Broadcom Wireless adapter is a DUD

[Vince Boyle]

I am experiencing what everyone else is on a tablet notebook tx 1000. The laptop is over 7 months old and this is the first time it has happened but it's been going on for 4 weeks, fortunately I have a back up laptop or a lan that I can plug into when at home. I have spent over $600 including upgrading my Vista OS to Ultimate, getting the laptop serviced and told it was trojans!and uninstalling broadcom drivers, chatted to hp Live Online, installed Intel pro set drivers while I have an AMD chip and now they want me to reset the wireless card by opening up the box? I am a USER not a technician, what else can I stuff up which they will say has now voided my warranty?? I have now checked the Network adapters again which has no wireless driver(only Bluetooth drivers) & reinstalled the Broadcom w/lan driver. It works for the moment but i won't hold my breath as it is too unreliable and I have to fulfill my customers to earn money. Hp seem to have set up an expensive Support system with chat online but they are not listening to all their customers. Well my motto is if they do not follow through with their promise then I don't go back and they won't know why. Here they have a chance to fix all these customers who cannot find their wireless lan connection. Well goodbye Hp, I hope you have better luck finding your next satisfied customer.

[Vince Boyle]

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1087188
It looks like a lot of people other than hp have been working on this problem and a Bill Travers see above link (sorry Bill if I have forgotten your correct name)has come up with best solution so far. In addition whilst the battery was out of the laptop I removed the Broadcom driver as it did not show up at first. I then reinstalled and booted up without battery in. Once it started on mains power and found the driver I then shut it down again (completely not a restart) and rebooted with the battery in. I have tested it by shutting down 5 times and restarting and it seems to be holding. Will it last? I don't know but it's a solution for the time being, the Hp tech's and Broadcom should do some research and come up with the proper fix. Hello Hp anybody home??

[Chacho Rodriguez]

Hello everyone. A group of us are working on a solution, and would greatly appreciate your help! Please, just take a moment to send the following information to hp.consumers@gmail.com :

- Your name
- Your location
- Your model
- Your problem
- Your experience with HP so far in finding a solution

Every letter is greatly appreciated, and helps us to help you! You will receive a reply within only a short while with some more information on what is being done to find a solution. Thank you very much for your help.

[sljamka]

Chacho Rodriguez which part of this conversation you did not understand. What every bit of information will help to you HP guys. Why HP do not confirm that HP product ( nootebuks)have some major problem, and resolve them- simply stop sell them and reimburse to your customers. Thank you.

[anton m]

issue: wifi hardware disappearing

HP Pavilion tx1000z CTO NB
purchased march 9 2007
one year warranty
july 28 2008 i unplugged the working laptop from power, carried it to another room, plugged it back into outlet and realized that wifi light switch in front is growing amber and that windows does not see wifi hardware

up until the incident i ran vista sp1, current with all updates; bios F.1E; 2.00 A NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 Video Driver; Broadcom Wireless LAN Driver for Microsoft Windows Vista 7.00 E; HP Wireless Assistant 3.00 I; NVIDIA nForce Chipset/Network Drivers 5.53 A; Essential System Updates for Microsoft Windows Vista 2.00.

last windows update - 7/25; nothing in the event log.

the laptop was in light use, mostly as email/music/multimedia/word processing for 3-4 hrs a day. it always was connected via wifi. the manual wifi trigger was almost never used.

when the problem happened, i did all the usual steps - reinstalled drivers, flashed bios, unpowered and removed battery, etc. only once the wifi came back up after power down, battery remove for 10 minutes, and then powering back on. no amount of tinkering could bring it back afterward.

booting into linux revealed the same thing - there is no wifi hardware. the wifi switch in front keeps glowing amber.

called support, case 801-427-6116. spent 1 hr 40 minutes; got escalated from frontline (shawn?) to tech support (?) to supervisor (michelle?). according to her, they have no known cases for tx1000, but they do have a known recall for dv6000. note however, that tx1000 is relatively new (i believe my model based on amd cpu became available a month before my purchase), so that if there is a problem that manifests itself 15 months after purchase, we would see the reports starting to trickle in right about now.

the supervisor could do nothing for me, except for usual 600+ for mobo sent to me or 300+ to send in for fixes. so i gave up.

i will purchase a usb wifi card and shop around for another laptop. this was my first brush with hp after 10+ laptops over the years with other manufacturers (i buy for myself, family, friends, and recommend to others), and unless hp does something to change my opinion, it will be the last for a while.

so the only hope is to speak up and report this problem as much as you can. post similar details and call in - they track the number of calls related to a problem, and hopefully once it reaches a certain threshold, they will be forced to act.

if you remain silent, they will never even know there is a problem.

please post links to other posts discussing this. with enough concrete data we should be able to build a case and hold hp responsible. post on your blogs and link to this entry, this way google search will pick this issue up and bubble it to the top.

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1245147
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1188907
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1104931
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1190592
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7587_102-0.html?forumID=69&threadID=298008&messageID=2792618

[Jay Levin]

Same problem! I was told that 100 days out of warranty means I must pay or go online for a chat with a technician. Chat link does not work! Called again and was told abruptly that my refusal to pay made me ineligible to speak to someone. Supervisor was more polite, but also not helpful.

Since this is clearly a pervasive issue (mine is a tx1417cl) I would have thought that customers would get the kind of service that Mr Shank expected and received.

Not sure what to do next. I don't think that HP is playing fair with this issue.