HP 6735s + SSD = Problems ?

[Evildead666]

I'm trying to install Win7 on my laptop, with a Kingston 30Gb (Toshiba controller) SSD.

It is a cheapo SSD, the cheapest in think....

Win7 installs fine with a normal HDD, but not an SSD.
It gets to the point where its restarted twice, and tries to start the "services" and there is hangs...
most of the time it just comes up with a generic message saying "restart and try again" which doesn't work.

i've tried reparing the installation, and doing a clone from the good drive to the ssd..nearly worked...

the laptop is AMD 780G based, and I can't seem to find anything about it on google.

Anyone have any ideas ?

The laptop has the latest Bios also.
I can't find an updated firmware for the Toshiba based SSD's chez Kingston..

any help/thoughts appreciated.

[Evildead666]

I've just finished fully installing and updating on a normal hdd, and have cloned the drive to the ssd.
It reboots fine, and immediately says "you must reboot to apply the changes in hardware" or something like that (in french).

It rebooted, and seems to work now.
The one driver it couldn't install by itself was the 3D drive guard protector.
This is the driver that checks if the drive is falling or something..

Anyhoo, seems to be working, will have to check TRIM is functional now though....

[Marshmallowman]

Sounded a bit like ahci/raid driver issues. Did you use native IDE, ahci or raid in the bios?

[Evildead666]

I don't have the raid option on my laptop.

I tried both other options.. It worked just as well with either.

Last night, I tried booting it again, and after three or four crashes (Black screen + mouse pointer) I got into Win7.
At one point Explorer kept on crashing, restarting, crashing, restarting, I had to switch it off holding the on/off button.
Then, no problems at all. boot fine, runs fine.

I have now installed the ATi displa drivers and everything else, so maybe it will be fine from now on...

It just woke up from a hibernation OK, and seems fully functional.....

Haven't activated it yet (not until sure its stable, got an oem licence for the lappy).

will be keeping an eye on it.....

[dZeus]

I've just finished fully installing and updating on a normal hdd, and have cloned the drive to the ssd.
It reboots fine, and immediately says "you must reboot to apply the changes in hardware" or something like that (in french).

It rebooted, and seems to work now.
The one driver it couldn't install by itself was the 3D drive guard protector.
This is the driver that checks if the drive is falling or something..

Anyhoo, seems to be working, will have to check TRIM is functional now though....

the '3d guard driver' probably is the driver that parks the heads of the HDD in case of a too sudden acceleration (e.g. laptop falling or bumping into something). With a SSD you don't need it and should not install it as it might start to act strange.

[Evildead666]

As long as the PC doesn't crash anymore i'll be happy.
The 3D guard driver is there by default, it leave an uninstalled device in the device manager.

The ssd probably doesn't have an accelerometer in it, but the laptop might have one, and that would 'park' the heads of the ssd so to speak in case of a droppage.

The way I understand it at least

[Evildead666]

Have just RMA'd the memory I got for the laptop this week, so hopefully i'll be able to put 2x2Gb back into it instead of just one 2gb sodimm.

Had two, mismatched sodimms in there, nd you don't get dual-channel unless you have identical ram in both slots, so video performance is low....

1080p acceleration works in MPC-HC though, even on a single channel of memory.
In XP i couldn't get it to work at all in 1080p without bad stuttering.
and the battery life is a LOT better in 7 than XP. 2hrs was a bit short

[Evildead666]

Theres still some problems, maybe the SP1 will fix the last bits...

[Evildead666]

Stable in booting at least, no more boot up probs (Touch Wood).

One of the probs, is trying to DL a file in IE8.
It comes up with the "Save as" and you choose where you want to save it, and press OK.
Then, IE8, and the "Save As" box all close, with no resulting error message or anything...
Chrome works fine, so I have that installed.

Having a USB key installed, and trying to do things sometimes causes the Explorer to crash and restart, until you unplug the USB key...not found a sure fire way of reproducing this yet...

[Evildead666]

Slapped the SSD into a lenovo mini desktop with an intel chipset, and it booted and ran fine.

Therefore, it must be a chipset/ssd incompatibility.

Maybe another ssd controller type would work, like and intel ssd or something.

Gonna see if the company I bought it off would accept to swap it for another ssd, a 40Gb intel, but since it ain't broke, i'm not getting my hopes up.

Sod.

[Marshmallowman]

Ok some computers (usualy slightly older bios) will have problems booting with a usb key inserted.. they won't try to boot off the key...they just don't boot, bios update or check bios settings.

As soon as you insert a usb key in windows 7 it can do a whole bunch of tests to see if it is suitable for readyboost. This can disrupt things a bit and windows does not tell you its doing it.

It might be a good time to see if there is an updated firmware for the SSD , before you start using your computer since some firmware updates might trash the data on the drive.
When I updated mine it said it I would lose data, but I did not lose any data.
Formatting after a firmware update may be a good idea as well.

Also there is the issue of how and when the ssd drive is formated, you should be ok with windows 7.
on my drive it had to create 100mb "system partition" and then the main partition for windows, as I understand it the small parttion is for alignment boundaries on the ssd.
I had issues booting until allowed it to do what it wanted.

[Evildead666]

Yeah, it creates the extra 100Mb partition also.

haven't found anywhere any info on a firmware update or whatever for the 30Gb SSD with Toshiba controller.
Kingstons site sends you to Intel for firmwares, but its not an intel based controller.
Will have a lookie at Toshiba's site, but not sure if they will have one either...

[Evildead666]

So I bit the bullet and bought another SSD, an Intel 40Gb value SSD.

IT WORKS FINE

edit : The incompatibility must lie with the Toshiba SSD and the AMD 780G chipset, but I suspect it is probably related to HP's 780G laptops. I can't see every 780G out there failing with Toshiba drives....OK, there's maybe a 1 or 2% chance that will happen....

*phew*

Installed etc, no problems whatsoever.
Typing this on it now...



a LOT better than the 5400rpm Hitatchi 160Gb drive...the Read values are stunning.

[Evildead666]

I've disabled Defrag, Indexing and Windows Search.
Superfetch has been left on since it uses memory (RAM) and not the HDD.
Prefetch has been set to cache boot files only, not every file like it is set by default.
I've also lowered the page file to 400Mb, just to limit the writes.

Think I will try to disable Hibernate also, since this will use up 4Gb chunks at a time when hibernating. When I have my full 4Gb back....(took them nearly a week to get my RMA, should have taken 48hrs tops...)

[Evildead666]

Just one, final, problem to solve, and it seems i'm not the only one in this boat.

the PC gets to the Win7 'Flower' and the HDD stops functioning for 40-60s and then continues booting.

Gonna take some googling to sort this one out....