Paul A. Luzzi

December 30, 2013

I’ve been having trouble with my older HP dv9000 series laptops lately.   Many have been dying from bad video and other issues.  With the network issues appearing first, that was easily worked around with small usb wireless plug-in devices.  But when the video goes, not much can be done there.

So my latest death was my older 32bit hp-dv9207us model.  Its another of my dv9000 laptops, and is now serving a second life as an Ubuntu 13.10 host.  Simply put, it would no longer work with Windows.  It has a display issue, which is so common with these models, and NONE of the Windows drivers will work – all send the screen into nothing but black and white blocked mosaic, or complete death … unless I’m using the useless 640×480 mode.  Not even the external monitor will work, as its a chip/driver issue.  I tried Windows Vista – all editions.  I tried Windows 7 – all editions.  None would work in 1440×900 or even one step below that.  I tried NVidia drivers direct from NVidia, from Microsoft, from alternative parties, and everything in between.  I must have tried about 30+ driver releases all tolled.  They started back in 2008 or so, and go all the way up to the most current releases for the GE Force 7600 chip.  None good.

At that point, I went to trusty old Knoppix.  Started with 7.0 and tried with reduced color depth.  I actually had a fully working 1440×900 video at that point – but the screen never goes blank like i want – its always a blank but still back lit screen.  So it never truly powers off and continues to run hot.  I tried 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 7.0.4, and 7.2 – and some worked, some didn’t – but none like I wanted.  So the latest Ubuntu live dvd was my last chance before the scrapyard.  It’s been working pretty good now for a few days, so maybe this will become my server room Linux desktop, since I don’t have one since the IBM-R40, IBM-T21, and Sony Vaio have all died as well.