techbustr

As I wrote some months ago, my HP dv8300 laptop did the unthinkable and died on me. I had installed Linux Mint on it and was having a wonderful time with the new life the machine had compared to the old XP Media Center install that was installed previously. Everything worked flawlessly until one day it was hard locked when I tried to wake it from sleep. It's been a strange road since then, but all was not lost!

The laptop was out of warranty and it would hard lock with a garbled screen any time a GUI was booted. I ended up installing FreeNAS on it and using it to back up my iTunes library. This worked for months until I settled on Windows Home Server for my backup needs. At this point I could actually use the machine as a desktop for my daughter.

I downloaded Linux Mint 7 just to see what I could do with it. I put the CD in and booted the machine. Everything went well up to the GUI loading phase and then the same old lock up routine. The next boot I figured I would mess around with the video settings and see if anything could be done. I ended up trying failsafe mode and this led to the magic...I was in X with no issues!

Further testing revealed that this was due to the vesa mode drivers that were in use. I was able to install Mint onto the hard drive and use vesa only modes and everything runs wonderfully, if a bit slowly in the graphical department. The only outstanding issues I have are forcing widescreen video modes...I just cannot seem to figure out how to do it with the 7600 Go no matter the configuration I specify. Any advice here would be greatly appreciated.

Since the install, I've read about overheating problems in numerous HP laptops specifically relating to video hardware. I have no idea if these issues have been corrected or not, but I do know that to repair my laptop would have required a new motherboard. At the time, HP would have charged just over $450 for the part. It made more sense for me to just bite the bullet and buy my MacBook, which I am thrilled with. Hopefully anyone either shopping for a new laptop or looking to get some more life out of their broken HP can keep this information in mind.

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