Asus UL30VT FAQ / Official Owners Lounge redux

OK, just purchased the X1. I heard back from the seller that it has built in bluetooth.

So far, I read a lot about people putting SSD's in there UL30's. Would there be a big difference swapping out the current 5400rpm drive for a 7200rpm HDD? I don't have the money right now for an SSD. (especially since I just bought the UL80vt and now the UL30vt) I do have a 150GB 7200rpm drive sitting around.

Someone was complaining about the hard drive bottlenecking this system.

 

Congratulations on your purchase, I suspect you will be very happy with it. May I ask what system you are upgrading from?

I can speak to the SSD and hard disk bottleneck issue you speak of. Even before I ordered my ul30vt-x1 (amazon about 5 weeks ago), I was planning on putting an SSD in. I have an OCZ Agility 2 60 GB on the way.

Why?

Well, in my opinion, an SSD simply allows a notebook to live up to its potential.

+ An SSD emits less heat than a mechanical hard disc, which allows for a cooler notebook, which in turn means extra battery life as the fans/cooling system don't have to run as much. A good notebook chill pad can help here as well, and make the notebook much more comfortable to use. I purchased the Targus AWE55US from Costco for $29.99, and love it. Very simple yet effective design, and the bottom is always cool to the touch, and much comfier when using it on the lap in a chair/couch/bed. I think it is very quiet for a two fan pad, but I don't have experience with others. Would not cheap out here, and would look at them locally in person if you go down this road.

+ An SSD has no moving parts, which equates to reliability for mobile computing.

+ An SSD draws less wattage than a mechanical hard disc, which equates to battery savings.

Oh yea, they are friggin fast too man!

If you need the space, check out the Seagate Momentus XD hybrid drive. 4GB of SSD goodness integrated with a tradition 500GB hard disc.

Also, I doubt your 150GB 7200 RPM drive, that I assume is older, will be appreciably faster than the Seagate 500GB hard disc that ships with it. Chances are the 7200 RPM disc will emit more heat and draw more power. May I ask which model it is, since I am making assumptions here?

Hope this helps.

FYI

 

I'm upgrading from an very old Dell X1. (hmm ironic that I bought another laptop with X1 in its name) Its worked for most of what I needed it for. I use it mostly when I travel. But the 1.1ghz Centrino M and no dedicated graphics was starting to show its age. Its maxed out at 2GB's of RAM. So there's no more room to grow.

One of the things that I'm hoping the UL30Vt can handle is media streaming via HDMI. We have started consuming a lot of our media via the internet. I'm hoping with a little effort, we can ditch the $100 a month cable bill.

The extra hard drive that I have is an older Hitachi HTS722012K9SA00. Since I cracked open the external case, I'm reminded that its a 120GB (not 150) It also states 5V 800mA, if that means anything.

The one thing I loved about my old Dell X1, was the small size. With only a 12" screen and just over 2.5 lbs, it was easy to take along.

Originally, I thought the UL80VT would be a suitable upgrade. After having that for a few days now. I think its bigger than what I need. The size and weight would probably hinder me from throwing it in a bag/case and taking it with me.

I'm already used to not having a built in CD/DVD drive. I am yet to use the one in the UL80Vt.

Time will tell, one will go up for sale on ebay, the other will be my trusty sidekick for the next 5 years.

 

The ul30vt handles HDMI HD streaming beautifully. If you are interested in ditching cable, (as I am looking into as well) check out the boxee software. One of the problems I see with ditching cable is the lack of integrating all your various content sources and types into a single interface. Boxee software (and the boxee box) aim to do that. I highly recommend looking into this if you are trying to ditch cable.

As to your notion of the 15 inchers being too big, I so agree. I have used laptops for the past 20 years for biz/personal, and between the new widescreen resolutions with 1366 becoming "standard" for even 2K biz class 'books drives me nuts. In some ways, notebooks have taken a step back. Very rare for such a widespread technology. Just my opinion of course.

With the widescreen format a 13" laptop, such as our trusty ul30's, are comparable to a non widescreen 12" of many years ago, the resolutions were much friendlier to coding and IT tasks. I think I am making the comparison right, I have a killer headache and need to just look at the inside of my eyelids for a while....

 

What's the build quality like? Some of the reviews I read made it sound like you can't even pick it up without the bottom flexing, and the the keyboard suffers from bad flex under just normal typing. I also read that the palm rests were terrible.

 

I just got this laptop, did a clean install of Win7 - but I can't seem to get Bluetooth to work. I installed the Wireless Console, but if I click on it (in the tray), I just get the WLAN part and nothing about Bluetooth. And when I try to install the driver it says that no bluetooth adapter was found. Does anybody have a hint on what I'm missing/doing wrong?

Jcooper88: The bottom is perfectly fine in my opinion, mine's stable when picking it up at a corner (my thumb does have more flexing trouble than the laptop ). The keyboard does flex though. Personally I don't have a problem with that though - it's not the greatest keyboard I've just, but it is far from awful. Really, it's fine to me and I like it better than a fair number of other keyboards I compared it to.

 

@Jcooper88: Build quality is just fine for a laptop in this pricerange. From what I have read, a lot of "build quality" comments I have read don't map to the notebook in question's price.

@dingdongl Bluetooth worked just fine with the OEM Win7 image that it came with I assume? Did you change any BIOS settings? Any devices in device manager banged out / aka Code 39'd? Have you opened your notebook at all recently?

 

Yes, it did work fine with the OEM one. I only changed the BIOS settings that referred to the boot order to install a fresh Win7 from a USB stick; and I changed those back. In the device manager everything looks normal to me.. and I haven't opened the notebook at all.

 

Is there a bluetooth adapter install in device manager? It should be in the Bluetooth Radio class. Have you disabled or turned off the bluetooth with a hotkey or button?

 

No, I can't find anything in the device manager. And the FN+F2 combination only turns Wifi on/off, not Bluetooth (which is different from the behavior in the OEM version, where there were two clickable icons when I pressed fn+f2, I think).

 

Sounds like Windows is not enumerating the Bluetooth adapter since it does not appear in device manager. Below is a screenshot of what should appear in device manager. At this point I would reboot, enter the BIOS, and make sure the Bluetooth adapter is enabled.

Sorry if this stuff seems obvious, just trying to help!

 

Could you point me to the exact setting I should look for? Somehow I couldn't find a setting in the BIOS that looked like it turns the bluetooth adapter on/off..

And no, I'm thankful for your help.

 

I just rebooted to find out where the setting is, and it isn't there. My mistake was thinking it was truly an integrated device, rather than the snap in module that it really is. Sorry.

At this point I would wonder if it came loose somehow, since Windows is not seeing it to install the driver. Are there any unknown devices in device manager? Can you put up a screen shot of device manager? I seem to remember reading once about a particular order of installing driver/app, I think relating to the wireless console.

Do you have Wireless console 2 or 3 installed? My ul30vt-x1 shows 3 installed.

 

This question might seem odd, but here it goes:
Do you have Bluetooth driver installed? Driver is quite a hefty piece of software (80MB), so I don't think Windows manages to install working version on it's own. You can get driver from Asus Support pages.

 

Actually my W7HP image did install the BT drivers.

The first screen shot shows the drivers but the second show Asus BT utilities that would be installed, after image, from driver DVD.

It's possible the image DD! used did not include the drivers?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...cial-owners-lounge-redux-139.html#post6811669

 

If anyone is interested, the "hybrid-gpu-automatic-switching-not-working-after-resume from hibernate" problem I was having changed after clean installing Windows 7 x64. I clean installed Windows after installing an OCZ Agility 2 I recently purchased from newegg.

Install went without a single hitch, from a home burnt legal Win7 ISO. After install, I threw in the driver/utility CD that came with my ul30vt-x1, and installed all drivers and some apps. The Asus bloatware guide helped a ton here.

Bluetooth works just fine, I know someone is having problems with their bluetooth after clean installing Win7.

The hybrid problem is different now. Now when I switch to battery, I am prompted that Google Chrome is preventing the laptop from switching GPU's. I close chrome as prompted and hit the save power button, and then it switches. I have Chrome set to reopen tabs, so this isn't as painful as before when it would switch at all, until I restarted the laptop that is.

 

That's common and known problem about switching. Any application that utilizes GPU will render switching impossible. Google chrome seems to use GPU acceleration, so does new Windows Live Messenger, Flash 10.1+ and so on. In fact more and more programs use GPU, so it'll be increasingly difficult to switch without closing everything first.
I don't think we can do much to address this problem. We'll just have to live with it, till we jump on Optimus bandwagon.

 

Hey guys, I was hoping that you could help me in regards to this new driver for the touch pad. I have it installed, however the touchpad icon is no longer in the task bar menu. I know the previous driver had a icon there, that showed the specific motions related to finger motions. So now I am not sure about what gestures I can use, and I tried looking on line, but no luck so far, so I was hoping someone here could shed some lite on the subject for me.

BTW, I have the UL30VT-A1 (Really love the computer so far)!!!! Will be doing the keyboard mod within the next couple of weeks, just haven't decided if I will do the switch, or just constant on......(the latte seems easier and less trouble. Also, does anyone have an example of the felt pads you used to protect the screen?? ((link or pic))

Cheers,
CC

 

Do you have a link to the exact part you will be buying to mod your keyboard? I would definitely benefit from a back-lit KB, so I too have been thinking of going down this road. Thanks.

 

Hi, from what I have read on this forum, it seems like the back-lit keyboard from the U80 is a direct fit. I order mine from e-bay, as they appear to be out of stock from Asus. This is the company where I bought mine:
New ASUS U80 Backlit Keyboard US BLACK 04GNUS1KUS00-3 on eBay.ca (item 310209685299 end time 21-Dec-10 05:50:37 EST)

I ordered mine last week, and then the price was 14.99, so it went up a bit.

Here is the link for the backlit forum Mod:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/465841-ul30-backlit-keyboard-mod.html

Hope it helps.....

CC

 

Indeed it does, exactly what I was looking for. Please do let us know how the mod went when you get around to it.

Thank you.

 

No worries, my pleasure to help out. I have found this forum very informative thus far, and the backlit keyboard seems like such a good idea.

FYI, I have seen on an Acer forum where they have used a small switch to turn the backlit on and off. However it seems like a fair bit of work, and my UL30 is only a month old, so I don't want to make such a noticeable mod, in case I have warranty issues down the road. I will post pics when I am done with my mod!

Good luck with your project too!

CC

 

No unknown devices, everything in the device manager looks normal. I have Wireless console 3 installed. I'm really out of ideas. Maybe I'll just try installing Windows a second time..

If you think it might give you an idea, I'll make screenshots, but there's really nothing there that looks like bluetooth, no unknown devices..

Well, I try to install it, but the driver tells me, that there is no device.

Press the Windows key, type "mouse" into the search box, go to the Elan tab (weird enough: I have two tabs, both do the same thing, but if I select one after the other, I get an error.. well) - you can select to discplay the icon and/or select the options there.

 

Press the Windows key, type "mouse" into the search box, go to the Elan tab (weird enough: I have two tabs, both do the same thing, but if I select one after the other, I get an error.. well) - you can select to discplay the icon and/or select the options there.[/quote]

Thanks for that. I too have the two Elan tabs. But at least I have the icon now, unfortunately it only lists the same commands as before. I will have to play with it a bit more to sort out the finger prompt features.

Thanks again!

 

I recieved my UL30VT X1 on December 2nd.
I am going to call about using the ADW, anyone have an ADW experience they'd like to share? Positive? Negative?

 

what is adw???

does anyone knows where to buy the backlit keyboard of the ul80 with german layout for a "normal" price? what i have found so far was only one offer for 80€!!!!! which is compared to 20$ of the us layout way too much

 

(ADW) I believe it is the accidental Drop Warranty. Usually within the first year of your ASUS warranty.

Sorry no help on the keyboard question.

 

Still waiting on my UL30VT to arrive. (should be here tomorrow) In the meantime, I've been playing with the UL80VT. Since they have nearly identical specs, they should operate similarly.

I have one problem that I can't figure out. When I use Hulu Plus on my desktop, I'm able to watch shows in 720p. (which is fine for my 21" desktop screen) I've noticed on my UL80VT, that I am only able to watch in 480.

At first, I thought it was because I wasn't using the Nvidia graphics. So, I made sure it was switched. Then I thought it was a bandwidth issue. (since I was using the NB on wifi, and the Desktop was ethernet) So, I connected the NB to the router via cable and I still am not able to view in 720?

Is anyone else using the UL30vt to watch Hulu plus? What quality are you able to stream?

Thanks

 

My UL30Vt arrived this morning. Unfortunately, they sent me the A1 instead of the X1 that I ordered. Now, I'm waiting to hear back. Looks like it will be another week with the UL80VT.

I can tell the the UL30vt will be the better choice for me, the size and weight difference between it and the UL80Vt is very noticeable.

 

Press the Windows key, type "mouse" into the search box, go to the Elan tab (weird enough: I have two tabs, both do the same thing, but if I select one after the other, I get an error.. well) - you can select to display the icon and/or select the options there.[/quote]

I also wound up with two Elan tabs after updating to the latest Elan driver. Does anyone know how to delete to redundant tab? I have tried deleting and reinstalling the driver which did not work.

 

I ordered my A1 from Amazon, and it was more expensive than the X1. I chose the A1 because it has the larger battery, as well as I preferred the Silver colour opposed to the Black. I think I vaguely remember noticing in the description, that the x1 has a 1 year warranty, were the A1 has a two year,,,,just my opinion though, your decision..........

 

Thanks CC13. I was on the fence about which one to get. My previous laptop (Dell X1) was silver and it shows its age, with some wear on the palm rest. So, I was skeptical about buying another silver laptop.

Also, since I bought the UL80VT already, it has the black finish. I really like the look of it. I know its a fingerprint magnet, but that doesnt bother me too much.

Since I have the UL80, it has the larger battery. I was going to keep the bigger battery from it, and sell the 4400mAh one with the UL80Vt on ebay. (once I decide to keep the UL30)

The only other factor, is the Wifi card. I'm a little worried about the Atheros card. When I use my laptop on the road, often times I can't physically move closer to the source (such as in your hotel room). So, having a stronger signal from the Intel card would be important to me.

Unless of course Asus is no longer using 2 different wifi cards in the X1 and A1. I'm not sure how many people are still buying the X1, that can confirm this.

 

No worries, that makes perfect sense. I have only had my UL30VT for about a month now, and have been very happy with it so far. As far as the wifi signal, I have not been on the road to test it, but in my house the wireless router is in the downstairs media room, and I use the laptop sometimes in my bedroom, on the second floor, at the opposite end of the house and have full wifi signal. So far I have been really impressed with this little guy.

 

Sounds like the Atheros card is working well for you. I wouldn't have a problem here at home. I have two wireless routers set up in different parts of the house.

On the road was a different story, I remember a few months ago, I was in Vegas. I could only get signal in one corner of my hotel room. Luckily, I was able to rearrange the rooms furniture to put the table in that one corner. (I'm sure housekeeping thought I was messing with them)

If the A1 had the same wifi card, I probably would just keep it. I've already heard back from the seller and will be shipping the A1 back.

 

@Snotick I wish I had the silver, bought my UL30VT-X1 about a month ago. Don't suppose you live in the Seattle area? If I understand you correctly, you would prefer the black UL30VT-X1 to your silver UL30VT-A1? FYI, in regards to the wifi adapter, mine has the Intel adapter.

(I realize they aren't a straight trade and am not offering at this point, just thinking... Perhaps we should take this to PM if you are at all interested.)

 

does anyone have issues with their built in mic? im on skype an there is always this humming noise in the background. ive turned down audio boost to zero and its still there.
when im checking skype audio settings the bit that shows microphone volume is always moving but mostly staying around the 50% mark indicating the mic is picking up sound even though my room is almost dead silent.
thanks guys

 

Built in microphone is, sadly, very poorly integrated into laptop's body. It seems to be mounted directly onto plastic w/o any dampening material in between. That causes it to pick every single vibration from the case. For example you constantly hear vibrations coming from cooling fan and HDD (unless you use SSD). Even more distracting in my opinion are keystrokes, which are very audible as are random taps (with fingers) on other parts of the laptop.

Mic is in my opinion useless, if you plan on using it for team games. It's good enough for Skype chat tho, if your buddy isn't much into sound quality

tl;dr
It's laptop's construction problem. We all have it.

 

sorry davmat, I sent the A1 back yesterday morning. It will be another weeks wait for the X1.

 

Hello All,

I apologize if this issue has already been discussed in this forum, but the search features of this website are not robust enough for me to perform an exhaustive search of troubleshooting topics on the thread.

In short, my Asus UL30VT-X1 likes to restart randomly. I purchased my laptop in January 2010, and did not encounter the issue until last August. My laptop began restarting frequently with no BSOD or reported error message. One minute my laptop is working completely normally, the next moment, I see the ASUS Bios startup screen.

The issue has occurred as frequently as once every ten minutes. The average been around every 40 minutes.

Investigating the log only reveals a code 0 error, which is described by Microsoft as generally something related to hardware, and not software or drivers.

I did send the laptop in to Asus to see if they would fix the problem, and they returned it to me with NO explanation given as to what could cause the error, or if they did anything to fix it!

Since receiving it, I have played around with my processor states, and noticed that the number of random restarts I encounter seems to be greatly reduced if I avoid Turbo mode completely, which had been toggled as On for quite some time. However, I still encounter random restarts. I continue to suspect that some type of overheating is the culpret, but can find no more evidence.

Can anyone help me with this terrible problem?

Oh, I should add that I have also tried to restore the system to original state three times. I have also run DBAN to be sure that erasure was complete, and these steps have had no effect on the problem whatsoever.

 

Check temperatures. It might be overheating. Your fan might not be working or something. I use CPUID Hardware Monitor to check temps.

 

seems to be holding steady beneath 50 C for now, but to be sure I'd have to keep the window open all the time and wait to see how hot it gets.

About the fan- I know it works because if I put my ear to the vent on the leftside, I can hear and feel circulation. But I never hear it otherwise. Is this typical?

Assuming we are talking about overheating here, is there a way to toggle fan settings?

 

My CPU is currently at 39C and my GPU at 46C.

You normally can't hear the fan on the UL30VT unless you are in absolute silence or you put your head next to it. Sometimes the fan doesn't even run because it isn't needed.

Does it restart even if you don't do anything on it after booting it up?

What do you mean by you tried to restore the system to original state 3 times? Did you use the restore partition, or a Windows CD and manually downloaded drivers?

Edit: In case it is BSODing, but it's so fast we can't see it, do this so that it will pause at the BSOD instead of restarting the laptop:
Hold down the Win-key and press Pause.
On the left side, click "Advanced System Settings".
In the Advanced tab, under "Startup and Recovery", click the Settings button.
Uncheck "Automatically restart".

 

I have installed an Sandforce SSD into the UL30VT, since that the notebook crashes when I want to wake it up from standby. I've read some posts about it in this thread about similar problems, but no solution yet. Anyone found a solution for the problem?

 

@Noby
@gouraudshades

I hit the same bugcheck coming out of S1/Standby as you are apparently. At least they are occurring at the same time. I have unchecked automatic reboot to get the stack, which should tell us what driver is bugchecking.

If that don't work, I will put this on a debugger unless I have to open it to attach a serial port.

Very happy with my ul30vt, except for the lack of driver support from Asus. Their are glaring and consistent bugs that could be easily fixed by Asus. It's not like they need to fix the code in a kernel mode driver, they just need to repackage the .infs and associated updated driver files from NVidia.

Not that I am sure it is Nvidia driver stack blowing chunks on resume from S1, just an educated guess!

 

davmat787. Thanks for your reply. Do you have a sandforce ssd also?

I could narrow it down to the ssd because I mirrored the drive to a conventional hard drive and then I had no problems with waking up from standby. Also these sandforce drives are known to cause problems with standby on many systems.

I will probably send my sandforce ssd back and go for another chipset.

But one thing is sure: I will never ever use a system with conventional harddrives anymore. SSDs are the best upgrades you can get, even with their problems.

 

Hate to go into something different but my temperatures are much higher now then they were when I got this lappy.

I believe before my CPUs were high 50s for the CPU high 60s to low 70s for the GPU under load

But now it's low to mid 70s for the CPU and low to mid 80s for the GPU...

So im guessing this is because dust has been building up inside...
I have took the keyboard out and looked at the fan and saw very little dust and tired blowing at the vents immediate to the fan to avail

I have actually tired running without the keyboard and the temperatures were closer to the ones I had when I first had to laptop for both CPU and GPU

So I guess what im asking is how to clean the dust out of this lappy

 

As you removed your keyboard, use thumb or whatever to keep the fan from over rev as you use canned air or other source. The idea is to blow the crud from outside to in as it builds up on the inside part of fins. A vacuum may work for you as well if used on the keyboard fan well to reverse the flow. Check other areas for lint build up under notebook in the slotted areas.

 

@Noby
@gouraudshades

Do either of you have the ability to put your memory dumps online? I will be having lunch with an old driver testing buddy of mine, and if we could give him the dumps, I bet he would load them into a debugger and tell us exactly what is breaking. He might be able to get pressure on the driver owner to fix this, at least report it directly to asus.

Can't promise anything, but I have done this before.

The memory dump is located in %SystemRoot%\MEMORY.DMP which for us should map to c:\windows\memory.dmp

Let me doublecheck a mem dump is being created for this break before you upload anything.

 

davmat787

I already set windows to stop at the bluescreen. It reports me that it crashed and that it wants to write a dump file, but the writing of the dump file failes.

Seems as if the SSD doesn't wake up from standby, that is the reason for the system to crash and also the reason no dumpfile can be written on it.

By the way: In a German Board many users with other SSD chipsets are fine with standby on the UL30VT. Seems it is only the Sandforce chipset.

 

Try the Momentus XT. IMHO the SSD are way too expensive but would get one in a heart beat at half the price..and with a 5 year warranty .

The XT is fast with lots of room in the trunk for single bay use on the road.

Cold boot to 100% desktop is 25 seconds which is not too shabby?