* Asus N61JQ Owners Lounge *

Hi all,

thanx for the responses. I downloaded the official updated for my ASUS N61ja. So didn't use the N61jq instead. It is strange that ASUS uploads this update when a lot of peoples got problems with this update, though. I will request a RMA, but I got one question.

I got some sensitive information on my ASUS. Beats, Lyrics and complete songs. That date belongs to me and some artists, so I don't wanna send them that data.

Can I open my ASUS and backup my data trough another PC and delete all data, except the OS and put the drive back in? Without losing my Warranty?

Kind regards,
Tuner12

 

Need help here please.
Risco, sorry to hear about your laptop. Hope the problems get sorted out with the laptop replacement.

 

Usually, you don't need to send your hard disk to them except if you have problems with HDD itself.
When I RMA an ASUS notebook I always take out the harddisk.
This does not void your warranty.
Just leave them a note in the RMA form so that they know you are sending the NB without HDD.

 

Your video drivers are outdated, grab the 10.5's from ati's website.

 

Well i am using the 10.4 So,not that outdated. will be updating shortly,but risco and others were able to access contrast and brigthness before 10.5 came out.

 

Did you download the new control panel as well, not just update the driver? Meaning did you download the full package.

 

I ran into your problem as well, but then downloaded the 10.5 update and solved it. Like people had said, contrast and brightness will be in there.

 

I just clean install windows 7. Where do I can download PowerDVD that include ASUS Video Magic.

 

Just got my rma confirmed. Any tips on notes I may need to include?

 

Where can I download the mediashow espresso that came preinstalled in the machine? It seems like it's not included in the discs that came with the laptop.

 

1. I ONLY use the "C" drive for installation of applications. All of my data goes onto the D:\DATA partition. You can change default save locations inside such apps like MS Office (if you have Office) so it will default to saving to a different location other than the default C:\etc
2. I have customized my power settings to my liking. I have the screen dim down after 5 min on power and 2 min on battery. Then the screen shuts off a few minutes later. This is 100% personal preference but understand that the less power you use the cooler it'll run and the longer your battery will keep plugging away. This laptop is designed to be light-weight, not super-long running on battery. I personally like this option over a monster battery (weighs a ton) and several hours' run-time.
3. Lithium-ion batteries do not need to be full-cycled like previous types (Ni-Cad and even NiMH have to be cycled more often) but it is a good idea to cycle it occasionally. I also agree with another poster that said you don't have to drain the Li-ion batteries quite as far down...though I do like to take mine down to 3% or so then charge back up. Use your own judgment how often or do some research on the Internet...lots of different opinions.

I would love to know if anyone knows if leaving this model system plugged in 24x7 hurts the battery. Some systems keep on "trying" to charge when the system is off and it eventually ruins the battery. Others have a full shut-off system that once the battery is charged nothing further is leaking in so it doesn't damage the battery. I am new to Asus laptops so haven't seen anything on that yet. Dell systems were real bad at one time about "do not leave charger attached indefinitely once battery is charged) as it will damage the battery" while Toshiba's are not (as well as several others).

 

hi, me again...

i read some pages looking if there's a way of putting a backlit keyboard and i didnt find if someone really put one... i read that maybe some people would do, but i dont readed if they actually did it..
any info will be appreciated...

 

@scias and @guide you can't download it. It is a special edition special for this machine. I mailed few days ago to asus because i had the same problem as you and they said they couldn't sent me a copy of powerdvd or a repair disk due to copyright. The only thing to do is to reinstall windows from recovery dvd and somehow save the installer if is possible. Guide, if you reinstalled, the windows it is very possible that you rewrote the BCD and you don't have access to recovery partition anymore(Windows can't see it at boot partition). I solved this thing(because i made a stupidness and i installed grup instead of windows boot loader) by recovering bcd from first recovery dvd(the dvd what i burned at first use).

 

Well when the battery is fully charged it says "not charging" when you mouse over it.

 

I would like to say that the USB 3.0 drivers 1.0.20 is pure scrap for me, it shutdown randomly and erase all stuff in my USB HD and I have to format my HD and rollback to stock drivers 1.0.18 from A.s.u.s to be safe and happy .
An other thing, this drivers seem to be uncompatible with Acronis True Image..

Or May be my enclosure do not like this drivers...

 

Thank you, that helps...makes me think there's a good chance it's not harmful to leave it plugged in.

No real surprise considering the whole charging equation is controlled on the motherboard and Asus has been making boards for many years (I know most reading this forum know that but some may not). That fact was one of the biggest reasons I chose Asus.

 

The capacity of lithium ion batteries is shortened by heat and charge level (see Figure 1 of this link). When you leave the laptop plugged in, the battery stays near maximum charge (not at 100%) and takes heat from the running laptop, which reduces its life somewhat. Discharging the battery to 0 can also damage the battery and shorten its life.

 

1) Since I have 2 drives, a SSD and a Magnetic I divvy up things a bit differently. Windows is installed on the SSD along with all my programs and user profiles. My Pictures, Music, Documents, Downloads and Video folders from my user folder have been moved to my magnetic 'data' drive. I don't like splitting up my User profile folder like this but it makes the most sense as the large contiguous files are moved off the SSD where they won't see much performance benefit and folders such as 'AppData' are left on the SSD for quick program launching.

2) I keep my notebook on the 'balanced' power saving mode. Balanced doesn't seem to cap performance in any way when it is needed while still using plenty of power saving features. I did chance some of the power button features to my liking but the rest is unchanged.

3) I do as recommended by a number of battery experts and keep my battery stored in a drawer under my notebook when it is plugged in. ASUS seems to have some decent battery saving tech built into the N61 but it still can't prevent wear from heat. If I'm doing any sort of important work I like to plug the battery back in to prevent a shutdown in the case of a power outage.

 

Where can i buy laptop batteries for this laptop?

 

Didn't know that it was possible to download only the drivers. For the 10.4, I downloaded a (<2MB) executable file which on opening downloaded a 75 MB executable file.
So, I think it came with the control panel, but maybe I might have not kept the control panel for installing(had chosen express setup).

@andii36,
Thanks, but the problem, is that I can't connect to internet with my laptop at home,(don't have net currently) , so would have preferred to have an offline version which I could download from another computer and install. Thought I had found such a driver s/w in filehippo, but turns out it is not mobility catalyst.

Any alternative links?? (to download the full 75 MB .exe file to another computer)

Also, right now my multimedia keys(ie. the hardware keys at the top to control the volume, or the fn+number key combo to do the same) is not working?

How can I fix that?. Any suggestions? Right now, have installed the latest audio driver available, still using stock drivers for all the others(BIOS v206)

 

ATI used to offer several driver packages on their site, one with CCC and one without. Seems now the only choices are to download the full bundle of CCC by itself. You can still opt to install just the drivers when you run the installer but I agree that a smaller driver package would be nice to have.

 

It's good that it stops charging when plugged in. It can be harmful if li-ion cells are left at 4.2v for extended periods of time, which is where I believe this came from. If one is real concerned, pull the battery when not using it. Older Dell laptops used to come with a "dummy" plastic battery adapter. Wish they still shipped these so there isn't a big hole in the laptop when the battery is removed.

 

What's the max temp. rating that this GPU (Ati 5730), Hard Drive and CPU can go to?

Whilst gaming on Balanced Profile in Windows 7, I reached a max of 88 C, and hard drive to 47 C and CPU at 80 C.

 

On my N71JQ it also reaches to similar temperatures.

 

What is your BEST transfer rate with USB3 enclosure (with standard HD, not SSD) ?

 

For a 20 GB file, it settled down to about 60 MB/s.

 

Max temps before hardware intervenes (throttling) is 100 C for CPU, 105 C for GPU (unsure of this). Not sure how hot the hard drive can get.

 

Depending on the hard drive the top temps are between 55~62c

 

I want to do a BIOS Benchmark, what bench is better? PC MarkVantage?

 

Installed the latest patch in GTA4. I get the stutter now too.

 

A.s.u.s told USB 3 is 10X more faster than USB 2 but in fact is it only 2 time faster...this is not advertising nor marketing, but pure misrepresentation... pure FAKE

 

Well, not exactly.

USB 3.0 IS 10x faster than USB 2.0, but the device you are transferring to has to be able to match the speed of USB 3.0, and most devices do not unless they are SATA III. So it is not the USB 3.0 that is slowing down the data transfer, it is the device to which you are transferring data that slows down the potential speed that USB 3.0 gives you.

 

For comparison, my USB 2.0 external HD was transferring about about 15 MB/s, so I was getting a factor of 4 improvement.

 

The one big thing USB 3.0 ports do for USB 2.0 devices is ensure it runs at top speed to the device. We've seen a huge improvement with the same device, same data - run it thru USB 2.0 port then do the same thing with the 3.0 port...at least double the speed. Very handy. Eventually USB 3.0 devices will become more popular. That was one "Plus" to me about this laptop..it has technology that's actually a little ahead of the curve...a 3.0 port when 3.0 devices are only now starting to show up on the market.

 

So we have to put 3.5 HD because there is no any sata 3 in 2.5 except SSD with only 128Gb and it's very expensive

 

Be carefull with all the negativity Mike. It's sounding a little trollish and trolls are not treated very well in this lounge.:wink:

 

yes you are right dad, I should had to ask what to do to fully exploit the usb3.. but palladin44 answer all my expectations p e r f e c t l y without worrying me Thanks to him

 

If you have the choice, go with eSATA over USB3. It will be the faster alternative and is still hot-plug capable. Just make sure to update all your Intel drivers, old drivers + eSATA = PIO Mode (Why is this still a part of windows? It was depreciated when XP came out.)

 

eSATA/USB enclosure are hard to find (I mean with a cable plug USB to eSata) -if you have some shop link..- and its not clear, do I have to plug eSATA enclosure via USB or eSATA to my USB3 laptop ? How is it faster ? At this time we have very poor alternative to use and perform USB3 at max data transfer rate because there is no any 2.5 device ready for... except the very expensive SSD sata3. Even if it displeases to several...

 

Anyone who knows what the latest bios update fix?

ftp://ftp.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/N61J/

 

There are many drive enclosures that have both eSATA and USB ports on the back. You should use eSATA to eSATA if it is an option, eSATA cables are essentially the same as regular SATA cables and will give the same transfer speeds as internal SATA drives on a consistent basis.

 

I just used the regular USB 2.0 slot and got a sustained 30.0 Mbps transfer rate with my USB 2.0 external hard drive. The fastest my old laptop could reach was 20 Mbps.

 

Thanks for your answers again! great forum!

I'll quote the reply's I've gotten in case someone like me comes along and can find them together instead of browsing through the pages because of the great and high activity level in this forum, maybe it'll be easier to find. I hope this is not spammish, i'm trying to help someone like me, do letme know if there are better ways to help.

 

You should study the Original Post in this thread where you will find almost all the technical answers you need.

 

ok ill startposting compiled answers, fel free to add and maybe i should update this post.
maybe i missed some to quote!(feel free to let me know) but i did read them all, so thanks everyone.

1 - How do you personally use your drive partitions? There is much more space in drive D: DATA, what do you use it for, what do you install on it? I wonder if I can use D: to install most of my software and as a RAM scratch disk for stuff such as video processing or 3d, because it has much more space than C:

(Considering these suggestions, I'm using my D drive to store all my videos, zips, and documens, all libraries are being pointed towards their D equivalent.
Also, I'm installing most software, if it is a large install on D:, because it is much bigger, most newer games, video software, and adobe suite, because its several gigs per install!)

 

2- Which power mode do you generally use your laptop on, I wonder if i should switch to power saver ofter to lower temperatres if that will increase my laptop life?

ok, then, so far i use high performance most of the time. most suggestions don't go against it... Now, sometimes I leave the computer on all night downloading or rendering video, in this case, I made a custom mode similar to power savings, except that it ony turns off the screen after 5 mins, but never turns the computer off. i dont know if there is a way to make it more efficient for a single process going all all night.

 

3 - Is it really better to leave the laptop battery to discharge itself completely before recharging it,or do most of you leave it plugged all the time, is it better for it to use battery life or to have it plugged most of the time?

Ok, so I will start removing my battery when I'm at home or studio with the lap plugged in. starting...now...ok, it's done
I'll use the battery on the go and try to get it plugged in after it reaches 30%..because, frankly, it only takes about an hour/ hour and a half to get there.

 

@risco

i think i figured out how the stop the stutter in gta4. turn off vsync. it worked for me. let me know if it works for you

 

Hey, I got my Asus N61jq a couple of months ago.. I know this sounds like a very noob question, but I dled the new catalyst 64bit 10.5 drivers from here:
Drivers & Support | GAME.AMD.COM
and I was wondering what is the right way to update my drivers.. like do i need to uninstall my asus ati driver first and then run driver sweeper, or just install it without doing anything else..

Thanks everyone. :]

 

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/nb/N61JQ/