* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

I ended up having to spend the afternoon trying to get my neice out of jail so I couldn't get Ubuntu installed until this evening. After downloading the image, I spent the last 4 hours looking through every storage area I have in the house to find a burnable CD-R or CD-RW disk. It is amazing the number of DVD's I have and the lack of CD's that I have. Every CD-RW disk failed during the burn (probably due to age). I did finally find one CD-R disk that burned. Let's hope it is a good one!

ACK!!!

 

CD-RWs do that. Failed burning in later versions of stuff yet put them on a system from pre-2002 and its working fine. Have no idea why.

It's always a good thing to purchase a spindle of 50 CD-R's, you never know when you might need them.

 

Does anyone know if it is possible to get this notebook to supply power to the USB when it is powered off or in hibernate? I have heard there is meant to be 5v standby power! Any help would be hugely appreciated.

 

I would love to charge my iphone when my laptop is in standby. I hope this laptop does this. Although I havent seend this feature adverties much at all in laptops that do support it.

 

it unfortunately doesn't seem to be able to but really hoping I am wrong.

 

Hey guys

So I'm still loving my n61 alot

I'm having a couple of issues though... I'm tired and can only think of one right now

I've basically spent 2 days attempting to get Starcraft (the original and brood war) on my n61 and every time I try to start it (starcraft) the comp tries to start it but it goes to a black screen and the computer completely locks up and I have to hard boot..... Any ideas? Thank you

Mike

 

Epoxy sounds like a bad idea. Silicone would be discrete (dries clear), flexible (won't crack or chip if there is any flex in the case plastic), air/watertight and easy to remove (peels off in chunks) if it caused any problems.

 

So my laptop is a day old now and I am having a problem.
I have not played any games so far, but while watching some videos, the laptp shuts off immediately and turns into a blue screen.
Then it asks me if I want to start it on a safe mode.
I had this problem few times.

I did uninstall the office2007 trial version that was in there and installed my own office copy.

Anyway I restored my pc and I haven't had teh chance to try out the videos again. Just wondering if anyone is having the same issues.

Thanks

 

That's called the blue screen of death and it would help if you can tell us what it said was the cause of the error next time it happens. If you try to watch that video again and it blue screens, maybe the display drivers could be the culprit?

 

I usally grab the colored 5 or 10 packs. The last 5 pack I got had only one disk left and it was a bit hard to find. I think I am going to get a 20 pack of the colored disks and put them in different areas of the house. I have 6 areas where a computer possibly can be so, those are the areas I am putting them. The only time I really use CD-Rs, these days at least, is burning Linux distros.

Ubuntu installed fine. The video card isn't yet supported in the 10.2 drivers and the touchpad isn't detected as a touchpad so you can't configure the touch-tapping. Scrolling does still work and works well. Other then those issues, everything else I tried seem to work well. I am off to bed, but I will play with it more in the morning. Oh, it is BLAZING fast!

 

Thanks, I will record the error when it happens and let the forum know.

 

Usually if you experience a BSOD, it is a problem with the hardware.
When I had my Dell XPS, I was getting BSOD when i started up the PC. I found out that my media card reader was faulty which I had to switch off in the BIOS to be able to start up into Windows.

If I was you, call Asus straight away and let them know.

 

Disable the Automatically restart on error option and then see which BSOD code do you get.
BSOD is not necessarily from hardware failure it could be due to some software also.

Here is how you can disable Auto Restart on error:

Press Windows+Puase key.
On the sidebar press Advanced System settings.
Down in the Startup and Recovery section press Settings.
In the System failure sections unclick the option Automatically restart.

 

Set Starcraft to run in compatibility mode. Then right-click on the desktop and open the Screen Resolution options box. Keep the box open and run Starcraft. I tried the trick on a portable version of broodwars and it worked fine. Alternatively, use VMware or VirtualBox running Windows 98 to play the game.

 

You can read a decent beginners guide here. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/blue_screen_survival_guide

There's also a handy bit of free software here that will let you view all your BSOD logs from windows, without the need to disable automatic restart. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

I also second chiew, BSOD errors are commonly caused by hardware problems. If you have not installed any new drivers or devices and are not overclocking there is a good chance your notebook is faulty. Best to get it checked out now before you have it loaded with software and files.

 

Thanks for starting this Owner's Lounge! I added it to the Info Booth and the Reviews & Owner's Lounges Index.

 

Thanks for the links to guides. I will bookmark them. They could be handy in future.

I suggest to look into this problem using WinDBG tool from Microsoft. This tool can help to pin point what is causing
BSODs.

I believe one should do a proper analysis to see what is causing BSODs.
I don't like to put hardware as the main reason behind BSOD.

I cannot say that the BSOD problem Theonee has is due to hardware failure or software.

In my experience, the 90% of the BSODs I had on both desktop PC and ASUS M50vm were related to software.

I had already two with my new N71JQ BSOD with 0x0000007F in the one week I own this device.
I traced it down to Zonealrm and it was not any hardware issue.

 

Hi everyone, I am very impressed by this model and went through all details you posted. Only one issue stop my trigger, am stay in HK and difficult to find any shop to accept my credit card and deliver it to HK. any help?

 

I think the thread got listed as N61Q. Not sure since I didn't dig too deep.

Anyway, this gave me an idea. We may want to use the first posting of this thread as an index for the information contained inside. We could post links to all of the reviews, hardware modifications, special pricing deals that we find, GPU/CPU overclocking (I think there was one), etc. This way new people coming in could have an easier time finding things. It may even help me cut back on my rants. HA! ;-)

Allyw123, since you started this thread, you are most likely the first post. Do you mind posting the links? We can all take about 10 or 20 pages each and send you the links and categories that we find. Since I may be the only one thinking this is a good idea, as often happens (HA!), I may just be off my rocker. ;-) Then again, if others think this idea has merit, we can all figure out the best approach to getting it done quickly and without too much work for any one person.

 

I am from Germany and order my N71JQ from USA from Gentech PC.
The USA sellers do not accept credit card from outside. I think they will ask you to pay through e-Check.
In my case, I paid through Paypal. But in gereral Gentech does not accept also Paypal for international orders.
In my case, I knew Ken Lee for long time and he accepted that I pay with Paypal.

 

I have found many times that when you have many BSOD's on a new machine even after doing a restore of the factory state, it is hardware related. Since there have been known cases (not too many though) of the laptops shipping with loose RAM modules, I would suggest reseating the RAM as the place to start.

 

I tried the first trick....no dice

ANd i downloaded and installed virtual box...but i have no idea what to do :/

help please...all i wanna do is play some starcraft

WOuld the fact that its on the D: drive have anything to do with it?

 

Still searching for help on this, if someone could PLEASE help me out I would really really appreciate it.

For those with the laptop already: How easy does it look like it would be to replace the optical drive with a second hard drive? Like is the optical drive SATA? I want to have an SSD to boot off of and move my HD to the optical bay. My A1 won't be shipping until Wednesday, but I want to order any parts I might need now so I can have this configuration right off the bat.

Many MANY thanks to whoever can help me out!

 

Here is a forum with a bunch of tricks. Some of them (run in a window, install in comp mode but run without, etc.) worked for some of the people in the forum. Hope something helps:

http://www.sevenforums.com/gaming/1800-starcraft-doesnt-work.html

 

Take a look at this website:
http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=page&id=7&chapter=0

I gotta say I'm very interested in doing that myself. It would be fairly simple to install it, I'd say about a 10 minute job.

It's pretty much just an enclosure and it should work without problems, the key is to purchase the right one, I'm guessing that the dvd burner is SATA (I haven't checked). One of the resellers in here can clarify this, as they offer bluray upgrades and have removed the stock uptical drive.

The only thing that I would be worried about is the transfer speed of that thing. It has to be fast enough so that I would go to the trouble of installing this.

 

I actually had already looked there and even sent them an email. I'm hoping the optical drive is SATA, otherwise it gets a bit trickier.

When I get my laptop, I can try to do some sort of speed testing on an SSD by swapping it between the two bays, but I don't know what sort of programs or process to use for something like that (I've been a Mac guy for the past several years). If someone could link me to a good HD speed testing program I'd be glad to do a comparison. If one of the slots was slightly slower, I would just put the 500gb drive in the slower slot, and then boot off the SSD in the faster slot.

For making it fit, assuming it's SATA, it'd just be a matter of getting the right caddy, or worst case scenario, I'd just Macguyver myself one out of sheet metal and slap some plastic on the end of it.

 

It should fit just fine, although it would look ugly because it doesn't have a cover.

I would put the SSD in the laptop slot and the regular hard drive in the caddy.

As for benchmarking software, you can use Sandra:
http://www.sisoftware.net/

EDIT: I just looked at the website again, and they do have one with a black cover. Let me know if you get this thing cause I'm really interested too. I would also purchase an enclosure for the dvd burner just in case I need it, I would just plug it in the USB port.

 

I have no idea of the speed or price but, don't they sell SSD drives for the ExpressCard slot? I have no idea how well they work or if they are even a viable option but, it may be worth looking into since you won't be slicing and dicing your N61.

 

I'm hoping that it would be somewhat easy to pull the plastic cover off of the DVD drive, but we'll see.

And assuming both ports are the same speed, I would actually put the SSD in the optical bay, since the HD bay is specifically designed to help put a damper on the vibrations and such of a normal hard drive, whereas the optical bay is not, but an SSD obviously doesn't need to have any vibration dampening.

Assuming the N61 is like a lot of other laptops, it should be a matter of removing a few screws and pulling things out, so I wouldn't say "slicing and dicing," so much as "fidgeting," haha. But since no one else has done it, I guess I'll keep you guys updated.

 

That is a good point, I had not thought about that...but I doubt the caddy would be as fast as the native sata port. We'll find out I guess

Just make sure you get the right caddy!

 

Ok, I took out my dvd burner (had to remove 2 screws) in under a minute.

I can confirm that it is a SATA drive.

 

All,

Just pulled the trigger on the N61JQ-A1. I ordered from Amazon and am hoping it ships soon, right now it's on backorder. I picked up a Asus 1005PE netbook as well. I'm deploying for a year, so the N61 should get me by for movies, games, and skype in my room, while the netbook will keep me company on the long flights back and forth to the middle east.

I was choosing between the N61 and a macbook pro. But I couldn't wait for the latest chip update any longer... that and I'm driving my wife crazy comparing laptops! Plus I thought of the idea of buying the N61 + netbook for $400 less than I would have spent on the Macbook and thought "aha!"

If anybody has reports on how long they had to wait for their amazon shipment, let me know! Thanks for all the good info in this thread... I can't wait to get my new laptop.

Casey

 

That didn't even cross my mind. Great idea!

Well, having an optical drive has its advantages too. ;-) I do have an external HP DVD burner and rarely use my internal burner so, I do understand.

I found an ExpressCard drive on Screw-Egg (48GB for $170). The reviews of most of the "performance" style ExpressCard drives lead me to believe that if you don't get a great drive, you get a really bad one. Also, the transfer speeds look to be about half of the SATA drives. They may make an interesting drive for tinkering or alternative OSes but, not for your primary OS.

I did find an 8GB ExpressCard drive for under $14 shipped. The performance of this specific drive is about that of a USB thumb drive. I may get this drive and put my page file on it since it hides itself in the EC slot, doesn't tie up a USB port and is pretty cheap. Plus, I have no other use for the EC slot right now. ;-)

 

I ordered mine on the 18th... and still have no estimated ship date , I'm hoping real soon, but here I am 10 days later with no estimation at all....

Someone else here on these forums order their laptop on the 6th and it shipped for them on the 8th... I guess they got lucky.

 

Many thanks! I'm pulling the trigger on ordering the SSD, and will basically figure out the caddy when I physically have the notebook.

I honestly have NEVER used the optical drive in my Macbook, with the exception of reinstalling the OS. But if I had to, even that could have been done via thumb drive. Some use optical drives all the time, but it's just dead weight for me, so different strokes for different folks I guess.

Thanks for looking into ExpressCard SSDs. It's too bad that they're quite a bit slower... Ah well, I'll report my findings on SSDs and whatnot in the next week or so.

 

Looking forward to it!

 

Hi guys,

I just bought my N61Jq few days ago but i already have some issues with world of warcraft (which should run perfectly on such a laptop) : with max settings i only have between 5-16 fps in Dalaran and only 30fps (maximum) in 25-men group. And it's not a temperature issue (cores are at 60-70°)

Can you tell me how do you do to get 60 fps ? What graphic driver did you install (i've tried with the one that was installed by Asus when you buy the computer and the last one that you can get on Asus website, the 8.680.0.0) ? Do you play at max settings or not ?

Aout, who is a bit disappointed with his new laptop.

 

If you have your multi-sampling on 2x or higher, then you aren't going to be able to use Ultra for your settings. I keep most settings at either medium-high (distance related) or medium (effects) with 4x multi-sampling and everything runs smooth. I am also using the original drivers that were shipped with my laptop. I hear the latest leaked ATI drivers give everything a very nice bump in performance but, I haven't tested them personally.

 

So I've been trying to record some gaming videos with Fraps, but I'm having some troubles. I downloaded the Dirt 2 demo and tried recording some gameplay, but whenever I do it cuts the FPS in half and makes a really crappy looking video. Anybody have any tips for this kind of thing?

I did the best I could right now. Below is a screen shot of the benchmark run results in Dirt 2 with all the setting on high at native resolution. It looks fantastic running on this thing.

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/368/dirt2benchmarkresults.png

 

Does anyone else have a squealing sound coming from their n61? Mine has a very annoying squeal coming from the center of it. I am guessing its from the harddrive. I have to have some kind of sound on all the time or I get headaches.

 

Not on mine. If yours has that kind of sound coming from it, you may want to contact ASUS.

 

Ive had my x1 for about 3 weeks now, got it from Amazon for $899 with my employee discount! Loving it so far. this is actually my second one as the first one I had to send back due to the optical drive being very hard to open/close. Seemed like it fell off track or something. This is my first laptop purchase. This forum has been very helpful in me making my decision. Thanks to all who have contributed.

I don't...and my room has dust galore.. I know I should clean up more often but yeah.

 

My BSOD started again, and this time it is after I reset my computer to factory settings and the BSOD is still there;

STOP: 0x00000124 c0x000000000000004 0XFFFFFA8004Af3038 6X000000000000000 X00000000000000

thanks

 

I have'nt seen this posted yet:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Asus-N61-Laptop,review-1507.html

A review of the ASUS n61jq-x1, and a contest for the chance to win it.

 

David, That sounds like a good idea. Anything to keep your stress level down . I will add any links sent to me. And I don't mind searching lounge pages for links to post on the first page. For categories you mean list a category on the first page and then add individual links to that. Or is there a way to pool the links into one link.
EDIT!!! I just noticed E.B.E added links to the first 2 N61 lounges to the first page. I had no idea you could edit someones post. If that is the case David or anyone else has my full blessing to add links to this page. And I also give full permission to edit my lousy grammer and spelling on any post I make I am lost without spell checker

 

a quick question: is there any heat or power adapter throttling issue with core i7 version of N61JQ-A1? my tasks will keep cpu usage at 100% for 6 hours a day. just wonder if this laptop could be up to the workload without glitch.

 

Thank's, But I'm not entering any contest by Newegg. If I win they will just change the rules afterwards (1 year warranty!).

 

Oh you guys... your giving newegg such a hard time... although they should be forced to honor the warranty goof.

I have purchased all my desktop parts from then for years and have never had a single problem, although Ive gotten lucky from the 4 pcs I have built (with parts from new egg) I have never had to RMA a single part... So I nave no clue how the returns/cs department is.

 

I still suggest trying to reseat the RAM and seeing if that helps.

 

For categories I was thinking of something like this:

Upgrades:
Hard Drive In CD Rom Bay
Link To Post
Link To Post
RAM Upgrades
Link To Post (something like "Mixing Ram")
Link To Post (maybe something like "Recommended RAM")
Troubleshooting:
Running Starcraft
Link To Post

etc...

There are probably better ways of doing it but, this was just jumped out of my head at the time.

Anyway, let's look to see who else wants to help out and we can all get organized on how we want to split up tasks and layout the first post.