• Contact: Stevereid
• Brand: Hewlett Packard
• Make : Pavilion
• Model: dv6174ea
• Website:

Current Issues

• Headphone jack does not work
• Sleep (suspend to RAM) rarely works
• Hibernate (suspend to disk) does not work

System Info

bios-version:F.08
system-manufacturer:Hewlett-Packard
system-product-name:HP Pavilion dv6000 (RP983EA#ABU)
system-version:Rev 1

Hardware details

Notes

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.66 GHz (T5500)
RAM: 2 GB 
Hard disk: 120 GB SATA
NIC (wired): Intel 10/100/1000 Mbps ("e1000")
NIC (wireless): Intel 802.11 a/b/g ("ipw3945")
Video: Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 (256 MB Turbocache, of which 128 MB dedicated)
Monitor: 1280x800 LCD (15-inch)

Similar to other laptops in the HP Pavilion dv6000 line.

Installation went smoothly, except for trying to keep the Windows XP Media Centre install. HP ships the laptop with 3 partitions, one main one and two related to "recovery". I tried to shrink the main Windows partition to make room for Ubuntu, but the ntfs resize failed. Ubuntu installed fine, but due to the ntfs resize failure Windows was dead. Fortunately before doing anything I used HP's utility in Windows to burn a set of three recovery DVDs (the laptop does not ship with any disks, you have to burn them yourself). The recovery DVDs insisted on completely repartitioning the drive, which of course nuked Ubuntu. However, after the recovery process was done and a new Ubuntu install attempted, I was able to resize the newly-rebuilt ntfs partition and everything was fine. I've since deleted the "recovery" partitions (which used a whopping 10 GB of disk space).

3D acceleration works well enough to run Quake 4 (linux-native) with the Nvidia proprietary drivers ("apt-get install nvidia-glx", use driver "nvidia" in xorg.conf). However, I experienced some lockups with the default drivers (called "nv" in xorg.conf) which seemed to be triggered by the screensaver. Using a non-3D screensaver seemed to solve that problem (though I may have also changed the display power-saving settings), and I've not had any problems with anything 3D-related since installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Also, Quake 4 refused to run until I changed xorg.conf DefaultDepth setting to 24 instead of 16. I don't know why it defaulted to 16 bpp.

Headphone jack problem is my main complaint. Sound does not play through it, and plugging in does not silence the main speakers. Some googling has lead me to believe that this is a known problem with ALSA 1.0.12 and fixed in 1.0.13, although I haven't confirmed it.

Sleep (suspend to RAM) works sometimes, but usually not. I'll continue trying and report any further success/failure here.

Hibernate (suspend to disk) has not worked at all for me. I'll continue trying and report any further success/failure here.

Wireless ethernet works out-of-the-box. I simply downed both interfaces (eth0 + eth1), then brought the wireless interface (eth1) back up, and was browsing over it. No fuss, no muss. For security reasons I prefer to use the wired connection, so I've not used the wireless other than that simple test.

Touchpad does not automatically turn off when typing, but there is a physical button located at the top of the touchpad to manually toggle it on and off, along with a blue/red indicator LED.

I have not tested the microphone or webcam at all. Also, I've not tested burning with the optical drive. If/when I do so I will report back.

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