Travel Technology - Will i have problems? HP Health Check

Have my laptop in the living room watching telly & posting to FT. Little box comes up says HP Health Check; click box for results. I do, & see Status: Poor which scare the bejeezus out of me! But on the left side are a bunch of green boxes w/ checkmarks (such as performance, updates, etc).

The only one that has a red box w/ an X through it is Maintenance. And on the right side it says Maintenance/action. I click on that & it says repair. I click on that, and basically nothing happens. Right below the status: poor at the top of the left it looks like it's trying to load or update something, but it seems to be stuck at the 20% point - even after 2 hours.

I clicked on the about HP health check & get a copyright date/version. I click on FAQ & it says nothing found, go to Microsoft.

So should I be worried, and if so what should I be doing? Any input appreciated.

Cheers.

Hi there,

To start with, what model HP laptop and what operating system are you running? Can you write exactly what message you are getting regarding the maintenance dialogue?

HP software is notoriously buggy.

Interestingly, I just talked to my brother last night and he told me that he installed that Health Check a few days ago. He wound up having problems with his wireless card and couldn't connect to the internet with it. He called HP and they told him that his was one of the few models that has a "known" issue, whatever that means. He only purchased it in September.

The upshot is that they are sending him a box to return it to them so that they can repair it, probably a motherboard. Don't know which model it is, or any other details as I own Macs.

Hi there,

To start with, what model HP laptop and what operating system are you running? Can you write exactly what message you are getting regarding the maintenance dialogue?


HP Pavillion dv6000; Vista. Maintenance dialogue mentioned in original post. It was minimal verbiage. I don't remember installing HP Health Check; just popped up last night.

Cheers.

Unfortunately ilgoldstein is correct.

HP Software when it comes to the update activities doesn't work as well as one would hope. I have 4 HP computers that I love. (Laptops and 1 desk top) but I run Norton 360 to keep my PC's performance happy. THere are ways to fix the HP update program but it's a bit time consuming

My suggestion would be to only run the update for BIOS and driver updates but use a third party software for the other maintenance activities.

Unfortunately ilgoldstein is correct.

HP Software when it comes to the update activities doesn't work as well as one would hope. I have 4 HP computers that I love. (Laptops and 1 desk top) but I run Norton 360 to keep my PC's performance happy. THere are ways to fix the HP update program but it's a bit time consuming

My suggestion would be to only run the update for BIOS and driver updates but use a third party software for the other maintenance activities.

Gulp - I don't really 'run' anything. Just AVG & AdAware daily & defrag weekly. I assumed that HP & Microsoft did their 'magic' in the background. What maintenance activities am I, gulp, supposed to be doing? Yikes. Any input appreciated.

Cheers.

By default I never let the computer decide for me.
(I also do not let Windows update manually, in the background. I make that a manual process. It only takes about 2-3 minutes once every couple of weeks but then I can decide for myself if I want to install service pack 3 and have things stop working or wait a couple of weeks until they have the bugs worked out).

I make things a bit more manual, but then I know what I am installing / updating, etc.

And since I can install / update things incrementally I then know what it was that caused the problem (if there is a subsequent problem).

Ad-aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php), CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/), Defrag, Spybot (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html), McAfee (http://us.mcafee.com/) (or anti-virus program of choice) are what I usually use for "maintenance".
Backups once a week (automated). Backups of backups once every 2 months (manual) stored in a off-site nuclear safe bunker. Well, I lied. Actually the nuclear safe bunker is not off-site. :D

I am sure others can / will add their maintenance programs of choice.

But imo I would shut off HP's auto-update / maintenance feature.

Sorry, didn't mean to alarm you!

HP Updater is set up to run automatically when you receive the computer. You will find settings in Control Panel (I think it is in Help) which you can modify so that you can control its behaivior. Microsoft has system tools which will also keep your PC tuned up, but they are not "best of breed". And...you need to run them manually or set up a particular schedule.

Dependig on what you use your computer for, you may want to have automatic disk defragmenting, internet temprary file clean up, cookie clean ups etcetera. That's where software from, for example, Symantec, can be very helpful.

My HP's are home computers, one for the little guy (5) and the au pair, one for my husband and me, and a tablet for when we travel. I also have a Pavillion for my parents when the visit with me so we donät fight over the computers... We don't do a lot of gaming or anything like that, but I do try to keep the machines "clean".

Please don't worry, your computer will not self destruct but it may slow down with out some regular clean-up.

Stuff like that is why I avoid HP computers.

Stuff like that is why I avoid HP computers.

"stuff like that" is why when I get a computer from a 'brand name' first objective FORMAT.

Dell, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, all pre-install junk everywhere.

HP makes quality hardware.