HP DM1

Hi tpprynn

First off, the back comes off by SLIDING!

Press/slide the Battery button and take the battery off. Then press the battery button and push the entire back away from the (now empty) batter compartment.

It will slide off.



64bit Windows. I did the same. However, about 2 weeks later, I got an alert to say it had failed the verification.
However, I just followed the "phone support" steps, and it worked fine. Its a pain in the arse though, make sure you call from a phone with a loudspeaker!



32Gb SSD would be really pushing it. Windows7 takes a fair chunk. I put a 64Gb Crucial M4 SSD in mine, and there's about 40Gb spare on it for me to use.
 
Yes I've been trying to slide it all along, several sessions of this with no luck yet. Maybe there's nothing to break by sliding it more aggressively.

When my friend had the laptop she had it four months nearly with no activation warning so fingers crossed about that.

I've bought an 8gb HCSD card today to try Readyboost on it for a while (only works at all after formatting the card NTFS or exFat b.t.w.). So much mixed opinion about this online that I'll just have to try it.

Other info welcome.
 
I was sliding the battery button right over, yes, though it stops about 3mm short of the edge - not meant to be forced further than would release the battery is it? I haven't given up yet though.

Another question, having reinstalled Windows again yesterday I decided to be minimalist with the HP software. I haven't put HP Power Manager on for example and the battery life doesn't seem different. If anyone who's been using the laptop a while has any observations to share that'd be of interest.

CoolSense for example seems to be bundled in with a load of absolutely useless stuff that just doubles up what Windows 7 does. I've installed video, audio, driveguard, ethernet, wireless and bluetooth drivers, the last of these because it lets me type a text message through my phone on the laptop otherwise the stock MS one would do. Sounds like CoolSense doesn't make the fan less noisy at its worst though?
 
I had the same problem getting the back off, just had to get a bit more agressive and off it popped!

I´ve stuck 8GB in mine and a 16GB SD card dedicated to readyboost.

Also done a clean 64bit install and downloaded most of the drivers, went to AMD directly for the graphics though.

All in all well pleased so far, this laptop seems like it was designed with my specific needs in mind :-)
 
I didn't use the HP disks supplied. I downloaded a vanilla version. I HATE bloatware on my operating systems.

I've never seen one thing that was pre-installed that I would like to keep.



If you look back in this thread, I mention how the DM1 was running 10%+ CPU just to run all the crap that was set to start on boot.

Since I took it off, it idles at 0-1%
 
petertr2000 said:
I didn't use the HP disks supplied. I downloaded a vanilla version. I HATE bloatware on my operating systems.

I've never seen one thing that was pre-installed that I would like to keep.



If you look back in this thread, I mention how the DM1 was running 10%+ CPU just to run all the crap that was set to start on boot.

Since I took it off, it idles at 0-1%
Click to expand...

Thatçs what I did but used the AMD driver instead of the HP one, beggining to think that might have been a mistake though as the AMD driver takes ages to boot and initialize, seems to run a script at startup!
 
Maybe this is part of the apparently obscured reason why HP chose 32 bit Windows. I have just found last boot but one that the bluetooth driver did not boot again, as was the case late last year. I want to look into if the order of startup programs can be changed or if a minor delay can be added so that, er, the bluetooth driver isn't caught trying to answer the door to the postman with its pyjama bottoms off, so to speak.

I don't know where that image came from and I'm scared, but you know what I mean.

Are you happy and satisfied that the Readyboost is doing something good?
 
tpprynn said:
Maybe this is part of the apparently obscured reason why HP chose 32 bit Windows. I have just found last boot but one that the bluetooth driver did not boot again, as was the case late last year. I want to look into if the order of startup programs can be changed or if a minor delay can be added so that, er, the bluetooth driver isn't caught trying to answer the door to the postman with its pyjama bottoms off, so to speak.

I don't know where that image came from and I'm scared, but you know what I mean.

Are you happy and satisfied that the Readyboost is doing something good?
Click to expand...

My Dm1 came with 64bit
 
Ah yeah, I remember now that one of you mentioned that. Seems to be not the norm though. Does yours have the joint Atheros wireless and bluetooth card though? Judging by the drivers on the HP site there are variations in choice of card. Because I use Mobile Broadband mostly the issue doesn't directly affect me often but I'd still like to iron this out if possible.

I've started to see online in the last hour that there is stuff that can be done to switch startup programs' order or introduce a delay that might help.
 
I know we generally don't like to pollute our vanilla Win 7 64 bit installs with the HP Bloatware, but I did find the HP Support Assistant to be worth while. It automatically downloads the correct drivers for the 64 bit OS, even if your machine retailed with the 32 bit version (as mine did). I've not had any driver problems with any hardware since installing the HP Support Assistant and it doesn't appear to be draining any system resources when I monitor things with the AMD System Monitor.
 
flash2bang said:
I know we generally don't like to pollute our vanilla Win 7 64 bit installs with the HP Bloatware, but I did find the HP Support Assistant to be worth while. It automatically downloads the correct drivers for the 64 bit OS, even if your machine retailed with the 32 bit version (as mine did). I've not had any driver problems with any hardware since installing the HP Support Assistant and it doesn't appear to be draining any system resources when I monitor things with the AMD System Monitor.
Click to expand...

I did have to take the back off to see what wifi card was in it to get the right drivers. But they're all on the HP site anyway. Took 5 minutes. Nothing else was a problem at all.


Like I said, when I booted it as it came, it was horribly slowed down by all the sh!te that was pre-installed. Half of the gain in speed probably wasn't due to the SSD, it was the removal of that rubbish!
 
It probably shouldn't have been but I did have several attempts over four or five different days... Just concerned about a breakage as it was very stubborn.

I've now paid for the 64gb Crucial M4 too. This'll be interesting. I'll probably move it to my desktop pc for Windows minus big data and get a 128gb one for the DM1, but I thought I'd get a smaller one first in case I feel a bit ho-hum about SSDs. I've got a 7mm thick one coming, not 9mm, hope there's no problem there. Did a bit of reading and it seemed a good idea. Hopefully no one's going to tell me I misunderstood something there.

(Edit: M4 arrived next day and fit fine. Not disappointed with it exactly, and test programs show it's working as it should, but I suppose it's not the ideal computer to see an SSD at work for the first time. Faster boot and shutdown and LibreOffice opens faster but not instantly or near-instantly. Shame the DM1's fan still likes to break the eerie and pleasant new silence! Less frequently though I think.)
 
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cant say for sure as ive only used a 9mm one, but im sure 7mm will be fine, worst comes to worst you can always return it if it doesnt fit :)
 
Although this isn't rocket science and will have occurred to many users of a machine with this size screen, some googling that showed people's reluctance to use an 11.6 inch screen suggests this might be of use to some, a little tip.

The standard Windows 7 font, 9 pt Segoe, isn't great on a laptop like the DM1 or a netbook, is it. And the option you get to proportionately increase font size when you choose 'Make text or other items bigger' after right clicking the desktop > Screen Resolution messes up some icons, at best.

I've found instead that three fonts - Linux Biolinum G, Calibri and Candara - all at 11pt, make this laptop much more readable. Deja Vu Sans at 10pt isn't bad too but looks slightly blotchy... depending on whether I've got glasses or contact lenses on the go or nothing. (I think at least two of those fonts are standard Windows ones, the others may have arrived with Libre Office.)

The procedure for changing display fonts was a common enough tweak when we had Windows 95 but may have been forgotten with so much other eye candy present now.

Right-click the desktop, choose Personalise, choose Window Color, then Advanced Appearance Settings and in the two boxes on the left change the font name entry for Active Title Bar, Icon, Menu, Message Box, Palette Title and Tooltip, to Calibri for example, and change the font size from 9 to 11. Click Apply and OK to close that window, Save Changes and then save your tweaked theme.
 
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Hmmm, I seem to remember a long discussion about temperatures on this thread, but I can't find it anywhere.

I was playing Football Manager 2012 last night (I recently changed jobs, and do long night shifts ever other week - so the DM1 has turned out to be very useful to me!!!), and the side of the DM1 got VERY hot.

Installed Speedfan and noticed that it idles at 58C. That's idle!

Running PRIME95 it goes up to 77C. Which is suprisingly low. I'd expected more than a 19C jump from idle to torture!


Still I think that idel is crazy high. Does anyone know how I can get into the FAN SETTINGS so that I can tweak them to keep the idle temp down a little bit?

I remember the other poster talking about changing the thermal paste - I have half a tube of AS-5 in the drawer, I think I'll have a pop at that.

Hell, I'm almost thinking about cutting some slots in the base to help it drop some of this mad heat!


Edit: I actually found some comments about replacing the TIM on another forum - apparently HP have COVERED the APU with paste. His result was a 5C cooling - although he also set some undervolting - anyone tried that? Not something I've ever done before.



Oh, I'm also about to buy the 8Gb 1333 1.35V RAM that I said I wasn't going to get! Should give me another pinch of extra battery life (after already adding the SSD), and also get me a bit more performance on my games (FM2012 especially)
 
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