Strange behavior on HP notebooks (laptop)

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by Bjowah91)

Hi,

I got at least 3 HP 6910p notebooks with a strange problem that might be related to the BES client.

Let me explain.

When you work on the notebook the mousepad suddenly moves jerky and is uncontrolable for a moment. If you on the same time play a mp3 or streaming any sound this gets distorted and start chopping.

When you use perfmon to diagnose the problem you can se a slight increase of processor activity but not much. The counter pages/sec is increased quit alot which might indicate that the machine swaps from disk

If the BES client is stopped the problem is gone and can’t be reproduced. I have not heard that any other models in our company should have this problem. I beleave that the error lays in a driver somewhere and the you only limit the sympthoms by stopping the BES client.

Have any of you seen this or heard this before i would really apreciate any tips that might lead me in the right directions.

Best regards

/Björn

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi Bjowah,

The BES Client periodically writes some of its current in-memory state to disk (so it doesn’t lose all information in the event of a power outage or hard shut-down). This occurs fairly infrequently (I think it is a little less than once every 10 minutes or so, but I will have to double-check) and it is not very much data (usually a couple hundred KB or a couple MB depending on some specifics of what the agent is doing).

Generally, this type of activity should be very easy for the computer to handle, but perhaps these computers have some issue? Maybe some sort of constrained resource like VM size? or some driver that doesn’t take advantage of some hardware acceleration?

Ben

3

(imported comment written by Bjowah91)

Hi,

After som serious investigation this error can be related to the machine hardware. When use ask several WMI question involving the BIOS the machine has poor response. We have one (or a few) machines without this problem and the only diffrence is a small change in the TPM firmware version.

This case has been sent to HP for investgation.

To test if your machine have the problem start a .mp3 in mediaplayer and run the following script (you might want to make it a loop):

'=========================================================================

’ © 2006 Stena Line IT Services AB

'=========================================================================

’

’ Filename :

’ Version : 1.0.0

’ Description :

’ Date : 2007-08-27

’ Author : David Christensson

’ Requirements :

’

’ History :

’

'========================================================================

Const wbemFlagReturnImmediately = 16

Const wbemFlagForwardOnly = 32

lFlags = wbemFlagReturnImmediately + wbemFlagForwardOnly

If Not SetWlanSwitching(“1F261714”) = 0 Then

If Not SetWlanSwitching("") = 0 Then

If Not SetWlanSwitching(“192E1714”) = 0 Then

’ super failed

End If

End If

End If

Public Function SetWlanSwitching(strPassword)

Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:{impersonationlevel=impersonate}//./root/HP/InstrumentedBIOS”)

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery(“select * from HP_BIOSSettingInterface”,lFlags)

For each objItem in colItems

objItem.SetBiosSetting oReturn, _

“LAN/WLAN Switching”, _

“Enable”, _

strPassword

Next

SetWlanSwitching = oReturn

End Function

4

(imported comment written by Bjowah91)

Hi,

Just to finish this tread. This was due to an error on the motherboard. HP change motherboard and the problem was solved. We have probably got a bad batch which will now be processed by HP for remedation.

/BJörn

5

(imported comment written by bobk91)

Hi Bjorn. We are having a similar problem here, with the same HP WMI class. Is it possible that you could provide some more specific details about the TPM revision, the motherboard revision, BIOS revision, or anything else that I could give to HP to help in the troubleshoot.

Thanks

6

(imported comment written by Bjowah91)

Hi bobk,

We have the error on 6910p machines with this specs.

Windows XP, Vista (x86)

BIOS version f.04

BIOS Date 05/11/2007

TPM Version 1.2

TPM Chip version SLB 9635 TT 1.2 (41313100)

TPM Device Driver:

File name = ifxtpm.sys (x86)

Version = 1.90.0000.00 built by: WinDDK

The vb script above should trigger the error if you have hp protect tools installed.

Hopes this help

/Björn

7

(imported comment written by bobk91)

Thanks very much Bjorn.

Bob

8

(imported comment written by Fredrik23)

Hi,

I was wondering if you bobk got any solution from HP?

Or have found a fix fore this, it is fairly anoing. Can’t keep turning of Besclient…

// Fredrik

9

(imported comment written by bobk91)

Well we ended up running the HP bios config utility manually (remotely via WMI, not within BigFix). We still see the jumpiness when it executes but at least we have more control over it. We didn’t get anything useful from HP.

HTH

10

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Can someone tell me if there is a way to collect a systems TPM (Trusted Platform Module) Information out of wmi for instance? In order to install encryption software one needs to know if TPM is enabled .

thanks

-Jim

11

(imported comment written by NoahSalzman)

You have good timing… Ben just asked a question about TPM in this thread -> http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?id=3417

You might try the query he posted there:

Q: selects “* from win32_tpm” of wmi “root\CIMV2\Security\MicrosoftTpm”