W3j Owners Lounge

wow, I don't see any scatch, but anyway, if you do decide to switch the cover, then maybe you can post a pic by pic step on how to do it. that would be great, I could learn and many others too.

 

Whehe, you don't see it cause its a picture I googled. I can do a Howto if I get the part, will make a pic of my scratch tonight.

 

I installed the ati driver from asus 4 times over and over again, I can't seem to find advanced view, it's just not there. I reinstalled it many times, different versions, I don't know how to see the advance view. Can anyone help me please.

 

what settings are you guys using for NHC/rmclock, just the other day I left it on and when I came back it the BSOD. I'm wondering if its the settings for NHC, which were very conservative, or is it the X1600 again (still using omegas from probably a year ago)

 

I have something worse in my W3J... The Catalyst Control Center won't even open everytime I click it from a right-click on the desktop.

 

are you serious, or being sarcastic?

and hi

but seriously, I want to see what my setting is with powerplay.

 

You never know man, US ASUS RMA department is very fast and generous i would say. I rma'ed my w3j for a speaker that i broke myself lol. They not only fixed that but gave me a new cover because it had a little crack, and i didn't even asked them to do that. Not to mention I didnt pay for overnite shipping, and got it back in about 3 days.

Edit: And oh yea I didnt have the stock cpu, i had upgraded to a T7200 from a 5500, shouldn't they have voided the warranty? Well the RMA guy said just not to state it, they didnt care either way.

 

I stuck with catalyst 6.8 and it works perfectly. I might get a little lower scores in 3dmark but I think its worth the stability. For Robo and Latino, have you guys tried installing that version?

 

Hi to you too, my friend! No, I'm serious... don't be angry at me please. I just found out that Catalyst Control Center in my setup (W3J with Vista Ultimate) behaves rather strangely. Most of the time it won't open up when I click it.

The good news is... now it opens when I clicked just now. So, when you open CCC, what do you see? Is it a box with "Catalyst Control Center - Basic" at the title bar? If it's so, there's an "Advanced" button at the bottom left part. Click that button and you can see "PowerPlay" in the "Graphics Settings" box. Click "PowerpPlay" and you can see the settings for PowerPlay.

Hi earthdan, when I was still using XP, I tried (and also loved) the 6.8 version. It's great... But now I (and also Latino) use Vista, and of course we use Vista version Catalyst.

 

you need to click "restart runtime" from the catalyst folder in your programs list. This will allow you to click on the right click link again. I am having the same problem with Vista Business x64

 

Hey, thanks for your tip Rosemarycane, I'll try it next time the CCC acts up again.

 

Just curious, which anti-virus program are you running? I think my issues with CCC began with Avast. Before I was running AVG and did not seem to have a problem.

 

I am running AVG 7.5 Pro.

 

1. Try to uninstall all ATI software, in the end run DriverCleaner. Then install
the Catalysts you like again.

should this not help, then

2. Try to reinstall .NET framework, it may also be the issue

I had exactly same issue, CCC wouldn't open at all. Removing .NET and then installing it again solved the problem.

 

Hey - my stock (Fujistsu) hard drive died because a medium sized book fell off the shelf and landed on my laptop while it was on (confirmed it by running their diagnostic off a CD). So I just ordered a 7200RPM, 100GB Seagate ATA-6 drive to replace it. I only have the recovery cds to reinstall Windows with, will they allow me to partition the drive how I want or will I be stuck with one big "C" (which would be a little annoying, but not the end of the world)?

 

I think if you use the recovery cd you will get a big C, but after that you can partition the drive yourself using Disk Management from the Control Panel. IIRC.

 

Hi all. I just wanted to pull up my seat, as I am now a W3j owner. Any advice for me? I'm in Vista ultimate.

 

Will I really gain anything by installing the Wireless drivers from the Asus page? I am in Vista Ultimate Edition. Also, how do I make the media buttons (play/pause, stop, so on) work with Windows Media Player?

 

I just read the last few posts, regarding ATI drivers I use these: (diresctions copied from an old post;

OCing X1600 in W3j

Ok, I see that many people still have problems with overclocking X1600's. This is solution that should work in 99% (I left 1% cause you know - expect the unexpected ). Ok, so here we go :

1. Download newest Omega Drivers from www.omegadrivers.net
2. Download ATI TOOL (NOT ATI TRAY TOOL!!!) from this page http://www.softwarepatch.pl/plik/402...5_Beta_10.html
3. Now, UNINSTALL your current GPU drivers ->reboot
4. Install new Omega's + ATI TOOL ->reboot
5. Start ATI TOOL and DO NOT click on Find Max Memory/Find Max Core!!! In my case program went up to 580/580 and that's 100% unstable values. So we have to do it manualy.
6. Add 10 Mhz to Core and Memory -> save this values -> run 3dm05&06 to check stability
7. If benchmarks passed, add another 10 Mhz to Core and Mems. If not substract 5 Mhz and run benchmarks again.

And that's it. I should work like a charm. I hope it will help, good luck!!

Default Settings (450.00 / 450.00)
Core 445.50
Memory 445.50

Also in regards to the new drive, when you format from the CDs it asks you if you would like to format with two partitions or one, you choose although you dont get to choose the partition size. What are you doing with your old drive is it accessible? I used a good data recovery business in NZ to recover 40GB off an older failed drive, it was very cheap, PM me if you want the details.

In regards to the mdia player and buttons along the side, I dont think you can change the assignment of these to open WMP, by default the top button wil always open AsusDVD player, however if you have windows media player open, they will controll, play pause skip etc.

Hope that helps.

 

I don't have the AsusDVD installed, so they worked to open WMP, but they suddenly started working to control WMP. Thanks. I am still trying to get power4gear working right, and I am still curious if the WLAN drivers are worth installing.

 

Well.... I had everything I needed backed up onto an external drive, so accessing stuff on the dead drive is not an issue for me. Since I can't choose partition sizes, I'll probably just make one large "C" partition; not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. The main thing is just getting my computer up and running again (which will happen as soon as Newegg sends out my new drive).

 

Interesting about removing Asus DVD, I might try that, in regards to the wireless drivers, I find them good to work with, only had to repair the drivers once or twice (it connected but wouldnt transmit) but it works fine, I have found them quite sound.

 

So, I did a bunch of reading through old threads, but I still have two problems:
1. Power4Gear isn't working right. If I unplug, it doesn't seem to change any settings. The screen brightness stays the same, and I can't get it to be in high performance when plugged in and quiet office when unplugged, which I did on my V6j (also in Vista). Any thoughts on how to fix that?
2. The media keys are quite interesting. If I use them to open WMP, they don't work (play/pause, stop, they do nothing). However, if I manually open WMP they will work. Any ideas on how to make them open, yet still work?

P.S. - I tried reinstall all of the ATK drivers (all 4) and P4G xtreme. I installed them in this order:
ATK
ATK Hotkey
ATK OSD
ATK Media
P4G xtreme

I am using the latest drivers I have found, so I can't update. Any ideas about fixing this? Mostly the power4Gear, thats what I really care about at this point.

 

so any news on the member who wanted to change the cover lid of the w3J? did it work out, are you deciding to not change it or not...I'm curious.

 

That would be me. Meanwhile I have received the part no from customer care but I am not able to order directly at the asus Estore because they do not ship overseas.

I now have to contact asus Netherlands, so to be continued.

 

thank you, and hopefully all goes well.

As I just notice really minor scratches on the cover, and would like to know know it really can be change.


I will keep looking at this owners lounge.

 

Just to update, I changed out my broken Fujitsu 100GB, 5400RPM drive the other day and stuck in the new Seagate 100GB, 7200RPM drive. I notice a slightly faster boot time coming out of hibernation, but otherwise, nothing special. Also, the recovery discs were a pain to use. It kept giving me this error:

Causeway Error 09: Unrecoverable internal exception
Exception: 0D, Error code: 016C

Apparently, having a 2GB stick + a 512MB stick was too much for the program to handle. Removing the 2GB stick fixed everything and I just put it back into my machine once the recovery process was completed.

 

That is interesting to hear about the recovery disks. The 100GB 7200 RPM drive should increase boot times all around and you should see programs loading faster as well. I have always noticed better performance with faster hard drives.

 

Hey im getting another 160GB drive, I am going to do a freash install on it and use the old one for music storge.

Question is.... I would like to keep the old drive with windows loaded and if it was in my multibay, could I boot from that drive.

Because i've loaded AutoCAD 2004, 2005, 2007 & 2008, Vis 2007, and Map 2007 and Civil2008. all of which are large and messy, and some I have loaded or trial.

It would be good to choose which drive to boot from so it can keep my main drive running as fast a possible but still be able to load new apps whenever I wanted.

This would be easier than having to physically to remove the drive.

 

You should be able to do it. I was playing in the BIOS the other day, and from other experience, you should be able to set which drive to boot from first in the BIOS. My immediate suggestion is to set the Multibay to boot first, and when you don't want it just remove it before you boot, then once the other drive starts to boot, put it back. But, you could also look into a Boot loader, like GRUB and just set the computer to book from the external drive (and put GRUB there) then tell GRUB to boot the internal drive first. This will make it so the default boot is always the internal drive, and so that if the second drive is gone, you don't use an extra boot loader. Make sense? You might pop in the linux forum for more help with GRUB or more advice on boot loaders.

 

Where would I go about getting a W3J now?

Even though it lacks Santa Rosa and DX10, I think its still the best notebook for my needs.

 

When I was looking for a multibay battery I found that BTOTech says they still have them (though in low quantity). You could check there. Newegg also has the W3j with a 2.0 Ghz processor. Hope that helps.

 

Cool, thanks Caleb!

EDIT: BTOTech is charging $1600, which is way more than what I want to pay. Newegg is out of stock at $999, but I've signed up for auto-notify. Hopefully, they do get it back in stock, but I doubt they will. Heres to hoping anyways though!

 

Not that it is worth $600, but the BTO tech has a Core2Duo instead of a CoreDuo and 1 Dimm RAM instead of 2 Dimms. Those are just what I noticed in a really brief check.

 

The Newegg one has the 1 Dimm of memory as well, its the newer W3J+ config. The first version had a T2400 and 512MBx2, but then got bumped to 1GBx1 and a T2500.

And personally, I would rather have the T2500 over the T5500, since its got the higher clock speed. 64 bit is pretty much irrelevant at the moment, but if I need it, I can always upgrade to a T7200 or T7400.

 

Oh, I misread that. But I agree, I would rather not pay $600 for the 64-bit processor that I don't need. Good luck finding it. I assume you have gone through the rest of the resellers list from the Asus information booth?

 

If you do go with the core 2 duo 1.66 ghz, I can tell you it is plenty fast. I had a Lenovo T60 w/ Core Duo 2.0ghz and my W3J smokes that notebook in every respect.

 

I know that MilestonePC and Portable One no longer list it on their respective websites, and PROPortable has not had it on their site since it was axed. AGear Notebooks does list it, but the same C2D model (not a problem, but I'd prefer the T2500) at $1500 (too much...). I have yet to check the other resellers though.

And Caleb, I know you got your W3 quite recently. May I ask where you got it?

 

There are lots of factors there, including RAM, hard drive, OS setup, potentially graphics. Not to mention, for most uses the processor won't be the bottle neck, so why pay extra for it?

 

Its not that the T5500 is a slow processor or anything, its that the T2500 is faster and probably cheaper. I see a win-win situation right there.

 

yes, the w3j lounge is showing signs of life.

we are not outdated

anyways, you could try milestonepc.com, and I think the owner or something is a member here.

 

in addition, what are you main battery life wear level, mines is 10% according to everest, when it's plugged in.

 

I know that the core duo 2.0ghz would serve anyone well. I was just stating that *if* you had to get the core 2 duo version, you would not be disappointed. As far as I am concerned, any version of the w3j rocks. I am going to encase my laptop in carbonite when I replace it. lol

Anyone know where I can find Han Solo?

 

Certainly, the T5500 is more than adequate.

In my searching, I've found that MilestonePC and Portable One (who both had it as of three weeks ago) have removed it from their websites and are presumably out of stock, AGearNotebooks and Geared2Play/BTOTech have it at very high prices ($1550 and 1600, respectively), Newegg lists it as out of stock at $999 (I don't think they will get it back in stock, sadly), and plenty of people are selling it on the NBR forums. I'm not sure that I want a used one, so that really isn't an option. Maybe if they were selling it for $650 or $700, but how often does a $700 W3J come up?

 

I hope you find one man. It is the ****!! Sometimes I can believe how much power they stuffed in such a little frame. Being able to play Quake 4, Oblivion, Half Life 2, and Battlefield 2 all at high settings is pretty flipping sweet.

 

yes it is really sweet, this is truly a portable powerful machine.

 

Yet, you set the powerplay and processor down, and you can push past 3.5 hours of battery life (on one battery, add the second and you are into pretty good life). Most gaming notebooks can't do that. This is a great computer.

 

Yep. Even with the 4 cell you can hit 2.5 hours of battery life. I wish they had made a W3S. That would have been bloody brilliant.

 

Yes it would. Especially with a DX10 capable card.

 

I just purchased an optical bay battery from BTO, great customer service, can't wait until I receive the battery, so I can prolong battery life of my W3J even more.

now the only thing I need to order would be the 7200RPM hard drive, then my notebook will have great performance, longer lasting, and a sleek chassis.