Author Topic: HP Victus - Bad Omen  (Read 7564 times)

Dragon

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HP Victus - Bad Omen
« on: November 05, 2022, 22:39:12 »
I bought an HP Victus recently. This is the first new computer that I've purchased for myself in over a decade. One big reason for this, aside from the money, was that my Sony Vaio had a great keyboard layout to me, and most laptops that I had found weren't setup the same. Prior to this, I had been recycling, reusing, modifying and upgrading my old Sony Vaio laptop. That computer originally had Windows 7 installed, but has since become a fully Linux machine. I've been running Ubuntu as the primary OS for the past few years. A couple months ago, my old laptop started crashing often again. Even after reinstalling the latest version of Ubuntu, it was having problems. My son recently got an HP Victus and when I checked it out it seemed to have a very nice keyboard layout, good size, and nice specs, so I picked one up for myself. Around this same time, my wife started a new job and needed a computer at home to use until one arrived from her new employer, so I offered to let her use the one that I had just picked up since I hadn't used it much yet, expecting to just wipe it after she used it and then I'd start fresh again. All this was fine, but the problem was that I didn't have much time to check out my new HP Victus for the first few weeks.

After eventually getting my laptop back, resetting it back to day 1, and working with it more, I realized that the Home and End keys were missing... replaced with an Omen Hub key and a Calculator key. The Calculator key was able to be remapped as the End key, but not the Omen key.  I thought it would be something that would need a registry edit to adjust, but even using a program called SharpKeys couldn't detect the Omen key.  Very frustrating. Apparently this is something that HP has decided isn't important for their users. I've continued looking for an option to update this key, because other than that, I've been happy with this this new laptop.

Of course, on the 10-keys there is 7/Home and 1/End, which do work for those when the Num Lock is switched off, or by holding the Shift key, but not the same functionality as holding the Shift key plus pressing Home or End, which highlights the line.

Searching Google brought up several other threads of complaints and alternatives for this issue, including https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=43706 and https://www.reddit.com/r/Hewlett_Packard/comments/fws7h3/hp_omen_sequencer_remap_homecommand_center_button/ but for my needs, since the keyboard doesn't appear to be mapped to F24, there might only be one way. An alternative that might fit what I'm looking for as found on https://github.com/jingyu9575/remap-omen-key
"Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again? ... OK, well, the button on the side. Is it glowing?... Yeah, you need to turn it on. Err, the button turns it on. Yeah, you do know how a button works, don't you? No, not on clothes." - Roy (The IT Crowd)

Dragon

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Re: HP Victus - Bad Omen
« Reply #1 on: November 08, 2023, 20:08:15 »
I have a laptop for work that charges via USB, which is handy because a powered docking station can be used to connect multiple monitors along with charging the HP Probook laptop without needing a separate power cord. That lead me to another discovery about my HP Victus - USB-C charging is NOT SUPPORTED. There's a little lightning bolt icon next to the USB-C port, and I was able to try it out with a powered docking station with USB-C, only to discover that it doesn't charge the laptop at all. Apparently the charging feature that it has is just to provide a little bit of charge to other small devices, such as a phone, even when the laptop is powered off. So... there's another thing to consider for this laptop and future purchases.
"Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again? ... OK, well, the button on the side. Is it glowing?... Yeah, you need to turn it on. Err, the button turns it on. Yeah, you do know how a button works, don't you? No, not on clothes." - Roy (The IT Crowd)