HP Envy 14 laptop damaged by FreeBSD 8.1 install

wexi

wexi

Hi fellows,

As a long FreeBSD user shortly after getting this "i5-520M Dual Core processor + ATI 5650 switchable graphics" based laptop (model: 14t-1000) I let FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso take the entire 500GB disk.

Partition repopulating seemed to go well and then suddenly the laptop went blank. Rebooting indicated (through 4 caps lock LED blinking) malfunctioning of the graphic controller. I thought it was this particular laptop problem so I ordered an exchange.

Lo and behold, the new laptop failed in exactly the same way. I am not giving up on FreeBSD, going to find another laptop instead, but this incident is quite troubling.

Interestingly, before the second laptop failed I had Kubuntu Live CD running well on it, but I am not a Linux guy.

It seems that FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso is doing something dangerous during the install... or I have a defective FreeBSD DVD... or...

Anyway, I thought that this story may be of interest to this forum and future googlers.

Enoch.
 
I assure you if software is able to damage hardware, the hardware was faulty (by design) to begin with. Sounds like HP still stands for Horrible Product. :)
 
aragon said:
... Sounds like HP still stands for Horrible Product. :)
Click to expand...

That´s why I asked before attempting an install ... Mandriva 2010.1 runs like a charm on my Compaq CQ10-120LA (even if Im not a Linux guy anymore) but when you buy hardware from certain vendors ... you just never know ... and when you are from south america and have to pay for harware from two to three times as much than in the US while striving to make a living with three to four times as less than in the US, you just can´t afford to take the risk ...

So: Thanks a lot for letting us know about your issue.
 
OK. I am 'the future googler' :)

I was not installing FreeBSD on my Envy 14 but the Mac OS X(Hachitosh), and I broke my Envy 14 twice...

In fact, the operating system does not matter, the harddrive partition does. After some experiments, the conclusion I get is that Envy 14 will complain graphics controller failure and refuse to boot or enter BIOS settings if the BIOS cannot recognize the harddrive partition.

To reproduce this, just create a GPT/MBR hybrid partition layout on the harddrive and it will start to complain graphics controller failure.

To fix it is just simple, unmount your harddrive and plug into another machine, re-partition, plug back into Envy 14, fixed.
 
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