HP bricks customers laptops with faulty automatic BIOS upgrade
h30434.www3.hp.com
h30434.www3.hp.com
20 years ago when I worked in retail selling computers, we had moderately high end HP laptop at a great sale price with an extra RAM slot that many customers opted to get a stick for.
We started getting returns immediately and once we started inspecting the laptops, we saw that the extra DIMM slot didn't even have any lines connecting it on the motherboard.
HP tried to insist that they wouldn't credit us for the returned defective computers without us signing an NDA, which we refused but still shipped back all the units from our entire chain of retail stores. This was many thousands of units and they probably lost an assload on the returns.
Their products have been garbage for a long, long time.
I bought it spec'd down with the intent to upgrade it myself with parts I had a better deal for. It was advertised as having two DIMM slots, and I ordered it with only one small stick of RAM because I had a source for two of the largest supported sticks.
When I got the Computer, there was only one DIMM slot. The technicians had me take the entire thing apart looking for the second slot under they keyboard, but instead I found a an entire unpopulated part of the board with the words "DIMM 2" printed on it, with no slot to put another stick of RAM into.
When I figured out that they had lied in their spec sheet, I asked for a replacement motherboard with two DIMM slots. They explained that for computers ordered with less than 2 sticks of RAM, they use a single-slot board.
I pointed out that the line "2x DIMM" was on my order, and they complained that the only in-stock version of the motherboard that was compatible with 2 sticks of RAM was the version for the 3D version of the laptop which would require the complete replacement of my computer with a better processor and better monitor.
After calling them daily for a few weeks, and sending them a letter from a lawyer, they finally shipped me the new laptop. Bought myself a pair of active switching 3D glasses and hand fun with that for about an hour before finally enjoying my laptop like I intended to.
Also. https://www.reddit.com/r/Hewlett_Packard/comments/11zykiu/do...
The battery had died and when I first plugged it in, it immediately powered up, and started installing a BIOS update. If someone tripped on the power cord, or had a power outage, it would brick the laptop. I guess it downloaded the update the last time it was powered on (months ago).
They should put a minimum battery % (could be as low as 10% I imagine), but it seems very likely to me if someone has just plugged in their laptop, there is a strong chance it may get unplugged as well.
I only use this laptop to tune my AEM ECU on my car, and it rarely gets used, but I bet I am not the only one who has a HP laptop that isn't used every week.
Or, like most laptops, just require power cable + some level of battery to install something so critical.
No.
CFAA: intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage and loss.
The point is that fighting this is a lose-lose for HP. Either HP has to argue in court that they have a contractual right to brick your computer, or they have to make you happy enough to drop the case. Visualize the press coverage of HP arguing on the record that they have the right to brick your computer.
If you break someone's shit by accident, they can still sue you, and people should probably sue HP, but you can't try to have a prosecutor bring them to a criminal trial under the CFAA.
I’m not sure “potentially millions” is right; I suspect individual HP models (of which there are many) maybe sell in the tens or at most low hundreds of thousands.
But I fear the reason why there are so few complaints is easy: it’s a three-year-old HP laptop model so they are mostly already in the bin.
I ended up reflashing the 3.9.0 BIOS to the flash chip and it fixed it [1]. Later on, people discovered that changing an Intel ME-related jumper on the motherboard also fixed it - a much easier fix.
It seems crazy to me that manufacturers include BIOS updates as part of automatic updates, especially for out-of-warranty systems.
[1] https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2019/06/fix-dell-inspiron-...
Now I'm using a HP laptop with an i7 CPU and it's actually a nice machine. I'll see how much I like it when I need to open it up.
Bought the latest generation HP Elitebook G11 to try something else than Lenovo that had crappy trackpads due to the nibble
It has been a disaster in terms of software/BIOS: * The mic cut off my voice when I was speaking all the time * The CPU clocked down to ~300 MHz and got stuck there * External display would not work if I disconnected, came back 30-60 min later, and reconnected. Had to hibernate inbetween * The display would suddenly dim and be impossible to change
I think all these issues resolved itself with some firmware update released last week, and today I discovered there's an "HP Audio Control" app that by default is set to "conference mode" and "AI noise reduction"
Now I only need to get the built-in 5G modem to work
Would have gotten a Microsoft Surface model, but the selection is very slim in Norway
Anyone who buys anything HP is intentionally making their lives miserable and they deserve it for not doing a modicum of research to avoid them.
The "real" HP still lives on as its spinoffs that do "real" engineering: HPE servers, Agilent oscilloscopes, Broadcom optical sensors, Philips heartrate monitors.
The consumer facing brand of HP (printers, laptops, etc) is bottom of the barrel Chinesium, same as Philips.
Speak with your dollars. Even though I was unhappy that the device was broken, my next laptop will probably be a framework. Although I would love if they started selling replacement chassis, mine is bent (that was my own fault).
[0]https://frame.work/products/top-cover-cnc
Cf Apple who charge an arm and a leg for anything above the base config (which admittedly is tight but still usable) because people trust them to not pull such dumb moves.
I buy Apple mainly for reliability (not just that but that's an important factor), and HP is polar opposite of reliable in my view as a consumer.
For the lower end, you can get a refurbished from various resellers all over the internet.
I cannot recommend any non-Apple laptop these days. They are all total shit for run-of-the-mill consumers.
If you're tech inclined you can probably wipe and reinstall windows on a Lenovo thinkpad and come out _okay_, _maybe_.
They do not even come with much crapware. Most of what is there is from the base Windows OS.
You can even wipe the entire SSD on a mac and STILL you have the ability to reinstall macOS without putting in any disc or USB stick. It's just always there waiting
You can also waltz into an Apple store to have it done if you don’t have access to any other machines.
As a consumer this is what must not happen, and someone at HP QA must be kicking themselves right now.
Should really get ahold of a bios chip programmer, since they're pretty cheap.
A lower quality mainstream computer manufacturer does not exist.
I have a stack of P4 and Core 2 era machines that just have some random failure and its almost not worth my time anymore to fix them other than curiosity. P4 and core2 are basically worthless but HP P4 and Core2 systems? No one wants that trash.
Nobody wants post-Fiorina HP computers. But I recently sold several Core 2 IBM/Lenovo laptops, for significant money, because people love those. Last night, I ordered a part to polish up the final one on hand, to sell for $200+.
What do people do with them? Those chips came out in 2006. Loading a modern JS heavy webpage will kneel a Core 2 Duo laptop chip.
Maybe it's tinkerers and businesses who buy them, not people. Business who depend on keeping older machinery going in workshops and what not.
If you're an average joe in need of a laptop at home for web & stuff, for 200+ USD used you can get much more modern machines for home users that will be better at running modern web content than core 2 duo machines.
With 8GB RAM, they will run 3 separate Web browsers at once, still using only a minority of the RAM, and are just fine with pretty much any Web site.
(Maybe it helped to be using uBlock Origin, which reduces both page load bulk, and also eliminates some very invasive behavioral spying that can be resource-heavy.)
One of the ~10 Core 2 ThinkPads I recently I sold went to a business involved with used science lab equipment. The rest of the sales seemed to be for probably personal use.
Eh, everyone has a different subjective definition of what "just fine" means.
In case of an emergency I guess could make do for a little while with one, but I came back once to my old Core 2 Quad system out of nostalgia and while it does works cand can do things, compared to my newish Ryzen laptop the difference when browsing the web and multitasking is absolutely night and day, but the day is on Pluto.
Once you get used to a modern fast machine with 8 cores at 5GHz and NVME ssd, I just could never imagine going back to a core 2 duo and spinning rust machine today, Linux or not. The difference is staggering.
>With 8GB RAM
That definitely makes a difference, but it's a bit disingenuous, since stuff like 8GB RAM or SSDs were not the standard for Core 2 Duo machines though. Most of those machines you'll find in the wild tend to have more like 1-4GB RAM and spinning rust. That's really tough to daily drive.
What software you run, and how you use it, are also big factors.
The Web is the same for everyone. So is stuff like browsers and webapps like Teams, G-Suite, Office 365, Youtube, Spotify, Facebook, flight bookign sites, etc. The UX difference between those pages/apps running on a core 2 duo and a modern machine is stratosferic. Even bigger when you have same other stuff in the background like a torrent downloader, dropbox client, messengers, etc.
You are free to say it doesn't bother you, but the difference is definitely there and palpable for everyone. Of course, if your core 2 duo laptop is the Ship of Theseus with everything on it maxxed out and only the chip being the old original part, sure I can believe the difference is smaller, but like I said, that's not really representative for most core 2 due systems of their era which definitely show their age today.
(and Now I’m thinking of digging out my old MacBook Pro 2,2 to see what’s what)
Void Linux won't give your machine more GHz or TFLOPs or turn your HDD into a NVME, it'll just reduce the RAM and storage footprint compare to more feature rich distros, but your CPU performance in all tasks will stay the same.
I think I actually will revive it this weekend just to see for myself, all else fails it has a great big matte screen and excellent keyboard I could use for distraction free writing.
Also whenever I see Fiorina partner with someone in politics that person loses credibility in my eyes. Like they clearly don't care at all about track record.
This is memory I have as well, but not specific to Dell. It was the least favorite part of building/updating any PC from back then. I don't remember one time of not coming away with some sort of scrape or cut.
But HP just had so much extra redundant metal that you'd have to touch to disassemble the pc so it was just so much more common(in my opinion).
Also the 3 year onsite repair included is pretty great.
Would never buy a printer or so from them though.
Just wait until you heard what ASUS Support does for their customers...
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-...