W3j Owners Lounge

i think i may be the first to have to go and do a recovery. i had a problem when i went and tried to install an older version of NHC and think it messed something up. it's odd, since i did have .NET framework ver. 1.1 which was what it needed to install.

now when i start windows, it says that "windows has recovered from a serious error", but it contintues to work fine. in any case, to prevent any complications resulting from this in the future, i'm going to just do a recovery. good thing i didn't install much yet.

 

I have two questions. How do I disable the modem on start up? Where can I get a good monitoring program for the W3J that will monitor temperatures and such? One more question. Should I install the latest Catylist drivers?

 

Click on start -> run -> "msconfig". in the startup tab, disable sm56hlpr.exe if it is there. Then go to the control panel (classic view), System, hardware tab, device manager, modem, and right click on "motorolla sm56 data fax modem", then select "disable"

You should install the omega drivers for optimum performance:
http://omegadrivers.net/

just click on ATI at the top, then below click on the xp operating system.

I'm still looking for a program to tell the temperatures of the GPU, CPU, and HDD. Post here if you find it!

 

Thank you for the info I will look for something to monitor the notebook and post if I can find anything.

 

Speedfan is a good program to use to montior temps.

 

Every day this thing is making me fall in love with it more and more.

Movie Maker is a great little program - just put together a picture/video slide show with a seperate audio track. No bad for a bundled/free program

Editing and importing digital video was a snap - the W3j handled with ease.

Save for a few little quirks, this is a dream machine for me.

 

Hey all,

I was searching the forums for GPU OC/UC info, and have a question that I couldn't find an answer to - and forgive me if this is stupid.

If I use ATI Tray Tools, for example, with Omega drivers, should I uninstall the ATI Catalyst Control Center that came with the W3J? I know I have to uninstall the stock driver before installing Omega's, but should I also remove the Control Center? Likewise, if I use NHC (Notebook Harcware Control), should I first uninstall or disable Power4Gear?

Thanks in advance as always

[EDIT: From reading up on the Omega Drivers, I notice they recommend using ATI Tray Tools versus ATI Control Panel, but don't explicity state an uninstall is required...It also says ATT offers support for ATI CC - I'm assuming this means they can be installed in tandem, while only usint ATT to make modifications... Please confirm if you can! Or just slap me if I"m way off ]

 

The exact same thing just happened to me. Kinda freaked me out also. Hit f-f7 twice and got my desktop back.

 

The installation wizard for Omega Drivers/ATI Tray tools (they come together) ordered me to delete Catalyst Control Center before installing.

Does anyone know how to disable these quick icons on startup: "volume control icon" and "safely remove hardware icon" ?

ty

 

Yes and the reason being that when you install the omega's the program asks you to uinstall everything ATI on your computer. After looking through the FAQ and some other forums I found that when you install the omega's it not only installs ati tray tools which does the same thing as the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) but it changes some of the settings. If you have both of them and you change the settings on one the other might get overwritten.

I didn't do anything with power4gear stuff.

 

@ A-lit : I have both CCC and AT and they work just great. I don't use CCC though. Same situation with NHC and P4G.

 

Thanks for the replies Neo & Kier, I'll go ahead with my removal

Also, Neo - to dissable the volume control icon in the taskbar, go to Control Panel --> Sound & Audio Devices, and in the Volume tab there should be a check box to place (or remove if unchecked) a volume control icon in the taskbar.

As for the "safely remove hardware" icon, I'm assuming you have something plugged in via USB, Firewire, etc and you just don't want the icon to show up? I'm honestly not sure how to handle that one as I'm not sure it can be removed. Any one else here can chime in?

 

Uhh... so I'm installing Omega drivers on the W3J and I get the message "Is your video card an IGP or a Laptop? If you select yes, Overclocking will be disabled...etc). I'm assuming I just say no and ignore the message? Let me know if I'm wrong... sorry all I know I sound like a newb but I don't wanna screw up my brand new W3J (its so pretty!)

Also, I know some people have posted about the Windows battery monitor only showing the time for their 2nd bay battery, then screen blacking out, and then you'll see the remaining battery time... On a related note, I have my W3J on battery power and set NHC to "Max Battery". Both the NHC battery monitor and the Windows battery monitor report the same percentage of usage (92%). Windows reports ~4 hours, while NHC shows ~11.5. I definitely think the NHC estimation is well high over what we'll actually see, however this is the estimate with no load on the CPU whatsoever. I'll keep an eye on it over the next couple of days with no load, mild load (internet browsing) and then some more moderate load (file transferring over wireless network). I'll let you know what kind of results I get. My guess is that both are overestimations of the duration, but hopefully we can get ~7 out of this baby - wishful thinking, I know

 

Quick question:

Does the W3J come with an HDD thinger that you can put in place of the optical drive? If so, it's NOT SATA, right?

Thanks!

 

Nick,

The Optical Bay HDD Enclosure comes with an adapter - I believe it is to convert the SATA end of the HDD to the internal connection of the optical bay.



I've got another question for you all, too. My mom's HP TC1100 tabled that she had came ith an external CD-RW drive that I think was roughly the same dimensions of the W3J drive, and hers came with a "clamshell" type carrying case for it. The case was form-fitting and durable, and was much slimmer and more travel-friendly than the stock cardboard boxes. Does anyone know if such a case exists for the W3J drive??

Thanks!

 

It's only giving me the hdd temps?

 

A-Lit,

I know far less about overclocking an ATI card than mastha and others, if he says you can run both at the same time I'm sure you can.

As for the IGP/Laptop prompt: I actually installed the drivers twice. I wasn't sure what to put there either. The first time I said "no" cuz I thought it would prevent me from overclocking. I still wasn't able to overclock using ATI tool so I reinstalled (this time uninstalling CCC and everything they told me to) to see if it would work. It still didn't and this last time I put "yes."

Reading it more carefully though, unless I'm an idiot I think it said, "to disable overclocking using ATI Tray Tool" and I wasn't planing on using that to overclock anyway. Overclocking still hasn't worked for me because ATI tool doesn't work for me (others have had a similar problem) and now I can't use ATI tray tool to OC either so I have to reinstall the omega drivers before I can even think about doing it (I think...lol). My problem is that my screen goes black forever when I try to set either core or mem clock in ATI tool so I don't know what the deal is.

Regardless, I was initially planning on overclocking and I'm going to hold off for a while. I'm pretty happy with my performance just running the catalysts for now.

Anyway, here is a nice guide I found for overclocking an ATI card: http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?p=1703426

 

I just dloaded the beta version .25 b for ATI tool and it looks like that might work better for me. I haven't overclocked with it yet but at least it is detecting my core and mem speeds.

 

does anyone know how to alter the switch keys on the left and right of the w3j? specifically i want to make the cd player switch load itunes instead of wmp. someone mentioned downloading "multiplugin for itunes" -- i have it, now what do i do? lol

 

These are in reply to http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1397743&postcount=6

3. I got a Macbook Pro and took it back(I'm primarily a Windows user, didn't like the 1 button mouse, and didn't like having to use an input remapper, also hate the fact that the CPU, video and chipset area all soldered. If one fails, you have to replace the whole board that has all three of those on it). The screen is fine on both, although you have a bit higher resolution on the Macbook Pro, and its larger, as it is a 15 or 17 inch compared to the W3J's 14. I believe the native resolution of the 15in Macbook Pro I had was 1440 x 900, and the W3J is 1280x768. One thing I did notice on the Macbook Pro's screen is there was a bit of shimmering / speckles. I am very happy with the W3J's screen. Only thing that could stand some improvement is the backlight bleedthrough on black backgrounds, but this is common on most LCD panels.

4. I don't notice any reflections with the backlight turned all the way up. Depends on the lighting conditions, just adjust the backlight till they go away. Haven't tried it outdoors as of yet.

8. I can't seem to get Vista Beta 2 to boot off the dvd, or after the first reboot upon trying to upgrade from within WinXP.

 

Hey guys, I was wondering if someone might know about this. When I close the lid on my w3j it goes to standby/suspend mode. But when I open the lid to recover from standby, nothing seems to work in attempting to recover (pressing keyboard keys, moving mouse, pressing power button) Does anyone know how to solve this or is having the same issue?

 

hey!

just go to start --> control panel --> (classic view) power options --> advanced tab -> under "when i close the lid" select "do nothing"

that way the lcd will just turn off when you clost the lid

 

Go to Edit>Multi Plugin>Compatibility>check Make Programs Recognize iTunes as Winamp>check Fix Media Keys Functionality>Mode 2

 

Kier,

I actually ended up installing the drivers twice as well. The first time I installed the Omega set (which included ATI Tray Tools) I selected "Yes" to the laptop question, and then I noticed that ATT locked out all OC options. I then removed everything, reinstalled, and selected "no". This time when I checked it did detect my core and mem clock speeds, and options were available to OC but I haven't tried using them yet. I'll check it out and let you know. Thanks!

 

doesn't work whenever i click the "switch button for cd" windows media player, not winamp is opened

 

and just out of curiosity is it possible to alter the "power4gear switch" on the right side to run NHC?

 

been wonderin about that too. NHC does have Power4Gear listed under its PowerScheme you could choose, which I guess doesn't really answer your question anyway. It'd be nice if that button could change the CPU speed settings in NHC though. Was also wondering if any of you have Asus DVD player turn on when you accidentally press the Play button, and if you know how to disable that.

 

Where are you seeing this "switch button for cd" option? I never mentioned that and it's not in the plugin options. If you follow the procedure I mentioned on my last post, the media buttons should work for iTunes.

 

maybe he means the instantOn button, since well that button has a CD (and the letters) on it -and it does open wmp.

 

So I figured I'd play around with ATI Tray Tools to try some OC'ing, and although I can open the overclocking menu and move the sliders for core/mem speeds, for some reason it says "overclocking disalbled" and won't actually accept or initiate the changes I make. Anyone have some insight for this?

Thanks!

[EDIT: In going through the readme for ATT I found the following line dated April 14 2006:

"Overclocking for X1300/X1600/X1800/X1900 disabled in this release due to lack of information and without hardware sample in my laboratory."

This was right before the most recent release, which was on April 17, 2006, which did not state any type of correction for this issue. Is anyone else experiencing this problem or have I made an error during install or something? Could this have any type of conflict with NHC? When I tried to use the ATI Clock Control in NHC it said "failed to read ATI Clock..." and now all the check boxes are greyed out. Thanks again all]

 

Thanks man!

 

ahem
welcome me to the family


im in love...

 

yes i'm referring to the "instantOn buttion". in the w3j manual it's called the "cd power switch"

 

hey how do you remove the stickers safely?

 

Just fixed the partitions to my liking and wonders if i will notice any difference if i change to ntfs instead of fat32.

And what do you need the rescue partition for when you got the rescue cd that i guess will do the same thing? Another 1.9gig could come in handy later on but at the moment i dont need it.

 

Dys - I just pulled the stickers off slowly and it was no problem at all. I'm assuming you're referring to the "Splendid" sticker and the other sticker on the left of the trackpad. If you're talking about the ATI, WinXP and other tiny "badge" stickers, those I'm not sure about, I left those on. Usually the glue for those has been a little harder to remove, in my experience.

Tegis - I believe the recovery partition will allow you to restore everything to factory condition including all drivers and preinstalled software beyond Windows - i.e., ASUS splendid, ASUStek DVD, etc. It would eliminate the need to use the extra CD's.... feel free to correct me if i'm off.

 

dysfunctiotnal, for the tiny stickers i just picked at them until i was able to get my nail under the corner then i just peeled them off slowly. and for the glue that's left behind, just take the stickers you peeled off and stick them on the area where the glue is to remove it. you might have to do it a few times.

 

cooolllllllllll

hahah just took out the splendid
will be doing the same for the rest.. bluetooth speaker is already peeling off..

thanks dragon, thanks alit

im in love.
mwahaha

 

No problem dys. I just took off all the smaller "badge" stickers. The only one that gave me an issue was the Windows XP/Vista ready one (damm you bill gates!) but the glue came off eventually.

Also, using 3dmark05 I got a 4175 score without any OC'ing. Hopefully this can be improved with an OC since some of the framerates were rather low... I guess the score itself is more important, though?

Still fiddling with ATT trying to get it to work. I tried installing the stand-alone Ati Tray Tools (i.e., not the one packaged with Omega) but it still says Overclocking Disabled in the OC Option window. Could it be disabled through the drivers? Hmm....

 

Try this: http://power4gear.bk-kicks.com/hcontrol.htm ..it remaps Hcontrol. Look around in the forums to see if anyone has done so in a W3 series.

 

What motherboard model is in the W3J. I am trying to configure Motherboard monitor 5.

 

Hmm nice program but didn't seem to work when i tried it on the w3j. Maybe other owners have more luck or maybe there's something else in the registry that needs to be editted.

edit: forgot to mention, does anyone else feel like NHC (the most recent one) is a bit buggy? I try to set a lowerl voltage rate for the 11x step but the program just keeps testing out the 6x stepping over and over again. It also doesn't seem to display the max cpu speed when selecting the max performance profile. Seems to only display 1.00ghz even when the load is 60-80%. Also seems to only switch between the lowest and highest speed steppings when I choose dynamic switching, but most of the time the program says the lappy is on its lowest speed step.

 

Weird I got the nifty program to work

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ASUS\HControl\Custom]
@="C:\\Program Files\\iTunes\\iTunes.exe"

Unfortunately by using the modified Hcontrol, my wireless lan instantOn/switch button doesn't work

 

oh so you put iTunes at \Software\Asus\Hcontrol\Custom ?
I tried to change the power4gear and touchpad settings/buttons but they didn't seem to change at all. did you try those?

 

i tried those and they don't work unfortunately



anyone know how to disable the tinkling noise made during startup on the Asus splash screen? anyone know how to disable the windows xp music/sound that's produced upon logging in?

 

Ok, I've only had my W3J for a few days and I have already used both recovery procedures. The recovery partition option is MUCH faster then the CD option. You hold F9 during boot to get to it. I did this just to try it out at first. If you choose the CD option, you actually have to go through 3 CDs, Recovery CD's 1 & 2, then the Driver CD. This takes hours, as opposed to the recovery partition option which, for me, took less then an hour.

They both accomplish the exact same thing however. I had to use the CD option because after trying to install Vista Beta 2, holding F9 during boot to get to the recovery partition no longer worked. I'm not too worried about that though, as I always like to repartition my drive to have 1 large partition, using an external USB drive for backups.

 

For the boot up sound, go to BIOS when booting up, and disable it.

For the windows Boot up sound, its under sound and audio options, then sound, scroll down to Start Windows, and under it, change the sound, windows_xp_startup.wav to (none)

 

thanks much

the annoying "safely remove hardware" icon seems to be a permanent fixture of my taskbar. when i double click it, it asks me if i want to remove my DVD rom drive. anyone know what's wrong?

 

Hmmmmm, it seems like it thinks the OD is new. Have you taken it out recently?

 

ummm well i didn't physically remove it, but i moved the spring holding it in place to the "unlocked" mode. let's just assume i took it out lol

and yea how does one enter the BIOS on a w3j?