ASUS N71JQ Owners Lounge

I avoided all the free upgrade offers from Micro$oft for Windows 10. Had to keep removing and hiding two KB's. I read somewhere, I don't think in this forum, that there were hardware incompatibilities with the N71jq. My N71 is "parked", probably for good. I think the only fix for it would be motherboard replacement, and those are getting harder to find. On the other hand, this new G752VM sure is nice.

 

Did anyone successfully installed Windows 10 on this model?

I've just installed it, kept Win 7 as dual boot, now I am in search for drivers for win 10.
I see there are 2 drivers for ati graphic card, some beta and some final amd driver, so I have to choose.

Does anyone has a link to proven working drivers for Windows 10 for this model?
Thanks!

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Hi agan, anybody has a link for drivers for windows 10 for this model?
Thanks!!

 

OK, here they are: http://ivanrf.com/en/latest-asus-drivers-for-windows-10/#audio
The latest for Asus notebooks, just pick the right ones, according to your hardware....

 

Mine is still going strong - knock on wood head! I only use it as a desktop.

 

I think my laptop is finally done for. Refuses to start up, screen will not turn on, even though it is turning on and one hard drive is spinning (the main OS drive is SSD). I've tried plugging it into an external monitor to see if it was a screen fault and have also tried changing out the OS SSD to the original OS hard drive, but no loving at all.

Nearly lasted 7 years. Now to find a replacement.

 

Will mine be the last one left standing?

What sort of a replacement are you thinking of getting, Pin?

 

Hi, I bought the Asus GL753VD about 2 months back.

Sold the N71 for parts and the person who bought it said it was the graphics card that was damaged. I think he was able to fix it. I had the laptop for too long and had spent too much on fixing it previously I thought it was time to buy a new one.

 

I haven't spent a cent on my N71JQ. I don't even know what I want to get next since I use it as a desktop attached to an external monitor and keyboard and mouse - a desktop, laptop, or combo. How do you like the GL753VD? How does it compare with the N71JQ?

 

Still going.

 

Sorry, forgot to get back to you! So luck your N71JQ is still going, and kind of jealous.

As for the GL753VD, enjoying it. The keyboard is so much better than the N71 and it lights up (yes, superficial, but I like it). Also, so much faster. I'm running an NMVe for my primary drive and a 2TB HDD for my secondary drive. Also the wifi is now on a/c, so is so much faster.

 

Glad you like your new computer, Pin. I hope you have one of the good ones. I looked it up on Amazon and see it has a rather distressing 25% 1-star reviews. But I had a lot of trouble with this N71 at the beginning and then with Asus' infuriating repair service, but then they finally replaced my original with this one and I never thought it would be still going after almost eight years!

 

Eight years since this thread started and still - knock on wood head - still chugging along!

 

Kaput. About two months ago. Are there any left now?

 

Nope. Mine started artefacting in October 2017, I gather the graphics chip finally gave up. Always did run super hot. Didn't bother with short term DIY oven or heatgun fixes. Did well to get 7.5 years on mine, and 8 years on yours! End of an era!

 

Hello guys. My N71JQ is still going since july 2010. I clean it once a month with canned compressed air through the vents. Never took it apart. I've opened it some years ago to take out and put back in one of the hdds because sometimes it would not be picked up by the bios. Never had that problem for a long time now. Actually I think I never had any problems with it. I am running a Windows 7 reinstalled by me when I got it and along side it, Fedora 27. I hope that by posting here will not break my machine ). Joking.

 

If you NEVER repasted, you should do it, even 1 year old stock paste was bad, cant imagine the performance(or lack of) from such an old paste, on my N53SM I saw near 10ºC repasting after 1 year.

 

I never reach 100 degrees, not even in gaming. The temperatures are ok. The performance is exactly the same as in 2010. Everything works as intended. The thing is that I took care of it, I did not move it around a lot, basically it ran only in one or two controlled environments, never overclocked it, etc. The only problem is that it is outdated and new games are way out of reach and the fact that 4 GB of ram sometimes is not enough, although, newer operating systems like fedora work better than windows 7.

 

Overa year away in the cupboard and I finally got to gently heatgunning the graphics chip. Problem fixed (albeit likely temporarily) and stable now for 9hrs of continuous normal use (installing windows, drivers, etc.)

 

Hey guys!

I am using a asus N71JQ (came out ~2010) which do not came with backlit keyboard.

I found that some very similar laptops (asus G73JH and G60) have exactly the same keyboard but with backlit. Those keyboards have an additional FPC for the LED. I also found on a forum a guy who installed such backlit keyboard, but he made an external circuit to power the LED with a button that he added on the side of his laptop.

But I wanted to do something cleaner. I would like to be able to use Fn+F3/Fn+F4 to increase decrease the brightness as you would on G73JH.

So I started to look for N71JQ and G73JH schematics, which unfortunatelly cannot be found anywhere on the web. However I could find N61J schematic. On this schematic I found out that the keyboard backlit is controller with a PWM from the IT8570E embedded controller (EC):

This PWM goes to a mosfet the mosfet enable/disable the connection of the FPC to ground (5V pin is always connected). By changing the PWM the CPU can vary the brightness of LED.

Then I checked my motherboard (N71JA rev2.1) of which I don't have the schematic. However I found that it has same EC IT8570E. Also to my surprise I found that there is a FPC connector available for the LED backlight! I checked and there is same mosfet as on the schematic I saw. I also checked and the mosfet is connected to the pin 32 for IT8570E which is PWM6 (same as on N61J schematic).

I also checked that the 5V is correctly applied to the FPC.

So all the hardware is already ready to support the backlit keyboard! (Which is strange as no asus N71 serie never had backlit. And the motherboard is not used on other models. So they actually paid for components that never ever have been used.)



So I connected my new keyboard, the keyboard works, previous shortcut I had also worked (Fn+F5/Fn+F6 increase/decrease luminosity of LCD for example) but Fn-F3/F4 does nothing still.

There are several drivers related to keyboard shortcut ( see this forum)

- ATKDrv Utility: This is required because it is actually the ACPI driver. This is what tells your OS about the power state of your system and allows for power settings to be changed by the OS. It is also responsible for pulling battery information from the BIOS.
- ATK Generic Function Utility: This is required as it allows for communication between the ACPI and all the shortcut keys.
- ATK_Hotkey Utility: This is required to make use of all the function key shortcuts.​

I checked on asus website for drivers, and found the first 2 are exactly the same between N71JQ and G73JH. The third the version is different so I tried uninstall it, then install the G60J version, Fn-F5/F6 still work OK, but Fn-F3/F4 still nothing happening. (I just realized I have not tested G73JH, but this don't have exactly the same drivers than NJ71JQ and G60, will feedback when I had a chance to try).

Then I found this topic about backlit keyboard issue happening after bios update on G73JH..! So that brought me to understand that the problem might be in the Bios!

I have thought about 3 possibilities :
- Try this kbfix even if the asus model is different. Some people reported that it worked on their model. But it sounds very risky? (On the page 4 of this forum someone explain what the fix actually do.)
- Flash the Asus G73JH bios on my N71JQ : this somehow sounds like a terrible idea...
- Analyze the two bios ( G73JH and N71JQ) and try to find the difference. But I have virtually no idea how to proceed... Maybe trying with a binary explorer like PEBrowserPro?

Anyone tried this on their N71JQ?

 

EC firmware code is most likely different, so it isn't outputing PWM in that pin/not scanning those Fn combos to increase/decrease the brightness, because its all done in hardware, those programs wont help you, because you can change brightness even in BIOS, aka its all done in the EC, you could try extracting EC code from the G73 bios, and replace it in your model BIOS and then flash it, but, EC controls a lot of things, you can end with a brick, and need to flash BIOS again with an external programmer.

 

I tested the kb fix without success. it returned 0, which i don't know what it means! something suggest that the value the program is correcting is already corrected (something unclear saying 7C appears)

I tried install the atk package for the g73jh, now fn+f3/f4 show the icon of keyboard light but it does not work still.

I think something is missing in the bios indeed. Good idea to get the EC part of the g73jh bios, try to find which function write on PWM6 register and try to copy that to the N71JQ. If the code was readable it would be easy task but as it is I don't know how to proceed.

Another idea I have is to write a small program/driver to do just that, read and write directly in the EC register to turn on off the led. However I am not sure how to read write on the EC register with a compiled langage as C.
I know there's a program call RWEverything which enable to write in the EC register, but it's not permanent.

 

Btw if someone can try to run RWEverything on their n71jq and feedback a screenshot of the EC dump?

 

I have been banging my head for 3 days trying to find how to write such a driver with no success so far. It's really bugging me.
I posted a job to find a freelancer able to write such a driver.
Only one guy seem to be able to do it for around 220€. It's a bit expensive for a old laptop. However if other persons are interested maybe we can share the cost?

If we are 10 persons it would be way acceptable. 22€/person. The backlit keyboard is 15€ on aliexpress and connecting it is child's play as there's already the connector.

Please post if that's interest you!

 

Mine would probably still be going strong if I didn't mess with it and try to get rid of "unnecessary" startup programs.

 

Thought I would update things since my last post #2250. My ROG G752VM continues to do all I want it to. Windows 10 is a little buggy sometimes, especially after these so-called Creators Updates. The only thing I don't like about the laptop is the goofy keyboard lighting. There is so much light bleed around the key I can't see what the key is sometimes. Good thing I'm not a hunter-and-pecker. My N71JQ has been given a second lease on life. Had a friend hunt down a suitable motherboard and replace it for me. The GPU was toast, but I think the i7 CPU actually survived the overheating. Anyway, my N71 is back up and running and now belongs to my daughter. I think I'll even attempt to upgrade it to Windows 10 when the time comes.