HP offers laptop replacements in response to industry-wide problem

By Alun Williams

Posted on 28 Jun 2004 at 13:24

HP has identified a design flaw in certain notebook memory modules that can cause system crashes. Compaq and HP laptops are among the models affected and the company is offering no-cost replacements.

Manufactured by third parties, the flawed memory modules can cause the blue screen of death, intermittent lock-ups or memory corruption. Under HP's 'voluntary replacement programme', the affected 128-, 256-, and 512 MB modules can be replaced at no cost. Orders for this program, however, must be received before 31 December 2004.

HP insists the problem will be industry-wide, i.e. other notebooks brands could be affected as well, and that HP has just come clean about a wider problem.

'HP is the first technology company to publicly announce the existence of this problem - which we discovered by conducting our own ongoing and routine testing of our notebook products,' said Ronald Kasik, a director of HP's Personal Systems Group. 'We are taking immediate steps to notify customers, partners and our employees to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. While the probability of occurrence of this issue with the memory modules is low and dependent on the user's environment, we think it's important to notify our customers of this potential problem.'

The technical details are that HP has uncovered a circuit design flaw that is 'sensitive to self-refresh exit timing'. This sensitivity may incorrectly cause a refresh cycle to occur which could then corrupt bits within memory.

HP states that the problem will exist on notebooks that have the following design architecture [quoting from a FAQ on the HP website]:

- An electrical design that incorporates the following Intel standard core logic modules: 845MP, 845MZ, 852PM, 852GME, 855PM using a discrete video graphics controller, that is, not using 'shared memory'.

- Standard Intel processors that support the C3 low power idle state, that is, Mobile P4 or Pentium M processors.

-A system BIOS/ACPI that enables the C3 low power idle state.

More information, including the FAQ and further details on the HP models affected, can be found online at www.hp.com/support/memoryreplacement/. The web page includes a utility to detect - and order replacements for - affected modules.