Asus UL30VT FAQ / Official Owners Lounge redux

A question I have for everyone that I cannot find the answer to is how do I increase the smoothness of video capture with the webcam?

I was g-chatting a friend using the webcam so we could talk and my video feed was significantly slower than his. When I talked, my mouth did not match with the words and it looked like a dubbed kung-fu movie.

I scoured for some sort of webcam settings but could not find any. Is the webcam in this laptop that bad?

 

You'll find that the preview you get on your end is not what they are seeing. They are seeing a smooth feed. I know this because I tested it with 2 computers at my cousins' house.

 

LOL, Google should call it gg-cchating? Sorry.

How do you guy's compare this to Skype bandwidth vs PQ vs ease of use?

 

Oh. I've never used G-Chat, or whatever it's called. I was using Skype in my test.

 

I installed the OCZ Vertex 2 (120 GB) last night and installed windows. The Flyers and Senators started brawling, so that's all I really got to do. Hockey brawls are like boobs, I can't not stop and watch.

I timed my startup before the SSD install with the old plater drive and after install with pure Win7 installed (no drivers, software or Asus bloatware).

Platter time from off to login screen: 35 seconds
SSD time from off to login: 15 seconds

Wow. Just wow.

I have to travel this weekend and unfortunately won't be able to get back until Monday to finish getting the drivers installed along with all my software.

 

@Choucla78

Haha good for you and your laptop ! Enjoy the Vertex and keep me informed about your benchmark score. Tell me if after you installed all the drivers you got the sleep issue I described (could actually find it in forums but couldn't get a solution that works). If you don't I guess my only solution is to reinstall the OS from scratch with a clean W7 (I previously used the recovery disk from asus).

By the way, here some speed tests I made with OCZ Vertex II 120 go on the UL30VT :

Time from off to fully functionnal desktop : 39 seconds
Time from from hibernation to fully functionnal : 24 seconds

Time to shut down : 19 seconds
Time to go in hibernation : 40 seconds (weird that it's longer than turning on the laptop)

Time to launch Chrome : 1 seconds
Time to launch Opera : 2 seconds
Time to launch Firefox : 7 to 12 seconds (I guess my 20 add-ons are guilty...)

 

Hello all,

I have owned the UL30VT-X1 (black) for slightly over a year now. As of a few days ago, I am having battery issues where my battery will not hold a charge for more than an hour on power saving mode, and also, hovering over the battery icon in the taskbar has the message "Consider Replacing Your Battery". Any suggestions as to where I can find a good replacement battery that is compatible with the UL30VT-X1 laptop?

Battery For A42-UL30 ASUS UL30VT-X1K UL50Vt-A1 UL80Vt - eBay (item 370439083606 end time Jan-27-11 21:01:41 PST)

This was one that I was looking at on Ebay, but my battery is 8 cell and has 4400mAh, whereas the ebay battery has 5200mAh. I'd greatly appreciate any help on this matter!

 

The only thing you got to check about battery specs is that it has the same voltage as the original one. The mAh is pretty much the capacity of the battery. 5200 mAh should mean that the battery life is better than your original one.

It seems like this one is perfect for the UL30VT and the vendor looks pretty serious. The only thing you need to know is that it's not the genuine ASUS one, so you should normally not have any problems but of course you can't be 100% sure until you get it !

 

@ dwong, the warranty looks good but shame it was not the 8400mAh one.
If you cannot find the big one for resonable then it should work fine.

My dell e1705 ebay clone battery outlasted my 13 month original, fwiw.

 

I installed the drivers last night and that went smoothly. I liked the install interface that came on the driver disk. It made it simple to pick the ones I wanted to install. However, I missed a driver that allows me to use the default keyboard shortcuts so I will have to go back and do that later.

I am also having problems with sleep. The computer goes to sleep fine, but when I wake it up I get a brief flash of the BSOD and then it restarts. The frickin' blue screen flashes so quickly I can't even read the error. I will have to find a way to disable the BSOD INTO RESTART function so I can write down the error code and google a solution.

I rarely use sleep though, mostly just hibernate so disabling sleep is an option, but I want to solve the error. I have not tried hibernate yet so I don't know how quickly the computer wakes up. Tonight I will try to run Crystal Disk mark and compare it to my platter drive scores in a post.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I couldn't find a good ISO of W7HP 64-bit. I had to use the ASUS disk :-(. If I find a good W7HP iso, I may reinstall.

 

I just bought a UL30VT the other day on ebay. I've been in the market for a UL asus for awhile now. Needless to say I'm pretty excited now (switched from an eeePC 1000HE).

I have a few questions that I'm sure you long time UL30VT owners could be able to help me out with. I've been skimming the UL30 threads, but 170 pages here and 300+ pages in the other thread is quite a lot of info to sort through.

1. These asus laptops seem to come with a lot of software, some of which seems to be redundant. (volume, changing the brightness with fn keys, "graphix" boost vs "Power4Gear Hybrid" etc.) I liked how the eeePC had one little OSD pop up for just a few seconds when I changed the volume. I have no need for a 3D light bulb and a pie chart every time I want to change the brightness. I got this laptop used, and since reformatting and reinstalling Win7HP/asus drivers, I seem to be stuck with the flasy version. Also, The graphix boost and Power4Hybrid seem to be fighting each other, which seems to impact my battery life and performance.

For example, just switching to "High performance" doesn't enable the G210M, and likewise "battery saving" doesn't disable it.

So my question is: What's the best asus software/bloatware combo to get lots of functionality without useless 3D animations or having the different asus softwares fight each other?


2. What do you guys think of these 7200mAh 12-cell batteries? 12-Cell Battery A42-UL80 For ASUS UL50Vt-X1 UL30VT-X1K - eBay (item 280582258804 end time Jan-28-11 00:55:47 PST)
Right now I'm only getting 4-5 hours max when I power save everything. I'm guessing the last user abused the battery which is surprising because the rest of the laptop is pristine.

3. This is a more general laptop question but what's the difference between these two screen protectors, which do you recommend?
Keyboard Cover Skin Protector Asus U80 UL80Vt UL30 A42 - eBay (item 150423348041 end time Feb-06-11 20:21:01 PST)
TPU Keyboard Protector Cover ASUS U80A U80V U81 UL30A - eBay (item 160395716205 end time Feb-10-11 19:44:07 PST)

That's all for now, I'll probably have more questions later. =P

 

@Choucla78

Well about the ISO you got a pm... Maybe there is a conflict with some drivers or settings put by the Asus recovery disc, reinstalling a clean W7 copy could be a solution. And if not, well it means the ul30vt doesn't like our Vertex HDDs !

 

There is a W7 ISO here.

See which version of Power4Gear you are running. You can check by going to the Control Panel, going to the "uninstall programs" area, and single-clicking the P4G program. It will tell you at the bottom of the window what version it is.

If it is not 1.1.24 or 1.1.25, then you should get either one of those. 1.1.24 is available from the Asus support page for the UL30VT, and 1.1.25 is available on the Asus support page for the UL80VT. I'm running 1.1.25 and it works fine, but mine came with 1.1.29, which didn't work for mine.

 

I've tried about 10 different things to uninstall P4G Hybrid 1.1.31 and it is NOT possible. I get an error about "Windows installer package" every time.
P4G 1.1.25 waiting to be installed. =\
Anybody have suggestions?

 

@Gskellig

1. Set it to High Performance mode, making sure it is using the Nvidia GPU.
2. Uninstall P4G Hybrid.
3. Run the 1.1.24 or 1.1.25 executable.

Step 1 is very important. Make sure that you do it.

If that doesn't work, I know there was an installer-repair tool for the Windows XP installer, but I'm not sure if there is one for the Windows 7 installer.

I found this list of error codes for the installer, which may be helpful.
Windows Installer Error Messages (Windows)

 

The vertex 2 (and all other sf1200 sandforce based controllers) is/are known to have problems with suspending/resuming. It should have been fixed in firmware with the latest release, but I know from direct experience that it is still an issue on certain ASUS machines (I tested a brand new vertex 2 on a U80V and U20A), even on a brand new drive with firmware that is newer than the one on the OCZ support site.

ocz vertex 2 suspend bsod - Google Search

 

cmasupra, thanks. I finally ended up being able to uninstall P4G by reverting to a restore point JUST before installing any asus drivers at all... Anyway I have 1.1.25 working great now. Battery life seems to have improved a bit. Thanks!

The nvidia icon that tells you which gpu you're using still isn't right. After pressing the "graphix boost" button, screen flashes and removes winows aero (clearly switching to low power mode) but the nvidia icon still says "Increased performance" Same thing happens when I use P4G to switch instead of the graphix boost button.

I'm messing around now with how P4G works withOUT ATKOSD2. Just using ATKOSD for brightness/sound and the "Graphix Boost" button to switch gpus. Still have the nvidia icon showing up wrong though.

Thanks for everything.

 

Thanks fo that ! Well I gonna try to reflash again the last firmware of OCZ, and if it does not work I will wait for the next firmware release.

 

@Jon-jon, if you have a newer Vertex it might have firmware that's newer than the one on the site like my friend's did (purchased it a week ago). Apparently the newer firmware that shipped on the drive is for a new hardware revision and is not compatible with older drives. I'm not sure you can downgrade anyway, but just in case, double check the firmware versions to be safe.

I guess the firmware release is delayed anyway, for no specific reason I have been able to find on the OCZ forum. The latest one is months old.

BTW I tested the U80V with my intel X25 g2 and it worked fine... that drive is in my U20A and has no issues but it's slower and more expensive than the vertex 2. So anyway I can rule out hardware and software configuration, the only thing left is the BIOS and both machines I tested are from the same generation.

 

is there any way to remove the nvidia icon from the tray?

it doesnt do anything other than show you if you are using integrated or discrete, which is obvious anyway

i know you can "hide" it by right click taskbar, properties, customize, uncheck always show.... but then windows has that arrow on the taskbar which i dont want either.

anyone?

 

Have you tried going to that same area, scrolling to the Nvidia icon, and saying "Hide icon and notifications" just for that icon? This is a drop-down box, not a check box.

 

yes but u cant use the dropdown box (its grayed out) until you uncheck "always show..." and then the arrow appears in the tray...

im thinking the solution is something in the registry?

 

Just to make sure I understand what you are wanting:

1) You want to hide the Nvidia icon so that it never shows

2) You want to see all of the icons in the bottom-right without needing to click the arrow

Is this right?

 

thats right

 

I quickly tried looking for a way to do it, but I couldn't find one. I can look more thoroughly when I get back to my dorm tonight. The only thing I found was checking the box that you checked, but that would show the Nvidia icon, which you don't want.

 

Hello. I was wondering if some1 else has noticed the weird sound coming from the hdd. It is kinda hard to describe it, the sound is actually very quiet and i can hear it only when there is complete silence. The sound repeats after 30-60 seconds. Usually when the sound appears the laptop stucks for 1-2 sec. I haven't seen any lag when i am playing games or watching movies. For example it lags when i use excel/word, browsing the web, looking into my folders...
It has been a problem since i bought the laptop.

 

If it is a soft clicking sound, it is perfectly normal. That is just the hard drive's power-saving mode/state.

Otherwise, I would recommend downloading Acronis Disk Monitor and telling me what the percentages are for the hard drive. I only need the ones that aren't 100%, because 100% is good.

 

I have an odd or stupid question....

Does anyone know if replacing the stock ram say for a better name brand company with a faster speed will make any difference with the laptops, or is it a moot point and a waste of money?

I was just wondering since RAM is so inexpensive now....

Thanks in advance )

 

Different name brands are moot. As for higher speed rams, you'd probably won't find any noticeable difference in your system's overall performance unless you plan to overclock your CPU.

 

@ David.

Thanks for the info. I kind of assumed as much. I couldnt find any info regarding factory installed RAM vs. Name brand RAM that was sufficient. ome forums said yes, other said no, so..... I will save my 40.00.
Thanks

 

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/5843/diskp.jpg

+I have used the HD utility and it didn't find any bad sectors

IMO this sound can't be normal. I have used many laptops and this is the first time :S Others are quiet but mine still keeps making this stupid sound,

 

@sativa
D'oh! I keep getting them confused. I meant Active Disk Monitor, not Acronis. My mistake. From what I can see in that image, though, your hard drive looks fine. None of the values are close to the thresholds. I'm not sure what could be causing that sound.

Is the hard drive activity light always on whenever it makes that sound? If yes: is the light solid, or flashing?

@donnrfl
I couldn't find anything about showing all the icons, but hiding 1 specific one. You can probably do it in the registry. I would look in an Nvidia folder in the registry. The driver might have a variable in there for whether or not to show the icon in the tray. The other place to look would be wherever Windows 7 stores which programs use the tray, but I don't know where that is.

 

thanks for trying man,
i agree it is probably in the registry there somewhere and ive been looking but im no expert. it isnt a huge deal but i just like the simple minimalist desktop look and that green thing in the tray is annoying me

unrelated.. but i love this laptop. i stuck a 80gb intel ssd in mine and it is fantastic performance to battery life. mines the black version and it looks pretty cool also

 

No, the light is absolutely off when the sound appears.
Now i noticed that the hdd makes this sound even when i am only on the desktop (no programs running).
@I took a pic and the indicator lights looked exactly the same all the time. As you can see only the left/right ones were on. (solid all the time)

Spoiler

 

Your post makes it sound like the hard drive activity light is never on. In that case, you definitely have a problem somewhere, and I would call Asus about that.

You might call Asus anyway, but I'm not sure they'll be able to do anything except take your laptop in and replace the hard drive.

There is also a chance that the noise is perfectly normal for this hard drive. Different laptops have different hard drives. My UL30VT-A1 hard drive makes a noise, but I know that is the power-saving feature of the hard drive activating and deactivating.

 

I have been bitten by this S1/OCZ bug as well. How can I determine the firmware version of my OCZ Agility 2 w/o taking it out of my ul30vt?

Thanks.

 

I installed a pair of Corsair 1333mhz 4gb dimms into my UL30VT-A1 to upgrade my ram to 8gb. These chips now go for around $42 each.

The part number is CMS04GX3M1A1333C9

Upgrading from 4gb to 8gb won't be noticeable unless you're using tons of memory. This only happens with huge games and virtual machines typically, no standard day-to-day stuff. The speed of the memory, even 1333mhz memory such as mine, is simply downclocked to 1066mhz speeds with this laptop.

In essence, there will not be noticeable difference in speed unless you're running very special and hungry programs.

 

For people that purchased the zeroshock case.

Will the 34-27 work or do I need to get something bigger?

Notebook Cases, Laptop Sleeves, and Mobile Computer Accessories ? Customer Care

This is for the ASUS UL30Vt-X1K

 

A noticable boost in my opinion is the upgrade to a SSD. I have the 80GB Intel G2. Especially great are the fast hibernation and wake-up times. I'm just thinking right now if 8GB of memory (4GB for a RAMDISK) would prolong the life of my SSD. Through the RAMDISK I could buffer the hostwrites. Does anybody have any experience with it?

 

Regarding the memory upgrade, I bumped my ul30vt to 8GB with these G.Skill modules. Very stable.

If you had to choose between going to 8GB RAM or an SSD upgrade, the SSD will by far give you the better overall performance increase.

 

hey, just received my laptop today and want to know the best drivers overall in terms of performance and stability/features. I don't want any modded inf that still has issues in some areas. I just want to know if there's something that everyone usually uses. Thanks.

 

I just finished these 174 pages, still have the 300+ other thread to go through sigh.
Loving my UL30VT-X1 but I have a few more questions.

1. Sometimes when coming out of hibernate or switching P4G modes, my taskbar (which I have on the left side) switches my auto hide off.

2. What is a good tool to test my seagate hard drive for errors? From what I've heard loud is normal but I still want to make sure nothing is wrong.

3. Someone in the Seattle/Tacoma area is listing THREE brand new in box SSDs for $150 total. I'm planning on picking them up tomorrow. Anybody interested? 1 Transcend 32GB, 1 Kingston SSD V series 30GB and 1 ocZ vertex 2 40GB.

All things considered, this laptop I got very lightly used for $470 shipped on ebay is turning out AMAZING. I've been looking for a under 4 lb 12-13" laptop for awhile and I was amazed I could get something this good for so cheap.

 

@mD-
The one thing that I tell everyone to do is make sure you are running Power4Gear Hybrid 1.1.24 or 1.1.25. Some people have had some success with other versions, but most of us haven't. My laptop came with 1.1.29, and it didn't work well for me.

To check which version you have:
1) Control Panel -> Uninstall a Program
2) Single-click on Power4Gear Hybrid. In the info at the bottom, it will tell you which version it is.

To download 1.1.24 or 1.1.25:
1) For 1.1.24, go to the Asus support website for the UL30VT. It's a downloadable "utility".
2) For 1.1.25, go to the Asus support website for the UL80VT. It's a downloadable "utility".

To install 1.1.24 or 1.1.25:
1) Put P4G into High Performance mode, and make sure it is using the Nvidia GPU, not the Intel Integrated GPU.
2) Uninstall the current P4G.
3) Install the new P4G.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

@Gskellig
1) I think you forgot to finish your sentence
2) I use Active Disk Monitor. Basically, anything that isn't at 100% in there indicates a possible problem with your hard drive. For laptops, I would say anything below 60% is danger. For desktops, anything below 80% is danger.

 

thanks cma, I read that already and I'm using 1.24. What I really mean is: what's the best graphics card driver that's also stable?

 

Haha yeah I did forget to finish my sentence. I wrote all that out then hibernated my computer before posting, when I came back from hibernation I guess it didn't save quite everything. I edited it to fix it.

 

@mD-
I'm not sure about the graphics driver. I would just use whatever your laptop came with. I do know, however, that the newer Nvidia Hybrid graphics drivers don't work with the UL30VT, so you have to use older ones. Someone who has installed Windows from scratch on this laptop should be able to help you, but I can't.

@Gskellig
I noticed that too when I first got this laptop. It seems to be controlled by P4G. A trend I've noticed is that the taskbar shows in High Performance mode and hides when on battery. Changing the Windows setting didn't save the state, and I couldn't find a setting for this in P4G (including in the advanced settings). The best solution I can give for that is to hide the taskbar manually everytime is shows itself, although that's obviously inconvenient.

 

My RAW read error rate is 54% and my Seek error rate is 68%. Everything else is 99% or 100%.
The total health status is 54%.
Is this something to be concerned about? I think it dropped a few % actually after running a disk scan.

I was trying to think of a way to run a .bat or reg file and get it to hide, would be easier than right clicking on the taskbar and going to properties, etc. And I could even put it in the startup folder.

 

I recieved my laptop yesterday and it is great, but I was looking to update the bios, but I can't.

I have the file for 211 (UL30VTas.211) but the FAQ says to put it on a usb drive, and run it from the bios. I have no option to do that from the bios, which is 210. I've gone through all the options. Am I missing something?

 

@Gskellig
I would monitor your hard drive for the next couple of weeks. If any of the percentages become lower, you probably have a bad hard drive and should back up your data. You should really back up your data anyway, but if the percentages become lower, that's when you should start worrying

I looked for a bat file to hide the taskbar, but couldn't find one. I then tried to look for which exe controls the taskbar so I could make a bat file myself, but I couldn't find that either. I did, however, come across this, which will let you show and hide the taskbar by running the program. The only possible problem is that when the taskbar is hidden, you can't move your mouse anywhere to show it; you have to run the program again to show your taskbar. It's a good program if you never use your taskbar. It's up to you if you would be fine with never seeing your taskbar (or needing to run a program to see it).

------------------------------------------------------------

@stan18
I have BIOS 208, and I have an option to update the BIOS. I'll explain how to get to it step by step, although I'm sure this first step is obvious because you actually know what a BIOS is.

1) Repeatedly press F2 during boot (before Windows loads) until a blue and grey screen comes up.
2) Go to the "Advanced" tab.
3) Choose "Start Easy Flash". This is the utility for updating your BIOS. If you don't have this, follow the directions below after step 5.
4) Find your new BIOS file (211).
5) Update your BIOS.

If you couldn't find "Start Easy Flash" in step 3 above, restart the laptop and repeatedly press F4 until a blue, grey, and yellow screen comes up. Then continue from step 4 above.

 

I found it, huuuge thanks! This laptop is great!