Monday, April 30, 2018

HP ElitePad 1000 G2 is Missing Sound after Windows 10 installation

This one is short and sweet!  The Elitepad 1000 G2 is HP's line of Business class Intel Atom-based tablets that would best compete with Microsoft Surface 3 and other similar Atom-based Windows tablets.  That said, I have a couple of these machine at work that required a refresh from Windows 8 to Windows 10.

If you have completed a Windows 10 installation on this device, you will find that Device Manager is missing the Sound card and several other device drivers.  If you check out the Sound Control Panel, it lists output as unknown.  Some hardware components do not show up at all.

The reason for this is Windows 10 will install generic drivers during the installation as it identifies you computer's hardware.  Some of these drivers are just temporary to allow hardware to function while others may be missed entirely.

HP bundled the Graphics, Sound, Cameras and part of the IO into one driver - SP78311.  You can find this driver on the HP Support Drive Site for the HP ElitePad 1000 G2.  Once you install the driver, sound should come back.  You may need to reboot after the installation.

I recommend downloading all of the HP driver packages for this machine as Windows 10 will typically download and install generic drivers for each device.  While this does help during the build process, it can cause hardware function issues and, occasionally, cause hardware to not show up at all.

Have a keyboard and mouse handy for the re-installation because you will also lose the touch screen functionality.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Fixing the Orange light Mute Button Issue on HP ProBook and Elitebook Models in Windows

This is a bug I've run across on HP Probook 6XXX, 6XX, 8XX and HP Elitebook 8XXX, 9XXX, 8XX, and 1XXX laptops.  This is mostly an annoyance and usually the volume works, the mute button works, but the orange "mute" indicator light is stuck on orange.

If you look through HP forums, you will see HP Support claim this is a BIOS issue.  I've run across this issue several dozen times and each time I do a fresh installation of Windows on the machine.

The problem is usually caused when Windows Update installs the Audio Driver during the OS Install Process.  Windows Update will install a generic driver that works fine for the audio, but does nothing to control the mute indicator light.

The solution is to download the actual HP driver from the HP Diver Support site.  If you are installing Windows 10 on the machine, you will need to download the Windows 8 or Windows 7 driver.  While the installation process claims you will need to the reboot the computer after the driver install but this is not always necessary. 

In Windows 10, you can use the Windows 8 driver.  Upon completion of the install, the light changes white immediately.

HP Elitebook 8470P
Windows 8/10 64bit: Use IDT High Definition (HD) Audio Driver SP63916.exe
Windows 7 64bit:  Use IDT High Definition (HD) Audio Driver SP60317.exe

For some models, there are no Windows 8 or 10 drivers available.  You can use the Windows 7 drivers instead.