Thursday, June 28, 2018
FIXING The HP Pavilion Gaming Notebook 15 ak085na ENERGY STAR
FIXING The HP Pavilion Gaming Notebook 15 ak085na ENERGY STAR
After my previous whinge about this computer I should really have thrown in the towel / taken it back / got my money back from >>>fleece-me-vurld<<<
Still type the occasional message of congratulations into the HP feedback box (as and) when I go to check if they have come up with some miraculous fix for all of the ridiculous problems this pitiful machine has built in!! (features?)
I was talking to someone the other day and we were discussing whether it could just be this particular machine (my luck!) or whether there are loads of these computers lying useless, and broken, at the back of their perplexed (and some considerable ���s less rich) owners dusty cupboards.. Only Hewlett Packard know the answer to this!
Presumably depends on what the laptop is being used for and whether owners are bothered about boot times / fan noise / windows updates not working / lack of graphics card (despite being termed a "gaming laptop") / continual restarts to get WiFi working and lastly (not forgetting) overall reliability and stability!
Anyway, perseverance is the answer to this one I think - There is light at the end of the tunnel..? Although you have to go pretty hardcore to find it.
>>>The BIOS updates<<< have now dried up. However, there was an update for the clockwork 2tb drive which allegedly fixes some of the speed issues - This arrived a little too late for me as I spent some time on TouTube watching videos of these, and similar, machines being taken apart to see if their was an M.2 port anywhere inside. It looked as though there was so I took a punt and bought one of >>>these<<< This laptop is not an easy machine to take apart and I have actually broken, and split, the casing now as its been in bits so many times! (it really doesnt get any easier!) Broken off plastic clips and chips of white plastic litter the table after each disassembly!! They serve as an an annoying reminder of how cheaply manufactured this product really is! (haha shut up and get on with it!)
I used >>>macrium reflect<<< (what a fantastic bit of software??) to clone the clockwork drive onto the M.2 drive and eeha the machine was fixed! (temporarily anyway) Super fast boot times and a real improvement in almost every aspect excluding the WiFi networking. I must have had a good couple of months of mostly trouble free operation. Each time the machine played up (usually after windows updates) I would look on the HP webby and more often than not there would be a BIOS update to mitigate.
Eventually the flow of BIOS updates petered out and the wireless networking and (interesting new) lock-up issues became more frequent. Then Windows updates stopped working completely and there was absolutely nothing I could do to get them back working again! This is when it suddenly dawned (like an epiphany?) on me I was fighting a loosing battle with the Windows 10 installation on this machine. Had a conversation with someone else about Linux / Somewhere in the house I (usually) have one or two computers configures with different flavours of Linux i.e. Zorin / Ubuntu / Mint / DSL / Puppy and anything else I fancy trying out. Im not an experience Linux user though ~ so the next step was a big one for me.
I installed Ubuntu and immediately deleted both copies of Windows 10 and the recovery partition (didnt make a note of the license no either!) deciding I needed to really try and make a go of this / Thinking = the fact I wouldnt want to buy another Windows license in the future should force me to (as mentioned previously) really persevere and blah!
Broke the Ubuntu install twice in the next 24 hours and ended up reinstalling (and repairing) it before it finally bedded in and settled down (original software center is still broken / I have had to install the older one) and discovered the problems I had with wireless networking in Windows were significantly amplified in Ubuntu (much, much worse ~ hardly working at all)
Somewhere I had pictures of the inside of this laptop / couldnt find them anywhere (couldnt be bothered to hit YouTube again either)
so decided to guess and bought >>>this<<< which didnt fit / managed to use it in another laptop and I can confirm it is a brilliant card! Didnt really take much notice of the slot (Doh!!) and bought >>>this one<<< next. Didnt fit either!! (Actually cant find anything this card does fit / so now consigned to the darkest drawer etc) The Mrs was getting a bit annoyed bout this network card fixation / easily placated once I told her third time lucky hehehe!
Third card to turn up was >>>this one<<< which (thank goodness!!) fits and works brilliantly! (In Ubuntu / havent tested it with Windows obviously)
Its been a long and arduous journey getting this machine into any kind of useful condition - But if its a road your willing to go down -> It can be done!
Spot the deliberate mistake!! Works fine using the aux port...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.