Mini 5102 - A Warning

[jdt]

Hi there,

Just a bit of a heads-up for those considering purchasing an HP Mini 5102.

Firstly, I should give credit where credit is due.

This machine is nicely put together, and very solid for a netbook. It's probably the nicest netbook I've used (physically).

Unfortunately it has a very significant problem:

A part of the included HP software causes very high CPU utilisation, and basically the machine runs at 90-100% CPU most of the time. The means that the computer is much slower than it should be to respond, and the battery life is very poor (3-4 hours on the 6-cell battery). The piece of HP software that causes the issue is the HP Wireless Assistant. When this is disabled, the machine runs well, when it is running the whole machine grinds to a halt. You require this software to turn the machine's WLAN, BT and WWAN radios on or off. If you don't require turning these on/off, you might be able to get away with not running this software (I think). For my job in the field, I'm constantly required to turn the radios on and off. The runaway process is wmiprvse.exe.

There's a number of people experiencing this same problem.

I spent two weeks on the phone to HP trying to fix the issue. When they became convinced that the issue might be hardware, the machine was replaced. The new machine had the same symptoms, and after battling with both machines for almost 2 months I threw in the towel, got a refund, and bought another brand. After 2 months from being made aware of this issue, HP still hasn't done anything to fix it.

Before buying this machine, please ensure that they have rectified this issue... otherwise you'll regret your purchase (as I did).

Hope this helps out some prospective purchasers.

cheers,

Jeremy

[bulls96]

APpreciate the headsup. It is still on the CNET tops laptops (note laptops not even netbooks) though...

[ken88]

Too bad u already sold it. Steps to stop that is:
1) run Msconfig
2) Disable 'HP wireless assistant'
3) Follow the 'restart' instruction.

My Mini5102 runs at 90%-100% of 1833Mhz when the HP wireless assistant is "Enable"
But it scaled down to 11%-19% of 989Mhz when the tool is "Disable", all the time Downloading 20 torrents!

So YES, the HP tool is sucking the life out of you Mini.

P/S: This tool do not do anything special that MS do not already doing, so rest assured that you are not losing any valuable software disabling that software. If you must have it back, just run the msconfig and enable it again.

[jdt]

P/S: This tool do not do anything special that MS do not already doing, so rest assured that you are not losing any valuable software disabling that software. If you must have it back, just run the msconfig and enable it again.

As far as I know, it's not possible to turn off the various radios without using this tool. Disabling a radio in the Device Manager does not actually power it off.

In my job as a field engineer, I need to be able to turn certain radios on and off several times in a day.

Stopping the HP Wireless Assistant service does the trick, BUT, enabling it again results in it not working properly (requiring a restart), and I don't want to keep restarting the machine all day long.

Regardless, HP should really be fixing this issue.

[Suftop]

why would anyone use HP wireless assistant anyways? Does it even add anything? First thing I do with any HP is always to uninstall all that bloatware and disable those junky services and startup items.

[jdt]

why would anyone use HP wireless assistant anyways? Does it even add anything? First thing I do with any HP is always to uninstall all that bloatware and disable those junky services and startup items.

That's like saying you'd uninstall drivers that came with the machine. IMO, the HP Wireless Assistant is a vital part of the included software.

The HP WIreless Assistant is the ONLY way to turn the WLAN/WWAN/BT radios on or off. It's vital to me (in my job) that I'm able to turn the radios on/off during the course of the day. No being to do so means that I'm not able to attend certain sites, which defeats the purpose of having a laptop/netbook in the first place.

And no... disabling the radios in the windows device manager DOES NOT turn their power off.

[dafi]

Thanks very much for this post. I have a new Mini 5102 and I was trying to figure out what was gobbling all my CPU time. I have disabled Wireless Assistant and the CPU load has dropped, but not as dramatically as others mentioned. I suspect the supplied AV software needs to be tamed or replaced.

Incidentally, it seems you can power on/off the various radios in the Windows Mobility Centre ( Win key + X ). I haven't checked that this actually does turn them off yet.

Also worth noting is that my model (Mini 5102 WP429PA) is advertised as having GPS. Looking at any documentation supplied by HP or even asking their on line support assistant would have you believing otherwise, but eventually I did figure out how to get it working. Basically all you have to do is turn on the WWAN radio and then run some software that looks for the GPS (none supplied by HP). I used GPSMonitor from Infix Technologies. HP Connection Manager has a GPS tab which is useless. It does show the COM port but never seems to be able to get a location.

Cheers,
dafi

[R_G_B]

The problem is fixed by installing HP wireless assistant 4.0.6.0
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp48001-48500/sp48127.exe

Strangely this update is not notified by HP support assistant (even though a new broadcom driver was notified), and the wireless assistant revision notes do not mention the problem, but HP wireless assistant 4.0.6.0 does fix the CPU problem.

You can also dispense with HP wireless assistant if preferred (I uninstalled it via control panel).

This removes corresponding functionality from Windows Mobility Centre (the special HP tab disappears), and it brings all wireless devices to power on by default at next boot. But you can control all the wireless power settings in other ways:

1. Use the wireless switch at the front left to power on/off all wireless devices.
2. Use HP connection manager to independently power on/off the WWAN/GPS chip if fitted.
3. Use Windows Mobility Centre to power on/off the WLAN chip alone.
4. Although you can disable the bluetooth driver in Device Manager, the bluetooth chip remains powered on (unless you use 1 above).
5. If you want to turn off power to Bluetooth while leaving power available for WLAN (without the help of HP wireless assistant), you must disable Bluetooth in Bios setup.

I hope this helps. If you have a HP mini 5102 definately check CPU usage in Task Manager. If it stays at a very high level when the machine is 'idle', you absolutely should check the wireless assistant version and update using the HP softpaq noted above.

[R_G_B]

One problem solved, but another arises, as recently described (without solution) on the HP Business Support Forum.

After resume from sleep, the HPmini 5102 continuously consumes about 30% of CPU capacity with the system at idle. It is fine (0-3% CPU usage at idle) before sleep.

The 30% futile CPU consumption after sleep/resume is due to hardware interrupts (revealed by Sysinternals Process Explorer). I gather that futile hardware interrupts can be due to problems such as multiple drivers trying to control one device (e.g. after a faulty update). But I have no idea what it means only after sleep / resume, and no idea how to find the offending device or drivers.

My guess is that lots of owners of this model simply have not noticed the problem, and they are assuming the poor performance is due to the netbook atom processor.

Has anyone found the cause / solution? Until then, the workaround is to shutdown / restart; not sleep / resume.

HP needs to sort this out quickly - nobody wants HP netbooks to fall into the 'don't buy' category because of ongoing problems with futile CPU usage. The HP mini 5102 is the flagship model!

[NickBose]

I just picked up the Mini 5102. Very impressed and extremely happy. (I just returned the Thinkpad x100e due to its terrible battery time, sluggish broadband connection application, and the pale washed out screen)

The described problems are non existent in my unit which is from Optus (Australia).

A side question: can this car adaptor work with 5102? The voltage is 0.5V lower than the HP AC-DC adaptor output (19V vs 19.5V) and the current is 0.05A lower (2A vs 2.05A)
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....m=280531584997