ASUS N71JQ Owners Lounge

Who would you recommend such an upgrade for? Right now my internet is 25Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. I don't think I'd benefit from such an upgrade.

 

I'm unable to run the recovery disks - just get error messages. Called Asus tech support and was told that everybody is having this problem and they are working on a fix. But reading these posts this doesn't seem to be the case.

 

Will help if you do transfer of files between computers or need/desire the 5Ghz band. Otherwise no real need.

 

Wow, just finished reading this epic thread!!

I am also a new owner of the N71JQ-A1. Got it from Canada a few weeks ago. I was toying with the idea of getting a G73, which looks lovely!! However like many here, I'm not a gamer and couldn't really justify the extra $$.

Haven't had a chance to properly play with it as yet, but so far so good! Its a HUGE machine, much bigger than my present Asus A8F (but what do you expect jumping from a 14.1 inch screen to a 17.3 screen!!).

One thing I did note, the power brick is HUGE (I guess it goes with having such a huge machine!)

One of things I like about Asus was they didn't use to have a lot of crapware on their machines, i.e. when I bought my A8F. However, seems times have changed!! This machine comes with a bunch of Asus products which I don't think I'll ever use!

Also annoying is the lack of a Win7 restore DVD. I know I could burn the 5 DVDs (my god, that's quite an amount), but don't know if I can be bothered. Also that would just restore the computer with all the crapware installed. I guess I'll just stick to the recovery partition on the computer.

First thing for me to do is a clean install of Win7, I think there is a link to a guide on how to get a clean Win7 install on one of the threads here, so I'll go about trying that out tonight.

Another thing I'm thinking about is replacing one of the HDDs with an SSD drive for my OS and apps. Where would I go about researching which one would be the best (and more importantly the most cost effective). I'm guessing I don't need a huge amount of storage, just enough to hold my OS (win7 and my apps). I'm thinking around 80GB should be enough storage? Or do any of you guys have any recommendations for a decent SSD drive?

 

I recently upgraded my firewall and noticed that everytime I start my windows 7, rpcnetp.exe tries to contact internet. This file is located in windows \ system32-folder. If I delete the file and kill the process, they both automatically return during next reboot.

What I have found out from web is that this file a computer trace program LoJack, by Absolute Software.

The most disturbing thing seems to be that Asus bundles this software with N71JA laptops (and probably with other models as well). This file is very hard to remove without contacting Absolute Software.

Can other forum members verify my observations?

 

trust me...you want that file left right where it is. and there are two files that load no matter what os you put on your computer. the rest is embedded on the bios chip.
all new laptops are starting to come with lojack tracking software. so if your laptop gets stolen, you can get it back, pretty quick.
there are ways to get around it, but i would not advise it.

 

Thanks for this thread guys, was able to install a clean version of Win7 based on the links provided here!

I've now bought an SSD HDD, so will spend Sunday installing that!

 

OK, thanks for the info. While it is nice to know that there's a change to get my laptop back if it gets stolen, I think it wrong in every way to embed this piece of software without letting the honest buyers to know about it.

What this all basically means is that there's someone right know in Absolute Software offices sitting behind his desk knowing the exact physical location of my computer, right? That can't be legal!

 

the only people that care about that are people with something to hide from the law.
and no one is monitoring your laptop like that..get real!..rotflmao your laptop is one of 100'000's of laptops...i dont think your really that important...lol. and all it does is bounce the ip to a receiving server.

 

anyone know of a fix for random freezes

Happens either when I am surfing or watching a video.It freezes then I get a loud buzzing noise from my speakers on the laptop.

I cant even ctrl +alt +delete .I have to power it down by holding the power button down.

Been like this for 2 days now. Other than that this laptop has been great. only had it about 2 months now.

Hoping if any of you guys ran into and came up with a solution?

 

I turned off the SRS function and so far i have not had it happen again.

I left it to idle for a few hours too , I have not been able to make it happen again.

Now I'm turning SRS function back on to see if it will do it again.

 

If you think it is from SRS, then maybe try a newer Realtek Audio driver from here: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Support-

 

Seems I did exactly the same as you just now. I had read the whole thread here, but totally forgot about this point.

Oh well, I guess I'm going to have to contact Asus support tomorrow.

 

For everybody who has Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive, Seagate has released a new Firmware update:
Momentus XT Firmware Update

Note: According to the thread linked below this update works only for non-OEM drives.
Firmware update - Momentus XT - Seagate Community Forums

 

"I know I could burn the 5 DVDs (my god, that's quite an amount..."

I can't. Can anyon eelse? Asus tech to;d me it's a known issue and they're supposedly working on a fix.

Yeah, a ton of bloatware - but you get so much for your money with this computer...

And yeah that brick is so big. Can't they miniaturize the darn things?

 

I think it is harder to reduce the size of 120W supply.
In my opinion it is better that ASUS went for 120W instead of the 90W as some people were experiencing throttling with the smaller supply on some of the older models i7 models.

 

i will never understand why people want to trash the restore partition. or simply...make your own if your version of the laptop game with bundled software.
restore partitions restore about 50 times faster than some dvd's...one gets scratched and your restore is a wrap. partitions can be stored on other drives or across networks....dvd's are so...not the way to go...im just waiting for microsoft to start giving the option to buy os flash drives. since that's the only way to travel now a days....and with 3.0 working it's way in...
installs will take like 15 minutes instead of 30.

 

I tried SetFSB with ASUS N61JQ as clock generator and it works.

Do you know how can I make it work automatically after every boot?

That's right. Restoring is much faster than installing everything again.
I usually install a fresh copy of operating system on my new notebooks and then I produce an image of the system after I finish installing all the applications.
This saves a lot of time if Windows decides to crash. You can restore the system in a very short time.

 

well that's good news...now i need to know how high it can go....hummmm...

there use to be scripts floating around. you just put it in your startup and it loads after each boot.

edit:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...auto-tool-v1-0-oc-your-cpu-automatically.html
not sure if this will work with i7's though.

edit: none of the links seem to be working.... was going to check for reverse engineering

 

I did not try to see how high it could go. I tested it upto a bus speed of 142MHz and under everest stress test it was working stable.

I have seen before this auto tool you mentioned, but it seems kind of old and does not seem to be developed to support new CPUs.

 

Seems the motherboard is fried.

As this model isn't available in HK, they have to order the motherboard from abroad. Will have to wait another week or two before they can repair it.

Oh well..

 

Yes as I said before, after a bad flash the mainboard needs to be replaced as the bios chip is soldered directly to it.

 

ok...so just how did you fry your motherboard???

edit: just seen turbos post.


hold on now...you might still be able to recover.

first we need to know if your bios has a blind flash recovery option in place.
this is where you auto load everything and it re-flashes your bios.
you will need to try a set of key combinations first..
win-key +r
win-key +b
fn +r
fn +b

there are a few more...i have to hunt them down again.
1: you would take out battery and pull power cord
2: wait for 20 seconds
3: holding the power button and the key combo mentioned up above, then plug in the power cord
see if your computer starts making funny beeping sounds or all the lights stay on..something other than the ordinary stuff you would see.

 

Ran all of the above with Asus tech support, but none of that worked, hence me taking the computer to be reapaired. Its now with Asus.

 

is asus charging for user bios corruption???

 

Am not being charged.

 

cool! some makers were thinking of enforcing that.

 

Mine wasn't doing it, but just started last night, and continuing today - constant cycling fan on fan off at ~ 15 second cycles.

 

Called Asus tech support. The good thing about their tech support is they answer the phone quickly; the bad thing is they never know anything. Tech went and asked someone and then told me the cycling fan is a known issue and they are "working on it", Likewise the 5 dvd recovery disk that doesn't work thing. The fan post that I responded to above was from MARCH.

 

Yes it is a know issue, ASUS promised to bring out a solution since two months ago, but nothing came out yet.

I worked with Ken Lee from Gentech and did intensive testing for ASUS some months ago. ASUS knows that the problem is with the fan switching profile in the bios.
The last status that I got from Ken was that ASUS has not decided so far on the proper solution.

Basically they have to reprogram the fan profile in the bios, so maybe instead of the fan switching completely off and turning on again at high speed (3300rpm) , they will make it run at slower speed all the time, but they have not decided about it yet.

Ken wrote ASUS again about a week ago and we are waiting for their responce to know if they will solve it in the near future.
Usually ASUS is very fast at solving problems like these but this time it is taking them ages.

 

Thanks for the info, T. Do you know anything about the recovery disk problem? And now I'm suddenly getting some bluetooth error message popping up whenever I start her up. Is that another "known issue"?

 

ERROR: Unable to start the Bluetooth stack service

 

Try to install the latest bluetooth drive from the thread below:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-reviews-owners-lounges/494250-asus-n61jq-driver-thread.html

 

Is it harmful to the computer to where it will cause a problem if used that way for an extensive time?
I was on this baby 7 hours straight yesterday.

 

I don't think so.
Mine runs continuously for 8 hours each day for 5 days per week.
My last ASUS machines (M50Vm) were also used in a similar way for two years and it worked without problems.

 

Thanks again, T.

I just got it a couple of weeks ago and it only started the fan cycling thing the day before yesterday - and so far it's not doing it today (not been on long, though) - but before it started doing that the computer was getting quite hot in the upper left corner by the vent, and now it's not, so I don't know what's going on.

I spent a lot of time getting rid of all the bloatware and installing my own stuff. Now I'd like to save the setup just the way it is. What's the best way to do that?

 

Did you monitor the temperatures when the notebook was getting hot?

I usually make an image of the C drive using Acronis after installing all the softwares and tweaking the system the way I like it.

 

Strange Audio Service problem: out of the blue, every time my laptop restarts, the audio service is disabled. (This despite the fact that I've set it to automatic and manually re-started it many times). The troubleshooter finds the problem -- i.e., that Windows Audio Service is stopped -- and it re-starts it, but this all takes a while. I can't find a single useful explanation or suggestion on the Internet, so please advise away.

In addition, as of last night when I did change some sound settings (to alert me when battery is low but I may have inadvertantly made other changes), I have a new problem: once the audio service is re-started, it make sort of a weird echo=like background noise until I'm forced to mute the sound entirely. Any idea what the problem might be?
Plus, does anyone know whether SRS or Realtek is supposed to be set as the "default" for normal usage? I have no idea wht the differences are.

TIA,
Tammy

 

Good news for all of you who were waiting for a fix to the fan ON/OFF issue.
ASUS has released a new bios v208 that fixes the problem.
Here is the link from the ASUS ftp server: ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/nb/N71JQ/N71JqAS208.zip

Here is the link from the the driver download website: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?model=N71Jq&f_name=N71JqAS208.zip&f_type=3&os=30

With the new bios, they made the fan run dynamically instead of turning on and off every few seconds.
Now it goes up in speed in smaller steps rather than going directly from 100rpm to 3300rpm.
In my testing, when my system was in idle state the fan ran at 2200rpm instead of switching ON/OFF every few seconds like it did before the new bios.

One thing disappointing though is that ASUS did not include the Easy Overclock feature that we had in v205.

A very big thanks goes to Ken Lee from Gentech PC who worked very closely with ASUS to get a fix for all of us.

Over the last 4 or 5 months Ken and me had a regular contact.
The results from my testing and testing from the other members was sent to Ken on regular basis and Ken fowarded them to ASUS until they finally understood what the problem really was.

As usual when it comes to problem solving, one can rely on Ken Lee.

 

Hello everyone,

I just purchased my ASUS N71JQ-X1, and I have to say I love the laptop. I did upgrade a few things:

Wireless card: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 - Network adapter - PCI Express Half Mini Card

Ram: 8GB ram, G.SKILL 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)

- I was looking for something to put in the other pci slot, I was thinking about dropping one of these in the laptop:

"Intel Turbo Memory Card - Flash memory module - 4 GB, with user pinning."
I'm not sure if there will be much benefit
______________________________________________________________

Also has anyone completed installing the 2ndary HD tray and power connector for the 2nd hard drive bay? I noticed some links to the asus parts website at the beginning of this thread, I wanted to check if anyone was able to try it out yet.

also has anyone firgured out a way to turn of the Side LED's on the laptop or at least get them to stop blinking while in sleep mode?
______________________________________________________________

This laptop replaced my desktop and I love it so far.

 

As far as I know, Turbo Memory does not bring any banifits with the modern machines. Furthermore, I don't think it works on Calpella platform. It was developed under Montevina platform.
If the Calpella platform supports it even then you cannot be sure that it will work on N71JQ.
I tried it on my Montevina ASUS M50vm two years ago and it was never recognized by the notebook. ASUS support at that time told me that the bios support is not provided for it.

The side LEDs are not easy to disable. The only solution would be to open the notebook and disconnect them.

 

I did further testing on the new bios and I am impressed how ASUS has improved the thermal functionality.
In my previous tests with older versions of the bios, when I ran Everest System Stability Test and FurMark simultaneously, the GPU and the CPU temperature were in the range of 92°C to 95°C.

I am amazed now with v208.
Running the same two test simultaneously for 25 minutes, the system stabilized at temperatues around 85°C for both CPU and GPU.
Note: Room temperature here today is around 23°C.

ASUS has changed the fan speed setting when the system is under lot of stress. With the previous bios versions, the fan was going up to 5700rpm for a short while and going down again, but now it stays at 5700rpm when the system is under full stress. This mode seems to be activated when both the GPU and the CPU temperatures reach near to 90°C.
Once this mode is activated the fan is cycling at 5700rpm until the temperature drops below 80°C otherwise it will stay at that speed.
It is really noisy when running at 5700rpm but I think it is a very good solution in the case where the system is really stressed out. The temperatures of the system were kept in the range of 85°C when both CPU and GPU were under 100% load.

When only one of the two (GPU or CPU) is stressed, then the fan does not stay at 5700rpm. It is going up and down in speed and it stayed mostly around 4400rpm. The GPU or the CPU temperatures in this case also does not go higher than 85°C.

With respect to the case when the system is idle or used lightly like for browsing the internet, the fan now stays at around 2200rpm and is not going up and down between 100rpm and 3300rpm like with previous bios versions. When the fan is running at 2200rpm, it is barely audible. My 7200rpm HDDs seems to be loader than the fan.

Overall I am satisfied with the new bios. The fan cycling up and down between 100rpm and 3300rpm was really annoying.

It seems that the ASUS support person with whom Ken Lee has his contact had forwarded my test reports to HQ.
ASUS seems to have implemented the new bios accordingly.
I suggested them to lift the lowest speed from 100rpm to some value near to 2200rpm.

 

Their engineer said there are limitations on Clockgen with CPU specs, if they enable it they can't guarantee it'll work.

 

That could be the reason why they removed it in the bios versions that came after v205.
In fact it could be that v205 was just some test bios, because it was never released publically.
It cannot be downloaded through the ASUS website.
I got it through you. They gave it to us to test for the fan issue.

Thanks a lot Ken for all your help.

 

No. How do you do that?

Thanks! I'll try Acronis.

 

When I click on that link I get this:

N7iJqAS208.zip

Duh, what do I do with it? Windows cannot open it.

 

I did. Didn't help. This

ERROR: Unable to start the Bluetooth stack service

still pops up at startup.

 

You can use softwares like HWMonitor or Everest.

 

This is a zipped file. You need to extract it using a program like Winzip, Winrar or 7-zip.

For flashing to this bios it is important that you follow the following steps.
1- After unzipping, copy the N71JqAS.208 file to the root folder of a USB flash drive.
2- Leave the flash drive plugged into a USB port.
4- Re-start the PC and press F2 to go into the bios.
4- In the bios menus locate the tool called EasyFlash. If I remember correctly, it should be in the second menu.
5- Launch this tool and navigate to the bios file on the USB flash drive and it will flash it for you.

If you have never flashed an ASUS notebook bios then please read this guide for more details:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/174395-bios-update-guide-asus-notebooks.html#sec:easyflash

 

I thought usually it is due to corrupted driver, but I am not sure.
Did you uninstall the older driver before you installed the new one?