Folks,

� I’ve had to take the downloads for quickplay off.� Somebody’s bot or some low life who didn’t have anything else to do in life downloaded the hpqpdp file several hundred times, with the result that I used the 3000 GB allottment of bandwidth in 24 hours.� Someone needs to find another sever with more bandwih allowance and I’ll be more than glad to upload the files to that.

Here’s the new link for download Quick play for Windows 2.3 and 3.0, and HPQPDP, which is Quick play direct 2.3.

http://asifism.badongo.com/

Files are currently uploading, but they will show up on the link soon.

Since ridickulous.net is down, I’ve posted the two files for download here.� One’s a zip and the other a rar, since that’s what all I pulled off of ridickulous.net.

http://www.asifism.com/downloads/quickplay/HPQPDP.zip and

http://www.asifism.com/downloads/quickplay/QPW3.0.rar.

You can share this link to download hp quickplay: http://www.asifism.com/downloads/quickplay/

Since I have limited bandwidth, I’m going to disable the downloads when I’m close to running up my limit.� I will make a posting in that regard and will activate the downloads once more when my bandwidth renews at month end.

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Okay, here is the new link.� Be patient, I’m uploading the files right now:

http://asifism.badongo.com/.

Okay, so after installing the 83 MB Nvidia gforce 6150 driver on my dv2120us, the wireless card worked until i shut down the laptop. After I re-opened it, I had problems. This time the wireless switch stays red instead of blue, and no wireless card is detected; once again, the broadcom wireless card has disappeared. Low and behold, HP update didn’t show anything, but windows update did, a 33 MB driver for the same Nvidia card. So i updated with that. No luck! But once again, the HP Update driver shows up again, and I have to re-install to make that shit work! I had heard of such problems with vista beta on HP laptops, but you would think both Microsoft and HP would have resolved the issue by now. Maybe it’s time to revert back to Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Keywords: HP, Problems, Issues, Wireless problems, Wireless device vanish, vanishes, HP Warranty, International Warranry, Hewlett Packard, Wireless Card, Broadcom Wireless on HP Laptop, Disappearing wireless card in HP laptops, Undetectable in device manager, Windows Vista, Windows XP

AND yet again we come to another grand session of the HP saga of surprises. The problem I’m about to address comes with several different models. In particular, it seems to be very popular with versions of the dv6000 laptop from HP, but my dv2120us from the dv2000 series has now also become a victim of HP’s disappointing hardware. I’ve been a dedicated HP customer for years, and I think the’ve just about sealed the deal to convert me with this one.

Low and behold, my wireless card simply stops working. The computer behaves like it’s not there. When I flip the wireless switch on the laptop to off, the light stays blue (it needs to be red when off), when I switch it on, it stays blue. Basically, the switch does nothing. What else, device manager is unable to see the wireless adapter even when I switch on the hidden device view. Btw, I’m running Windows Vista Business.

Tried the latest wireless driver, no use. Spoke to a monkey on HP chat, still no use. Hp’s only solution? Send in the laptop for a motherboard replacement. They won’t even send me a damn motherboard to I can replace it myself. Apparently it’s too difficult. What mullarki!

With the research I’ve done, it seems like an update to the Nvidia chipset or the graphics driver MAY solves the issue, so I’m going to give that a shot. If not, some suggest restoring the laptop back to XP Media Center may resolve the issue. In either case, I’m going to try this out and see if it works.

This may be a hopeless cause, since you have to be in the US to employ the HP warranty.  Outside the US, my shit is worth more than HP warranty, especially here in Pakistan. See who else is ranting about terrible HP support and the bizaare disappearing of the Wireless Broadcom device in HP laptops here @ http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1104931&admit=-682735245+1177447268014+28353475.

UPDATE: The QuickPlay download is now available on http://www.asifism.com/downloads/.

Download Information for HP QuickPlay Direct & HP QuickPlay for Windows
Here’s what you need to do to download HP Quick play. I post keys to the download site http://www.asifism.com/downloads/ on the home page, http://www.asifism.com.  An easier way to get to the keys is to browse the the hp quickplay category on http://www.asifism.com/category/hp-quickplay-windows-vista/.  The latest post here should have the keys you need to download QuickPlay.   Browse over to the home page and look for the latest key for whichever version of quickplay you’re looking to download.Here are the installation instructions:

What is HP QuickPlay?

HP QuickPlay is a software that comes bundled with most Hewlett Packard & some Compaq Laptops/Notebooks. Ultimately, it’s HPs answer to Windows Media Player in conjunction with CyberLink. The software comes in two versions, direct & windows. You can find more information on the difference between the two versions on the post hp QuickPlay (QPW) Vs. QuickPlay Direct (QPD or HPQPDP). Furthermore, please note that HP QuickPlay Direct 2.3 is no more shipped with HP notebooks. HP claims the software has bugs and issues, and has, therefore, discontinued work on the software. QuickPlay for Windows is, however, still available and is being upgraded, with 3.6 being the latest version. QuickPlay versions 2.3 Direct, 2.3, 3.0, 3.3, and 3.6 are available for download on this site.

You can install QuickPlay Direct (QPD) 2.3 IRRESPECTIVE of what Windows Version (XP or Vista) you use. QPD will be installed on a separate partition with an automated Windows XP installation. QuickPlay for Windows 2.3 is ONLY Windows XP Compatible, and has reportedly had problems with Windows Vista.

All QuickPlay for Windows versions 3.0 & up are Windows Vista compatible only.

Please post any questions, concerns, or comments regarding QuickPlay on the latest download keys post on http://www.asifism.com. The original instructions follow.

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I’ve finally done it. After waiting a few weeks for the recovery CDs as directed by HP, which turned out to be absolutely useless, I scouted the web some more, found out how to install Quickplay on Vista without signing up for the HP Express Upgrade, which is a tedious process and basically gets you a Vista recovery CD specific to your PC model. Now, the orignal instructions that follow are from here: http://www.notebookforums.com/post2542025.html. Credit goes to this guy. Also, Please note the following:

- HP QuickPlay Direct 2.3, whether you install it on a Windows XP notebook or Windows Vista Notebook, will create a separate Windows Xp installation on your drive. So, ultimately, HP QuickPlay Direct 2.3 is Windows XP compatibale ONLY, but it CAN be installed on a Windows Vista Machine too.

- All versions of QuickPlay for Windows after 3.0 are Windows Vista Compatible ONLY.

Here are the instructions for installing QuickPlay Direct 2.3 on your Hewlett Packard PC / laptop:

1. Back up your system in case of catastrophic failure (always a good first step when jacking around with partitions).

2. Download HPQPDP.rar or HPQPDP.zip from http://downloads.asifism.com, using the latest keys on http://www.asifism.com/category/hp-quickplay-windows-vista/. You may have to look for the latest download key post in the HP QuickPlay category on the blog.

3. Extract whichever you downloaded and drop the resulting HPQPDP folder into your :\SwSetup\ folder (mostly for safekeeping purposes).

4. Using PartitionMagic Pro or Disk Management in Windows something else to either shrink your main partition, secondary partition, or whatever. You want to end up with a 1027.6 MB (or 1028 MB) UNALLOCATED area of space at the END of the drive. Go through all the reboots the machine will likely want to make this happen. It can’t hurt to verify that the unallocated space is there and unallocated after all this. (NOTE: If Partition Magic keeps giving errors saying “Selected disk contains one or more Partitions which cannot be moved,” you have a recovery partition that prevents it from doing what you need it to or drive information has changed. You may have to find another way of resizing your partitions or a reboot might solve the problem.)

5. After creating the unallocated space, assign it the drive letter X: but DO NOT FORMAT IT.  Now, hold on a minute.  Please make sure that you have ONLY ONE other partition than X:.  So, basically, C:, followed by X:.  If you have multiple partitions, C, D, etc., there is no guarantee that the QP Direct installation will work.  If you do install QuickPlay Direct 2.3 it with multiple partitions, please manually change your autoexec.ini to the correct windows installation partition to boot with, or your laptop may not boot up.

6. Hie thee to the HPQPDP folder and run setup.exe.

7. Wait.

8. Wait some more.

9. Reboot and keep on waiting.

10. Shut down the laptop and hit the Quickplay button. You WILL most likely see a Windows logo, since QP2.3 is Windows-based whereas QP1.x is Linux-based.

11. Enjoy a celebratory glass of single-malt scotch, and pop in or browse to your favorite flick. This step is optional if you are at work and/or not legal drinking age.

MANY thanks to everyone for their input. Also, thanks to Ericko for the QPv1 image which can now be downloaded from http;/downloads.asifism.com too.  The keys are available on the latest posts along with all other quickplay related download keys.  in case someone’s machine cannot run QP 2.x, and to everyone else that pitched in.

[Disclaimer: the 1.x image may not work in all machines. It looks like it was taken from a disc that shipped with a dv4000 CTO; YMMV. See the following article if you need 1.x:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g…reg_R1002_USEN

If you need QP 1.x and you created your recovery discs you have another option for restoring QP; it is listed in this article.]

This message was typed in anticipation while QP was installing.

[Edit: linusl also provides a more complex way of getting QP2.x to work under different circumstances if your QP partition is still intact - see page 42 of this thread.]

[Edit number 2: Changed slightly since files have been re-uploaded.]

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Getting the Authorized or Enabled Machine Error? Try this:

For those people who get the QuickPlay Enabled or QuickPlay authorized machine only error while installing, please try the following:

Using Notepad, make a file and save as .reg with the following:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\QPFlag]
“QPFlag”=dword:00000003
“@=”=””

Then add to the registry by double clicking this file after you’ved saved it and install QuickPlay.

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To Install QuickPlay for Windows, here’s what you do:

Extract the appropriate version of the downloaded QuickPlay file from http://downloads.asifism.com into in c:\swsetup and install quickplay from that folder. This is the actual Quickplay for Windows installation, and only after this will quickplay for windows work. . If you want Quickplay 3.0, download it from the provided link and use the setup file in that download rather than the one in the QPW folder. Enjoy, NO thanks to hp.

MD5 Hashes to check download integrity for QuickPlay Direct:

The MD5 hashes for checking the 20 part hp quickplay direct download file are available here:

http://www.asifism.com/hp-quickplay-windows-vista/hp-quickplay-download-md5-hashes/

So I happen to have an HP 2120us Windows XP Media Center Edition Laptop that is Vista Compatible. I also happen to be a Microsoft Partner, so with the release of Windows Vista, I got a copy of Windows Vista Business to try out and play with before I start advising my clients on it. Now I have used Windows Vista Ultimate before in another Microsoft Partner pack, and I was pretty happy with that version despite the fact that it was beta. Windows Business doesn’t fall much short; it covers all the features except for some media add-ons here and there, which would useful primarily for a technology enhanced Western household. Anything east of the UK, and people wouldn’t really understand the benefits of some of the features offered by Windows Vista Ultimate.

For all people who are considering upgrading their HP Laptops to Vista though, there may be several minor issues. HP provides drivers for all the hardware, but most of the not-so-useful software that HP bundled with their Media Center Edition pre-Install can also be found on the web. But one of their most useful inventions, HP Quickplay, is not available once you upgrade from Windows XP to Windowss Vista. Now the Pavillion dv Edition laptops are configured for HP Quickplay, and they have a Quickplay button on them; it’s just really weird having the button on there but no Quickplay itself.

I’ve gotten a hold of HP Customer support, I’ve searched all over the web, and HP Quickplay is hard to come by. HP Customer service flat out said that Quickplay is not available UNLESS you simply recover yur original OS and it’s complied into that installation. If you upgrade, you will be unable to take advantage of HP Quickplay, and apparently, HP has no intention of offering the software standalone in the future. Now, I’m an HP laptop kind of a guy, but this move on HP’s part is absolutely ridiculous.

This further complicates things for people with HP Laptops and Windows Vista, because unless you’re upgrading to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, you’re not going to have any DVD reading or writing codecs, and who wants to pay for those, again, when you already paid for them as part of your original laptop purchase.

How to go by this issue; you can try and put your recovery hard drive partition on your laptop onto CDs, because once you’ve installed Vista, you can see the recovery partition, but you can’t access it (I haven’t tried figuring this one out yet, it probably has something to do with NTFS and FAT32). Then you can try installing some of the software from your recovery drive. It may or may not work. The point is that HP’s service in the matter is currently poor, and I’m not sure they plan on changing that unless you buy a laptop which comes pre-installed with Vista.