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Recent HP Laptops Shipped CPU-Choking Wi-Fi Driver
An anonymous reader writes "Computer manufacturers have recently come under fire for the continued practice of shipping machines with excessive bloatware. Software preinstalled on some recent HP laptops was worse than normal though, consuming anywhere from 25-99% CPU by making incessant WMI queries, resulting in overheating laptops and reduced battery life. Users on a computer Q&A site did some sleuthing, and revealed that HP Wireless Assistant — software which does nothing but tell the user when their WiFi adapter is turned on or off — was causing the problem. According to an HP support forum, the problem is fixed in later versions, but thousands of laptops have the software installed, and the software does not get updated automatically."
As someone who fixes computers for a living, I can tell you that HP has the WORST bloatware, both preinstalled on new computers and included with their ridiculous, 200MB printer drivers.
... I make a DVD backup of the restore partition and wipe clean the HDD whenever I buy a new laptop.
I recently had the same issue with a loaded Dell Latitude E6510. The supplied video driver for WinXP consumed an entire core on my 3.0GHz i7. I contacted Dell on the issue and told them what was happening. I ended up using the driver from nVidia. The CPU would get very hot and the fan would run at full speed.
I know, good story - right?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
e.g. Did you know you cannot simply replace the HP buildin wireless with a pci-express card version because the wireless needs to be on a bios whitelist.
Let's talk about CPU-choking check-for-update services. Ever tried to disable GoogleUpdater? I mean really disable it? Or the Adobe "Let's interrupt the boot process with our bullshit" updater? Or my favorite this week - was recently straightening out a friends machine and found an updater service from Intuit running - my friend had installed and used TurboTax to do his taxes last year, so naturally a system service had to be running to check for updates to tax software for FY2009.
I see the <i>italic</i> tags are still broken, damn this web 2.0 stuff is HARD, isn't it?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
while(true)
{
if(wifi_is_on())
show_wifi_is_on()
else
show_wifi_is_off()
}
This is why whenever I buy a computer or a laptop, the first thing that I do is to slick the damn thing and install the operating system as I see fit.
Whether this be Windows or some flavor of *nix, I just wipe out all the partitions and install from fresh.
I learned that lesson with an HP laptop I bought in 2005. No matter what I did, no matter what I uninstalled, I could not get more than 45% of my hard drive free.
I did a fresh load of XP and low and behold, I was only using 10% of the drive with Office, XP, my music files, a couple of games and my applications in my "Must Have" list.
Ever since, I do this on all of the ones at the hospital. I made a fresh load version for every configuration we have and I keep an image saved on our servers. Since we don't allow anything to be saved on the local computers that are on the hospital floors (our way of enforcing HIPPA on our electronically protected health information (EPHI)), this means that if someone sneaks online and lets slip in a virus, I can just wipe-restore from the network, run updates, and the computer is back in business in usually less than an hour. Less than 15 minutes in some cases.
For administration PC's, it's a bit longer. I have to backup their data first and then slick and reload. Then I have to put the data back. So that's more in the 30-90 minutes category.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
There should be a list of Programs that can (or should be) removed from a Factory Install for safe operation.
Trackpad Drivers, Media Button Drivers and WiFi Drivers may be required to take full advantage of the hardware features, but most of the crap they put on is Third Party Crapware (on cheap machines) or Brand Enhancement software (on "Quality" machines). The worse stuff is the iLife wannabe software from a dozen Third-Party vendors that don't work together.
Maybe MS need to expand their restrictions on WM7 bloatware and customisation to Windows 7 OEMs. Buying a computer with third-party implementation of Native Windows features really dilutes the brand.
One of the reasons MacBooks and MacBook Pros work so well as Windows Laptops is because BootCamp only installs the drivers needed to keep the hardware functioning. Apple even look after their users who run Windows!
There's really no reason wireless device and PC makers even need to have "assistant" type programs written for their hardware to start with. They only need a driver itself, as Windows since XP has had it's own configuration utility with a system tray icon telling you when you're connected or not.
OT: PS to Slashdot coders: I'd really like to be able to use Firefox's spellchecker in here again. It highlights misspelled words but I can't correct them with it ever since you forced this dumb new layout on us. Same with italic tags not working anymore. Have you ever heard the phrase "if it aint broken don't fix it"?
if you prefer Windows, just buy a copy and wipe out your OEM's shitty version.
Why pay again for what you already bought? Install Windows from a downloaded/borrowed disk with the license key that was attached to your system. Dunno about the US, but in the EU you are legally allowed to do that.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Even though some might say that HP Wireless Assistant is bloatware, it isn't really.
It lets you switch on/off individual "wireless devices", like Bluetooth, WiFi or the newer WWAN adapters. Turning the ones off you don't need will definitely save battery life, and it might add some security.
And before anyone says "hey, that's what device manager is for", it's not. Device manager allows you to disable devices, but that would require administrator privileges, whereas the HP Wireless Assistant allows any user to do that.
I do agree, though, that much of the software on the machines you buy in the store is rubbish and is only there so you can buy your computer for less money than you could if the software wasn't there. Think about it.
you can.
http://www.msimobile.com/
Buy a barebones laptop with the features you want.
Buy the processor you want
buy the ram you want
buy the pci-express mini cards for the prephrials you want.
buy the OS you want.
start assembling and installing. I built one years ago this way and ended up with a great laptop that was 100% linux compatible. Problem is that nobody has a mobile video card slot so you are stuck with buying onboard
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There is one vendor that does just that: Apple. Even if you buy it and never intend to run OS X other than for the 10 minutes it takes you to set a Bootcamp partition, the Windows experience on them is very good. All the drivers and necessary stuff you need is on the OS X install disc that comes with the machine (and also on every retail copy of OS X) and you just pop it in after the windows installer finishes and it automatically handles all the drivers and utilities and leaves you with a fully configured, fully working Windows laptop with zero bloatware.
Hell, it doesn't even put iTunes on there by default ;)
Whether the price premium for the machine itself and then a further cost for a copy of Windows is worth it is an exercise left to the individual.
I've set up a quite a number of machines for a local businessman who liked the iMac's form factor but a major part of his business relies on Windows-only software. He started with a batch of 4 test machines that I set up for him and liked them so much he went and converted the whole office and workshop, ditching all the midi-towers and clunky keyboards he had before.
Had an HP all in one and installed the driver on my laptop. If the priinter was not plugged in to the laptop the driver would continously look for the printer, to the tune of 90% CPU usage. This driver also killed my onboard card reader. Finally found the piece of the driver that was causing the trouble and renamed it. The pruinter still works fine without it.
Vaio Care is an example of Crapware. Like HP Total Care and Dell Support Center, The software updates are never current (6-months out at least, and don't expect anything after the first 12 months) and it replicates Native Windows Functionality. Dell, Sony and HP only want you to spend money on a new machine when your old one becomes unusable. Microsoft want your computer to keep working until they release a new OS.
Why ship a clone of Windows Update on a Windows Computer? It's like replacing the native Windows Firewall with a crappier one.
First thing I do when diagnosing Malware is remove all Anti-Malware software, then run MalWare Bytes. After that I reinstall Microsoft Security Essentials. It may not be as secure as some of the Anti-Malware software, but a trained user can still actually use their computer with it installed.
I trust Microsoft more than I trust a company who's sole interest is to scare users. Norton, McAfee, even AVG's business relies on users being scared by computers. Microsoft's business relies on people being comfortable with using computers.
For scanners, I make sure the scanner works with something like VueScan or SANE. For printers, let there be PostScript.
After dealing with one of the early, inexpensive home-use USB scanners (Microtek X6 USB or something like that).... It had drivers that worked with Mac OS 8.1. Not 8.0, not 8.5, not 8.6. Just exactly 8.1. Fortunately, SANE could run it, so scanning moved to Linux.
I ultimately got a rather better scanner that works very well with VueScan, and gave the old one to a friend with a fairly old Windows rig. (Their Windows drivers weren't quite as bad; but that doesn't do anything for me.)
Between that and those stupid FusionIO SSD PCIe cards, I refuse to deal with hardware that needs a proprietary driver from the hardware vendor. Comply with a standard, handle generic functions with the generic driver. Then you can expose extra function with the vendor extension mechanism.
You do know some vendors replace the native Windows Firewall with a crappier one?
I spent an hour doing LAN traces trying to get someone's new Windows 7 box to talk to a WebDAV fileserver. No matter what I did, not a pip from the Windows machine on the relevant sockets; the only thing that went through was the DNS lookup. But all the interface plumbing seemed fine.
I ultimately found a vendor-specific firewall that was blocking nearly all outbound communication.
I removed it and turned on the Windows Firewall (which has actually heard of file servers) and suddenly it was working. And everything else got a lot faster.
And at least one of the Adobe background apps, the one that launches Acrobat at boot so that later it won't take so long to load.
You need to use msconfig. Just press the windows key and type 'msconfig'. One of the tabs in there has startup items. You'll see GoogleUpdate in there. Uncheck it and then you'll have to reboot (msconfig has a poor UI in that way) and the item won't load anymore.
Many apps will install another copy of their startup item when they update if you've unchecked the previous one. But GoogleUpdate isn't one of these.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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