Don't Buy an HP Laptop

So, I almost always purchase used tech. It just makes sense for me financially and from a moral perspective. If I can use something someone else is getting rid of, then it’s better for everyone. I’m savvy enough to usually get a lot of use out of older hardware for longer than other normies.

But back in July of last year, my mom’s laptop shit the bed and needed repair. Dell jerked us around, sending three different technicians here to fix it, the first two actually making the issue worse, before the third one threw in the towel and just had us ship it to Texas to be fixed.

My mom is elderly and spends most of her retirement on her computer, so going without a computer was going to be a no-go. All of my older computers have Linux, and she’s the one member of my immediate family that will not touch Linux. So, I decided to be a nice son and buy a new computer that she could use when hers was out of commission. I would be able to repurpose it as my work laptop once she got hers back.

I ended up with a 16" HP Envy 360 that I bought at Best Buy during back to school weekend for a little under $1000. It had great specs, and while I have had bad experiences with HP laptops in the past, their workstation has been great. So I thought that I’d give it another try.

BIG mistake.

The laptop is well-built, and it served my mom fine for the few days she had to use it. Then it came to me, and it sat for a little while. Then I installed Bluefin and then Nobara on it; all seemed well. I then installed Elementary OS on it. Now, I’m not going to say that what happened next was eOS’s fault because it wasn’t, but… Well, I want to blame the OS.

After using eOS for a few days, I restarted the laptop after doing some updates, and after shutting down, the damn thing would not post. Now, for those of you who don’t know about computers, posting is the process where the screen turns on and loads the firmware that will eventually lead to a bootloader and then the OS. All computers go through this process. A successful post is usually signified by you seeing the laptop or motherboard manufacturer’s logo on the screen and a small bit of text telling you how to get into the BIOS.

This laptop never showed that. All it would do is turn on to a pure black screen. Sometimes, if I waited long enough, I’d get a random CMOS error message. Now, this in itself is odd, mostly because the laptop is brand new. It’s a 2024 model and was manufactured in 2024. It shouldn’t have any CMOS issues at all. But, shit happens, so I pried (literally) the back off the laptop (it was very difficult to get off) and went searching for a CMOS battery or jumper. No dice. This laptop doesn’t have a CMOS battery, and if there are pins to jump it, nobody on the internet has found them and posted about it.

So, since the notebook was so new, I decided to brave the HP support chat and ask for help. Surely, those fine folk would be able to fix this thousand dollar laptop that is less than half a year old.

Well, turns out, no. They can’t. Their reason? Their reason was that I had installed Linux on the device, and since that is a sin, they can’t support it. Nothing to be said about how this couldn’t possibly be a Linux problem, since the damn thing won’t post. I got the run around for over an hour about how they were no longer responsible for the laptop because it no longer had Windows on it. One guy, and I swear this is true, told me to install Windows on it again, and then they’d be able to help. If I had actually been on the phone and not a chat, I’d have lost my mind. How the frilly fuck can I install a new OS on a computer that won’t post?

Needless to say, I was pissed all the way off. I even got on X, formerly Twitter, and bitched about HP. I got a response from their social media guy, and they ended up having the same response: they couldn’t honor the warranty because I had voided it by installing Linux on it. If I wanted service, I’d have to upgrade to a business plan, which would cost me damn near as much as the laptop cost in the first place.

I did not pay that. Damn if I will ever give HP another effing dime. Fuck those guys. I should have bought a Dell. At least when they screw you over, they buy you dinner first.

I’m As Stubborn As A Mule.

I took a break from the laptop for a few days. I had plans of either buying a new laptop (i.e., a used laptop on eBay) and just junking this one, or finding a local shop to see if they could fix it. But I really didn’t want to do either one of those because I’m on a Low Buy 2025 plan to see if I can recover from the shopaholic asshole I became in 2024. Spending more money on a secondary computer that would only be used to test Linux distros and on those fair few times I work outside the house seemed silly.

But I had spent this money on the laptop, and having it sit around as a stickered paper weight seemed wasteful, so I decided to do some more searching. Surely someone on the internet had this same problem. Sure enough, in the depths of Reddit, I found someone who had the same CMOS error I experienced. They didn’t fix it, but they had some ideas.

First, I would need to reset the bios. Normally, this could be done with a hidden partition on the NVMe. Oops. That’s long gone because of Linux. LOL. But it’s pretty easy to go get a BIOS reset key made. If you have a Windows PC. Which I do not. Because, again, Linux. But that is a solvable problem. I installed Windows on my secondary SSD in my main rig and suffered.

Guys, Windows sucks donkey balls. And not the good kind. How anyone uses that waste of code, I don’t know.

However, I got it installed and got the USB key made. Resetting the BIOS made no difference. Then I got back on the Google and found another person who had a CMOS problem on this laptop. They found out through HP that the CMOS functionality is controlled by the main battery and that resetting it is as simple as pulling the main battery out for a half hour. I did that, and I changed the NVMe at the same time, figuring I might as well since they all use the same screws.

Et Viola!

I got a new error: “There’s nothing on this drive; please insert a bootable disk.”

Hallelujah!

This I could solve. So I got myself a USB stick with Tumbleweed on it, and installed openSUSE, and the laptop works again.

Don’t Buy HP

I learned my lesson. I will never, not ever, buy a new HP device. I may still end up with a used one, someday, though I will be much more wary about the brand overall. The workstation I use for my home lab is solid and works well, so HP isn’t all bad. But I will not give my hard-earned money to the company itself ever again. It’s not even that the laptop broke. They do that, and shit happens no matter what. But that response? Total bullshite. It was complete nonsense to blame this issue on Linux. And it would have cost them nothing to tell me how to reset the CMOS. But apparently, Linux is a code word for them to get them off the hook when it comes to the built-in warranty. And that has to be against the law somewhere. And, if it’s not, it definitely should be.

Needless to say, this was a frustrating experience. But I fixed it, and that felt pretty damn good. So, alls well that ends well. I guess. Fuck HP.