I own a Compaq Presario Notebook V3252AU which I bought in July 2007. 2 or 3 months before the warranty period expired, I started having problems with the wireless chipset. I'm using Gentoo Linux as my main OS and Ubuntu as my secondary OS. I couldn't detect the wireless chipset which is Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01). I was too lazy to bring it to the HP centre to repair as that would mean that I'd be deprived of my laptop for a while. So I bought a USB wireless adapter and got on with life.
Two weeks later, I started having problems with the display. The screen would suddenly become distorted and the system would freeze and I had to restart the system all over to restore it. This happened twice and then the com died slightly less than a month before the warranty period expired. I sent it to the HP centre and they said that the mainboard was damaged. Got the com back in 5 days.
A week later I started having problems with the wireles chipset again. The wireless connection kept disconnecting. In the end, I just disabled it altogether and prevent the module for the wireless card from loading. I am using the wired ethernet now.
2 weeks ago, a friend of mine who has the same version of laptop as mine told me that her wireless chipset stopped working. Windows couldn't detect it at all. Yesterday, her laptop couldn't be switched on at all. This is around 6 months post 1-year-warranty period.
Oh, and I couldn't update my BIOS at all because HP only provided BIOS updates for Windows and not for Linux-based systems and did not have the courtesy to reply to my enquiry regarding a BIOS update for Linux.
I am never buying HP-Compaq products again and I will think twice before I buy any HP products.
Two weeks later, I started having problems with the display. The screen would suddenly become distorted and the system would freeze and I had to restart the system all over to restore it. This happened twice and then the com died slightly less than a month before the warranty period expired. I sent it to the HP centre and they said that the mainboard was damaged. Got the com back in 5 days.
A week later I started having problems with the wireles chipset again. The wireless connection kept disconnecting. In the end, I just disabled it altogether and prevent the module for the wireless card from loading. I am using the wired ethernet now.
2 weeks ago, a friend of mine who has the same version of laptop as mine told me that her wireless chipset stopped working. Windows couldn't detect it at all. Yesterday, her laptop couldn't be switched on at all. This is around 6 months post 1-year-warranty period.
Oh, and I couldn't update my BIOS at all because HP only provided BIOS updates for Windows and not for Linux-based systems and did not have the courtesy to reply to my enquiry regarding a BIOS update for Linux.
I am never buying HP-Compaq products again and I will think twice before I buy any HP products.
