14 DAY TRIAL // Hewlett-Packard listed a number of 24 laptop model variations that are affected by the faulty Nvidia graphics chips. According to HP, the problem first appeared in November last year. The company published a list of potentially affected systems which includes Pavilion and Compaq Presario notebook models.
As presented, Dell already announced that some of its notebooks had experienced the same problems. Nvidia issued a statement earlier this month saying that some of its mobile chips use a "weak die/packaging material" that causes the problems. The chip itself is referred to as the die, while the packaging refers to the material encasing the chip.
"HP has taken appropriate actions for any HP notebook products that use the known affected Nvidia chips," an HP spokesperson said on Monday, responding to an e-mail query. "We initiated a customer program to address this issue in November 2007, and have notified registered customers who have notebook PC models that are included in this HP program. HP became aware of this issue when we began performing an investigation based on field performance data," the spokesman added.
HP also published a list of potential symptoms that may appear on the affected models. These include no wireless network detection, no video on the computer LCD screen, no power and no active LEDs. Customers that experience these problems are advised to contact HP for further actions to be taken. "If you are experiencing one or more symptoms listed below, and your computer meets the product criteria listed below, contact HP to determine whether you are eligible for a free repair," the HP Web page states. The company mentions that some notebooks may fail to start due to the same issue.
The list HP published includes Pavilion dv2000, dv6000, and dv9000 and Compaq Presario V3000 and V6000 series. Users that own one of these models but have not experienced the symptoms yet are advised to update their notebook BIOS to a version HP released to address the problem. BIOS variant F.39 was made available for dv2000/V3000 models, and F.3D for dv6000/dv9000/V6000.
HP is the second mobile PC vendor to release a series of BIOS updates meant to patch the faulty GPUs.