Sound issues on HP Elitebook 840 G11

[Dion McGovern-Allen]

Hi All,


Have any of you experienced audio issues with the latest generation of HP 840 G11 Elitebook laptops?

Have got a couple where it sounds like the speakers are being overdriven and makes the audio horrible.

Bios update and Audio driver update from HP's portal and it still persists.
Tried the ol trick of holding the power button for 25+ seconds to clear any residual power (power reset) - no change.

Weirdly, in device manager I see the original Microphone and Speakers to be shown as disconnected and a (2) appended to a duplicate named device.

I've got about 50 of them out in the wild now and I hope its not a sign of things to come!
I remember during lockdown laptops needed a bios update else after some time, the audio driver would just stop working.

Thanks,

Dion McGovern-Allen.

[Rafal Janaszkiewicz]

Hi Dion,

We had a weird issue like that on a couple of laptops. Turns out the speaker grills are underneath the laptop and the magnets from the speakers pulled in some metal filings which caused the speakers to sound horrible like you are describing. 

Not sure if it's the same issue but you could pull off the back cover to see if there are metal filings sticking to the speakers. 

Regards,

Rafal Janaszkiewicz

ICT Manager

Wellington High School

E-mail: Rafal.Jan...@whs.school.nz

DDI: 028 2550 8784

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[Simon Wright]

We only have a few G11s, but they are with admin/support staff, no one has reported anything as yet.

Have a look in the depths of the audio settings (old school control panel) for any 'enhancement' options that are enabled. I vaguely recall having an issue on some of the older ones and certain driver version(s) that when the enhanced audio option (or whatever it was) was enabled would cause the audio to sound like you're listening through a tin can.

Regards,

Simon Wright

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[Andrew Hood]

Does the audio problem persist if you use headphones? If so, I might have had a similar problem.

I have had a 7 year long issue on a personal laptop - A HP Spectre ultrabook (non-360 variant). Its one of the coolest looking, lightest and thinnest laptops I have ever owned but with awful build quality. After a Windows/BIOS upgrade, I started getting poor audio quality - I would liken it to driving an amp into clipping, but it happens at any volume level - so when quiet, the same distortion occurs, but quietly. Rolling back updates and trying to rollback BIOS did not fix it. The device would have gone back under warrantee if it wasn't for my slightly dodgy 1TB SSD upgrade in a space that technically isn't big enough to fit it...

However, I run the machine Dual Boot with Debian - and Debian has perfect audio so I know its not a hardware problem. I have found comments on HP forums over the years of others having similar issues that no amount of patching, drivers and others seems to fix. Even though it now dual boots Windows 11 and Debian, I tend to just use it as my Linux workstation and only drop into Windows for specific apps, most of which I am not worried about audio on. 

So, try USB booting a Linux version and see if that works. That will at least prove if you have hardware issues or if it is OS/Driver based. 

Perhaps this is finally the year of Linux-on-the-Desktop?

Andrew

[Sue Way]

Hi Andrew,

It would be great to run Linux but unfortunately 2 of the most commonly used applications that we use in High Schools don't work on Linux. Creative Cloud and Filemaker Client..

 

Sue

[Armand deVilliers]

Same issue here - happened to all the laptops being used in the workshops.  As mentioned, grills at the bottom are picking up metal filings via magnets and causing the issue described.  TELA will replace the speaker but best to ask staff not to use laptops in the workshops

[Simon Wright]

If it is metal filings, this can fix this if you have a small magnet...

Often have to remove filings from students' laptops. I just use the small magnet tip that's in my ifixit toolkit. put a folded tissue in front of it and just lightly move back and forward over the speaker, then can just pull the tissue away with the filings so they aren't stuck to the magnet themselves.

For the most part this resolves the issue and the speaker works as normal.

Regards,

Simon Wright

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[Dion McGovern-Allen]

Good Morning Andrew, Simon, and Rafal,


Andrew, that was going to be my next step in troubleshooting - eliminating the OS out of the equation.
I am not looking forward to it if the issue can't be resolved by software!
And yes, its like the amp is driving the speaker to clipping and making the sound very, very tinny.
The normal ping sound you get when you adjust the volume level doesn't sound right at all - regardless of volume.

Simon, I did see someone mention online about audio enhancements.
I believe I found the setting and it made no difference.

Rafal, it so happens that they both worth in our Technology workshop.
One is wood and the other metal and I do recall finding a little tiny bit of metal shavings near the hinge for one of the two devices.
We have a second wood teacher who has yet to experience the issue.

I'll have a look at them internally shortly, luckily I have purchased a set of plastic shims and pry tools to ensure no marring on the case.
I wish they still had the easy to remove covers or just rely on screws to marry the shell up!

[Simon Wright]

Just know that you need to pry the hinge and sides of the bottom cover and with the back edge slightly up, slide the cover back towards the hinge/back edge to unclip the front, don't try and pry the front edge.

This is assuming the G11 is no different from the previous gen's.

Regards,

Simon Wright

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[Simon Wright]

Well that's weird, Sue's response makes sense now...did anyone else only get Andrew's response in the last 15-20min? 

Whereas Sues, Dions, and mine were 2 hours ago....

I don't have one in front of me, but I'm assuming it's a Realtek chip? try a non HP driver if you can find one.

Regards,

Simon Wright

[d.keen...@gc.ac.nz]

Same here, the message came through fairly late.

Regards,

David.

[Keith Craig]

Not sure what happened here. Sometimes messages get held up in the queue and need to be released manually. Timing depends on how busy the group moderators are.

regards

keith

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[Andrew Hood]

I have noticed that Email reply based responses seem to get an hour or so delay, where as using the Groups Web pages works immediately. However, my posting earlier was via the webpage, so that's really odd.

Andrew

[Dion McGovern-Allen]

After investigating, the sound issue persisted into a secondary OS (Lubuntu)
Carefully removed the underside, easiest clipped design for once!

If you put a bet on metal filings for both then you'd be correct.
Although the wood workshop teacher isn't quite in the same area as the metalshop one.
Having the speakers ports on the underside - I guess we'll have to tape it up or find some adhesive fine mesh.

I've got some small neodymium magnets spare at home that I was using for a 3D printed Catan board game to snap together.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2525047
Oh and as an aside, if you're interested in multi-material for single filament printers - check out Mosaic's Palette 3 Pro - 8 filaments into one continuous line.

I'll see how I go with that for next week.

Otherwise, it'll have to be a TELA job - I wonder if I could call the location of the speaker a manufacturer's defect in product design!


Thanks for all of your input!
Dion McGovern-Allen.