cold dead raw fish (CDRF)

Fix for Bad Screen Resolution and NO Network Support on HP EliteBook 2730p tablet

Symptom:

Your new HP 2370p convertible tablet ships with both Windows XP Tablet Edition and Vista Business.  But if it comes preinstalled with XP and you convert to Vista by installing the Vista DVD, you might find that most devices don't work.

In particular, the choices for screen resolution are only 800x600 and 1024x768 (or something like that) whereas the native resolution of the wide screen is more like 1280x800.

More seriously, not only does Wifi doesn't work, but the integrated ethernet port won't work even when plugged into a wired network.

What's going on!?  :-)

Not to panic, you just need to finish the install by running the second DVD that HP gives you.  That second disk has all the drivers for fancy hardware devices.  You want the HP Drivers disk for Vista (be careful, you'll also have a similar CD for XP in the box with an almost identical label)

Once you get all of that second ndisk installed, your screen and ethernet point will work fine, as well as the finger print scanner, etc.

Mark

PS: From a previous blog, if you are upgraded from XP on that machine, make sure to BOOT from the Vista install DVD - don't just run it from XP - it will appear to work, but the language may be messed up, see my other post.

Fix for Screen Backlight Flickering on HP EliteBook 2730p tablet

A really nice laptop / convertible.  I'm running Vista Business.

But sometimes when I was scrolling, especially with the job dial in the side, the screen would flicker a bit.  Granted, I have it cranked up to max brightness (and an extended battery to compensate)

Updating the drivers did not fix the problem.

The fix I found was to tweak the power saving mode of the video graphics; the flickering seems to be caused by something to do with the power saving mode.  You only have to crank it up one or two notches, not all the way, to fix the problem, so just experiment a bit.

Right click on the Desktop (or tap and hold) -> Graphics settings (or something like that) -> you want the Intel branded control panel

On that blue and white control window there are 4 tabs on the left.  I think it's the tab second down.  Then on the bottom right corner is a button for Power Settings.  A bit hard to find.

Try adjusting the slider to one click down from Best Performance / Worst Battery.

And a theory:

I get this bug has been around for a while, but previous laptops used thin CF tubes for backlighting, which I suspect mask the flickering a bit.  But the HP is one of the new LED backlit displays, and LEDs are very flicker prone (or, to split hairs, will more accurately mirror rapid electrical fluctuations)

Mark

Fix for Vista waking up in wrong screen orientation on HP EliteBook 2730p tablet

Update: 11/6/08: The problem is back... after the machine slept / hibernated overnight.  Well... I think this is at least a clue.  I'll have to call HP I guess.

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The new HP tablet is really nice, but I was having a problem that when it was sleeping in tablet configuration, and I would wake it back up, it would come up briefly in portrait mode, then flash, then go into landscape mode with half the screen black.  It did this back and forth screen orientation change pretty consistently.  One time it even got worse once and half the Windows desktop was permanently black except for the task bar.

Very annoying and updating all the drivers didn't help.

But after reading some posts on the web about other weird problems, I tried a suggestion which worked for other problems.

Do a full shutdown.  Then remove both batteries (I had the extended battery installed as well) and also unplug the thing, so totally off and unpowered.  And then mush the power switch to On a few more times to drain all residual power.

Then reinstall the batteries and power on.  It's been working great so far.  For the record, I had also updated the drivers as I said.

Mark

PS: On this tablet, if you go into custom power settings, under "Lid and Power Button", you can have the laptop Sleep instead of Hibernate, which is nice, as the tablet fires back up much quicker.  Doesn't look like you need the Hybrid sleep however.

PPS: The fingerprint reader, used to unlock the thing, also seems sluggish, it sometimes doesn't wake up very quickly.  This didn't seem to help fix that.

Vista comes up in Portuguese instead of English HP EliteBook 2730p tablet

It might also appear that Vista is coming up in Spanish, since many English speakers might not recognize that is Portuguese.

Although the HP 2730p was supposed to ship with Vista Business preinstalled, mine actually came with XP Tablet edition instead.  It might be that I was one of the earlier customers to get the Gobi mobile chipset for accessing Verizon, who knows.

Anyway, I used an external DVD drive to install Vista.  Imagine my surprise when it didn't come up on English; I certainly didn't choose anything other than English, and California is not in the same Timezone as Brazil.  Apparently the DVD for the Americas comes with English, Spanish, French and Portuguese; I suspect when it gets it wrong, it takes the first one in alphabetical order, which would be "BR-PT" (Brazilian Portugese)

Anyway, long story short, don't waste your time with Control Panel, language packs and "LIP" files.

Just re-install, this time you'll be starting FROM Vista.

You see, since I was using a non-HP DVD drive, I started the Vista install from an XP Tablet cmd window, instead of booting from the DVD.  I believe it was this initial state that messed up the install, since as far as I can tell it's the ONLY difference between the failed and sucessful installs.

And if I were to try it again, from an XP system, I'd certainly try booting from the external DVD.

To HP's credit, their tech support person did try to help, and worked with me on the phone for quite some time, though they had no record of this, and agreed that it should have dome with Vista installed anyway.  Ultimately it was me just trying the re-install, and they were off the phone at that point, so I don't have any way to update them on the fix.

A very nice laptop / tablet / convertible btw.