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

[cameraboynyc]

[cameraboynyc]

again, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[HaggisCat]

I will try not make obvious suggestions, but I can only do that based on what you wrote and what I see or assume to see in your photo's

 Know that some of my photo's are wrong and Brian has corrected me on this in his post right after my photos.

 The hot-key cable has to be entirely covered in the aluminum foil, you will have to remove the cable and carefully flatten it out, to apply the foil. Make sure that both ends are cleaned in isopropyl and do touch the ends ounce it's cleaned. Make sure that the cable is fully inserted into the ZIF connector on the hot-key strip before locking down. The mother board connector just plugs in, but you still have to make sure it's in there squarely.

 The aluminum foil (duct work tape) adhesive is not really meant for this and does not conduct electricity on the adhesive side. So there for you have to fold the ends over to make contact on the laptops grounding strip(s), my pictures do show that. With out folding it over the static has to place to go or dissipate.

 I have a small camera that will shoot videos and on the weekend I will see if I can post a youtube video for this. It won't be great, but it should demonstrate it well enough.

 Doing a hard reset may temporally help and is recommended at any rate. Remove the battery and adapter, hold down the power button for 30 seconds, only plug the adapter back in on boot up. After that install the battery after shutting down and use as normal.

[cameraboynyc]

that is tremendously helpful!  i remembered reading something about that in the forums somewhere but as i was paging around i couldn't find it.

i will try it now and let you know how it goes.  thankfully i can have the keyboard off my machine in about 2 minutes now!

fingers crossed!

[HaggisCat]

It should work and yes, you will surprise your self how fast you can take it apart after a bit of practice.

 The shielding is like a lightning rod, it gives the static a place to go by diverting around and away from the hot-key strip and cable. If the shielding is not attached to anything it's not going to do a thing, as a matter of fact it may even make things worse by giving the static more places to build up. The aluminum tape you have over the USB and WiFi antenna cable is just sitting there, it's not actually attached to any of the laptops ground and is not doing anything either.

 I will make a serious effort to make that youtube video, there are still a lots of people out there with this problem.

[cameraboynyc]

ok, done and done.  so far so good (my past attempts have failed within 10 minutes).  

for the record, i had been folding under the flaps of the metal tape and doing the 'hold down the power button' trick every time before i opened up my computer.

here's what i just did:

removed the cable that goes from the mobo to the troublesome buttons and totally wrapped it in tape.  

wiped the contacts with alcohol and reattached the ribbon (without touching the contacts after cleaning), attached a jumper strip of tape (with ends folded over) from the ribbon up to the keyboard screw and covered that with a piece of tape so it wouldn't come loose.  in the pic below you can see (from left to right) the screw on top of the jumper from the ribbon, 2nd is the totally covered ribbon reattached, and 3rd is the jumper (with folded ends) from the bezel to the next keyboard screw to the right.

 i dont know if it will help but i also connected the shielding i put over the wifi cable and attached it to the keyboard screw at

 the far right.

anybody living on the east coast will know if this doesn't work by the sound of my blood curdling screams.

think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts ...

😃

[HaggisCat]

If it doesn't work, then wait for my video, the laptop will function in this partially disassembled state, so you may use it if you wish until I get my video posted.

 The other thing that may be a possibility here is that the hot-key strip is defective.

[cameraboynyc]

well, so far so good!  this si the longerest i've gone without some sort of touch-key weirdness in a year!

i forwarded a link from this thread to the woman at HP who has been helping me with my issues for the past sevral months.  considering it saved HP from having to pay for yet another round trip shipping of my laptop and the expense to fix it temporarily yet another time, hopefully the techs in the repair dept will take notice.

thanks for all the help.  y'all saved me a lot of frustration.

😃

[HaggisCat]

That's great that it worked. When I looked at you last set of photos, I thought "WOW, that's over kill" but it won't hurt anything _ better to safe then sorry.

 I still plan to post the youtube video. There are many other forums where people are reporting this problem too.

[LiquidGx]

Oh the timing of it all!  My laptop is boxed up and heading back to HP again.  I've copied this thread and put it in the box, think they'll figure it out?