HP Pavilion A6300F

Customer Reviews:

great deal! [Posted on 2008-03-21]
very nice pc for the price. very easy setup, no problems. the geforce graphics this comes with are onboard junk, i added much better dedicated video and sound cards and upgraded my power supply all for around $100, and now am very pleased with this machine.

Fast and easy [Posted on 2008-03-24]
This is a great desktop for the price. It is fast enough for advanced users and seems super fast for the novice. Can't get much better than this for the money.

Okay purchase once you downgrade to XP. [Posted on 2008-03-30]
Bought this computer on February 25 using the free shipping (estimated 5-7 days) and it arrived on February 27! Overall, no complaints. But there's a few things you should know. The computer isn't as quiet as the specs claim; the fan emits an audible hum. Still, it's a far cry from the roar of the AMD Duron Athlon I had custom made in 2000 and upgraded from. However, said roar is perfectly duplicated by this system when a DVD is burned or initially read-accessed. At times I can also hear metallic clicks (sounds kinda like when you crinkle foil) indicating that the computer is processing something. While noticeable, they're not loud.

CDs take quite a few seconds to auto read; my old PC detected them almost instantly by comparison. About the hard drive size, I confess that I was ignorant to the fact that video cards and other internal components can consume 35 or more GB of space. This was what the HP rep told me when I called asking the reason that my A6330F was showing 465 GB and not the 500 GB as advertised. I know, I know, it's still a huge hard drive---I'm not complaining. I just like to know upfront exactly what I'm getting and paying for is all.

Unlike what I read in the first review here, the back of my PC did not come with a DVI port, but I figure I can buy a VGA-DVI adapter and a DVI cable to compensate.

Giving Vista the benefit of the doubt, I tried it out for a few minutes and boy was everyone right. You ARE better off downgrading this computer to XP and I was oblivious to how I should go about doing this. When I stupidly installed XP Pro SP2 Lite I was thinking that it would autodetect all components during installation like it did on all of the PCs I ever put it on. It did NOT and I had no internet because the network card wasn't being recognized. I'm going off the topic here I know but I thought it best to share this part of my experience because I wasted quite a few hours before I was able to enjoy this purchase, completely ruining my excitement over finally replacing my 8 year old computer.

Since nothing in the paperwork you get says this, I thought I'd let you know: calling HP and letting them know that you overwrote Vista will completely void your warranty. I found this out in a pretty bad way too. I call them all alarmed that the crucial hardware isn't being recognized and as soon as I told them that I attempted to downgrade from Vista the rep unceremoniously transferred me to technical support and that guy coldly said as though addressing a felon, "There is nothing I can do for you. You have just permanently voided your warranty." I fell silent, shocked and expecting him to elaborate or apologize but he eerily kept quiet. Sorry to digress further but I must add that some people forget that their failure to help their fellow man in sheer loyalty to the multi-billion dollar corporation that likely pays them all of $6-7/ hour isn't gonna get them a raise, bonus or any kind of award. I'm sure HP didn't promote that rep. for being so calloused. Sheesh, would it have killed him to mutter, "You can get the drivers free on the internet at the HP site, don't worry, it's gonna be okay"?

Through forum reading and driver searches made using the HP website (I spent hours pulling up the desktop models that came with XP and noting what drivers HP had for download; I trial-and-error installed some and thank God, even though the model numbers were different it worked as evidenced by the yellow question marks going away in Device Manager), NVIDIA website and freeware programs like Unknown Device Identifier and Everest Ultimate Edition v.4.20.1292 I not only got all of the drivers I needed but also discovered that you need to run XP MCE on this system unless you don't mind seeing "IEEE 1394 Controller" with a yellow question mark next to it in Device Manager. My PC was totally functional, no problems at all running XP Pro with the drivers I'd installed but for some reason, no matter what I did, I couldn't get rid of that one aberration in Device Manager is all. Switching to XP MCE (and installing the drivers I collected---yes you still have to install them) was the only thing that solved this.

In short, downgrading will cause the following items in Device Manager to have a yellow question mark next to it: Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus; Other PCI Bridge Device; SM Bus Controller; Video Controller (VGA compatible); PCI Simple Communications Controller (and said IEEE item if you downgrade to XP Pro instead of MCE). I uploaded the required drivers here (I call it my Vista Downgrade Kit for HP A6330F: hxxp://xxx.megaupload.com/?d=HS7FX0Q3 Mirror: hxxp://momupload.com/files/84176/Vista_Downgrade_Kit_for_HP_A6330F.rar.html Mirror: hxxp://thefilehost.net/download.php?id=5A2955031 hxxp://momupload.com/files/84206/Win_XP_Pro_SP2_Lite.iso.html Mirror: hxxp://xxx.megaupload.com/?d=EYRFWHC4 For MCE try torrents (my upload to filedropper.com is taking longer than a week). If I can save just one person the stress and aggravation I went through, my pains will be worth it.

Great basic computer [Posted on 2008-04-04]
This computer (and a Toshiba monitor) replaced my Gateway system. So far it does everything I need and it does them well. I was worried about Vista but the 2gb of memeory seems to be handling it. Great DVD setup, and the price is right.

Review of new computer [Posted on 2008-04-05]
HP Pavilion A6330F Desktop PC (AMD Athlon 64 X 2 Dual Core 5600+ Processor, 3 GB RAM, 500 GB Hard Drive, Vista Premium) This computer is great and works very much to my satisfaction!

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