass control)

[ProblemSolver1]

CyberMud,

It's truly my pleasure.... to help anyone who may be at risk of having to travel around the world (virtually) wrestling with "tech support" agents who know even less than you do. I don't know much and am certainly not as savey as you, but I am persistent and won't take no for an answer... Especially for what we have paid for these machines, we deserve to get our problems resolved. I'd not had a single problem since that first post after updating that driver.... however, the treble bar did flash up there a couple of times yesterday... but U haven't seen it since.

Let's keep our fingers crossed.

[JayMeyer]

Good News:

This new patch to the IDT Hi-Def Audio driver works - my wifi card stays on, and quits turning itself off and on all the time.

REALLY Bad News:

Win7 doesn't boot all the time: freezes up before with login screen appears. And now Win7 sometimes will freeze up and the mouse and keyboard do not respond.

I had to power-off the machine a few times until the Safe Mode boot was available, then I used Control Panel to un-install the new driver.  this got me back to booting well enough, and now my wireless turns itself off again.

So this patch does not work for me.

[midwestkel]

It seemed to work for me for 2 days before it was back at it. What about anyone else?

And by it I mean that patch...

[lightfire33]

i have been rending literally hundreds of pages on this exact problem. i have been talking to hp "support" (yea right) for more than 2 hours. i have formated my entire hard drive 3 times. and even send my computer to hp for them to exchange the hardware. (sensor panel). and guess what there is no **bleep**ing solution to this problem. the following have not been confirmed by anyone. it's only what my experience have thought me::: first of all it only took the support guys 1 week to send a pickup guy to my school get my computer repair it and return it to me at my home address god bless them.. this solved the problem for about 2 months. and when the "dancing" blue bar appeared on my screen once again i thought  oh ****. well knowing that the the touch panel was not broken. this is confirmed by the 1000's of other people with the same problem after all they cant all have ruined their laptops.. well i started searching for ways to fix what i have belied to be a software issue. guess what no luck. therefore i took a close look at the panel itself. and now i finally think i have FOUND THE PROBLEM! it is a major design flaw made by hp. take a close look at the physical screen itself just in the area where the panel and the screen touches each other and i am 100% sure that you will find a 1 inch wide and about 18 inches long "scratch mark" from the screen contacting the panel. and if i am not mistaken thats the problem with the laptop. everyone who gets their brand new dv8. aren't having any problems but after a few weeks of use. ie opening. closing. putting in bag. maybe even compressing it a little with a stack of books. ect. ect. that panel stops working. and sure i might be way off. but when you think about it its quite obius that touch panels are very sensitive and after a little time of use they might get "stuck" and when a little heat is added the censor thinks you are touching it and hey presto, you are *****ed. therefore the only way that i have found to stop this problem is to deactivate the panel entirely in msconfig. and learn to live without the panel...

so lets hear a big round of applause for the hp designers for competing with apples antenna for the biggest design screwup on an awesome piece of hardware. :smileyindifferent:

[sanlynn36]

Can you tell a non-technical person step by step instructions how to disable the panel controlling the treble/bass and wireless lan? I am ready to pull my hair out. I have tried EVERYthing everyone has recommended including all the driver downloads and even downloaded new version of BIOS (whatever that is 🙂 )

I am ready to start an "I hate HP and never buy from them" blog, I am so frustrated. So, if I can disable these features and "cure" the problem, fine.

Thanks.

Sandy Lynn

[randomchance]

I've had the same problem intermittently since I bought this dv8. Before, usually onlyt the tone controls went wacky and the wireless would turn itself off, but earlier today the wireless control turned itself off and on repeatedly while the tone control flashed on the screen and changed levels randomly. Obviously, this ius a common problem. Who knows how many people have this problem but never thought to post about it? My guess is that this problem is expensive for HP to fix, so they're going to pretend it doesn't exist for as long as possible in the hope that people will just put up with it.

In re: how to disable the Tone Control using msconfig.

Click Start, and Run... (directly above the Shutdown button). Type msconfig and OK. When msconfig comes up, click the Startup tab and uncheck the box next to HP Tone Control in the list. Reboot. At startup Windows will display a message indicating that selective startup is being used; check the "do not show this again" box and OK.

I recommend anyone reading this post here saying they have the problem to let the world know that there are a lot of people who do. Then, contact customer support - make them as miserable as possible, tie up their technicians for as long as possible, demand to be escalated, and generally make as much noise about the issue as possible. We paid WAY too much for these machines to put up with being ignored.

[sanlynn36]

Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, "HP tone control" is NOT a choice on my startup list. The only HP choices that are checked are: HP Media Smart; hpwuSchd Applications; and HP Wireless.

Are any of these helpful?

Sandy Lynn

[bobbie3339]

Exactly the same problem here!  Bought my computer 2 years ago and it began doing it almost immediately.  I also thought it was a dirty slider.  Since then, there are many months when it doesn't do it and most recently it has done it quite frequently.  When it does this, I cannot use any other programs until it decides to stop

[sanlynn36]

I wrote to HP and they suggested I uninstall quick launch and then reinstall it to see if that would fix the problem. I did that about 1 1/2 days ago and so far so good. but, I'm not counting on it lasting forever based on other posters.

Now, however, I have another problem.

My shift key on the right will not work reliably. I really have to punch it down in just the right spot. As you can imagine, this is slowing down my entering any info and is a royal pain.

this is my last HP ever!

[galafrone]

I had this problem a while too, It disappears after I shook the DV8 upside down, really, and unstalled a few useless HP stuff.