Gaaah! Just a rant - HP Envy laptops, Win 8 and getting hosed on upgrading to 8.1

Meghan54

Lifer
Oct 18, 2009
11,684
5,222
136
After reading about Bill Gates spending most of a day trying and failing to upgrade a Win 8 install to 8.1, I have to commiserate with him....and rant about the same thing.

I recently acquired two HP Envy 17 laptops, one Ivy Bridge-based (3230m processor) and one Haswell-based (4200m processor) and one Asus X75 laptop, Sandy Bridge-based (2370m). Unfortunately, all were running Win 8.

I reset both HP's via the HP restore function to original factory setup. Then updated both completely. Then both "recommended" that I upgrade to Win 8.1.

I fell for it on the "little" Envy, with the 3230m processor. Damned upgrade essentially hosed the laptop to the point that even re-using the HP restore function barely got the laptop functional, much less back to what it was prior to the "upgrade".

After spending a few hours trying damned near everything I found on the web to correct the problem without getting positive results, I eventually gave up and loaded Win 7 Ultimate onto it....and that was just opening another can of worms. Can't find drivers...HP only lists Win 8 drivers for it. Had to google every darned hardware ID to find and download enough drivers to get it online so I could use update to sort of finish getting the rest of the hardware to load drivers.

Now trying to get the esoteric crap to work....card reader, Beats audio, etc.

I hate Win 8 and HP's refusal to put up Win 7 drivers for laptops that have drivers that can and do work on them, although they're hidden away here and there. (I've ended up having to use some of HP's ProBook drivers to get the LAN and WLAN to work---thankfully, the ProBook line is almost identical to the Envy line, in most cases.)


Interestingly, Asus has both Win 7 and Win 8 drivers for the X75A laptop. While the Win 8 install is working well, about to put Win 7 Pro on it just for the sake of simplicity and greater acceptance-ability for it.


Such is my little rant. I know it's pitiful, but I'm just frustrated beyond belief.
 

hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
17
81
I had an envy 15 that worked fine with the upgrade. That said I still hated windows 8 so much u returned it.

Ended up buying and hp probook with 8 pro and the downgrade rights and going to 7.

I dont really think they need to provide drivers given well you bought a windows 8 laptop. They dont provide Linux ones either. The drivers for everything are out there though. And they do sell windows 7 laptops again so those probably list the drivers for 7
 

hans030390

Diamond Member
Feb 3, 2005
7,326
2
76
That sucks you ran into issues, but, for what it's worth, I have upgraded seven Windows 8 devices to 8.1 without a hitch. This includes 4 desktop computers, Surface RT, Surface Pro, and Razer Edge. For the most part, it was download, install, done.

Only the Edge needed special attention. And by that, I mean I had to install 8.1 drivers Razer provided shortly after the launch. And most 8.1 upgrade issues I've read about were due to not having the right drivers installed (sometimes impossible if the 8.1 upgrade borks it to the point you can't install the right drivers), but you can only blame companies like HP in that case. Also not the first time large updates have caused problems for a Windows OS.
 
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Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
8
0
Shrug, my Acer V5 upgraded from 8 to 8.1 without a fuss. The tower I use for mining shit a brick when attempting to upgrade fro 8 to 8.1, during the install where it tries to convert your local account to a Live account, where you have no option to skip or bypass. Heh, I had to call the automated support line for having two activation attempts on the same key in a 10 minute time frame.
 

Imaginer

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 1999
8,076
1
0
That sucks you ran into issues, but, for what it's worth, I have upgraded seven Windows 8 devices to 8.1 without a hitch. This includes 4 desktop computers, Surface RT, Surface Pro, and Razer Edge. For the most part, it was download, install, done.

Only the Edge needed special attention. And by that, I mean I had to install 8.1 drivers Razer provided shortly after the launch. And most 8.1 upgrade issues I've read about were due to not having the right drivers installed (sometimes impossible if the 8.1 upgrade borks it to the point you can't install the right drivers), but you can only blame companies like HP in that case. Also not the first time large updates have caused problems for a Windows OS.

It would be of explicit note if the motherboard in the laptop is so custom that a general Intel PCH driver or CPU recognition did not work, but in many cases it should not be a problem in loading general drivers with the blanket 8.1 upgrade.

Windows 7 install would not have fared better either, you still would have to hunt down drivers to get to work, either all centralized on HP's website, or elsewhere with the controller chips, etc. The disc, download, image, would and cannot account for everything under the sun, but only the general driver implementations and general generic driver controllers.

And yes, outside of some hardware chips not having been accounted for to 8.1 (needing to find Asmedia USB 3.0 drivers for me since 8.1 did not account for that amongst the install), it would work fine in the transition.
 

Remobz

Platinum Member
Jun 9, 2005
2,564
37
91
I have an Asus pavilion G4 with Windows 8 but I refuse to upgrade to 8.1 yet.