W3j Owners Lounge

If anybody here has experience using the S/PDIF optical out in the W3J, this thread could use your attention.

~ Brett

 

Hello everyone, I recently have a battery prob with my W3J, Intel T5500 model and i really need some help.

Not long ago, my charger died so i bought a new one and during that period (about a week), the battery was just sitting there with little power. After i get the new charger and plug in, the battery wouldn't charge and the battery indicator was off. Although the system recognize the battery and said it was in critical condition (1-2%). I tried running the batter calibrator in BIOS but it runs for two days without any change.

After a few days, i leave the battery attached and turn on the laptop, this time, the battery indicator was flashing but still not charging when i checked. Now sometimes the battery indicator will flash with the battery attached or no response at all (off). I also have a modular bay battery, this one is about a year younger than the main battery and it wouldn't charge either.

Also of note, the NHC reports the battery status as high but show about 12000 mV in charge, Wear level 8% and no time available. The system recognizes two battery but won't charge them.

So is the battery(ies) dead or something else is causing this? If the battery is dead, where could i obtain a replacement?

I would really appreciate any help since i need to carry this around and having to be plugged in all the time makes this impossible.

Thank you very much for your help or input.

 

Hi Guys,

I've got a battery problem as well. Doesn't hold its charge so well anymore, giving maybe an hour of battery life. I also have a problem with the charger - the power light on it goes off at random intervals and only comes back on if I disconnect the AC in cable and plug it back in again.

Does anyone know the best place to get a replacement for both battery and charger in the UK. Also, what are peoples opinions on getting a second battery for the hot-swap bay rather than replacing the main battery. Any ideas what this will do for the battery life? How much does it add to the weight?

BTW,

I reinstalled the video drivers, ran the RAM check and checked the system logs when the video lock ups happen. Haven't turned anything up. Fortunately I can watch video on VLC quite happily so its probably a windows media player problem rather than a video hardware problem.

Ian
---

 

You have probably left your battery sitting drained for a week, and I'm afraid that killed it... the only solution would be to get a new battery in that case. You could try a battery calibration in the BIOS, maybe that can "jump-start" the battery but I don't hold much hope. Once the charge goes below a certain critical point, a LiIon battery is a goner.

Since the notebook is quite old, you are probably suffering from normal battery wear. You could get a new battery but be aware that it may have been sitting on a shelf for quite a long time, and may have accumulated a significant amount of wear due to that.

As to modular bay battery, yes it will add some weight. Besides that, the same cautionary note applies.

As to where to buy, have a look at the Info BoothFAQ, there is an item about that.

 

Haven't visited these forums in a while and I'm glad to see that people still use their W3J's.

I just reformatted my W3J and restored winxp. I'm currently updating drivers and was wondering if there are any special updates or software I should install besides the regular stuff off the asus website.

Also, I remember a program from a long time ago that let me customize the shortcut keys on the sides of the laptop. Where can I find this?

 

You should probably update your video drivers, if you have really old ones the new ones will probably give a reasonable improvement. Also check the BIOS. I don't believe the other drivers will have a major performance impact.

In the last paragraph, maybe you mean ASUS Notebook Keys (see Info Booth / Misc / Customize your ASUS hotkeys or something along that line).

 

Here's the thread with instructions. I just installed it and have it working perfectly in tandem with Songbird on my W3J.

~ Brett

 

Hehehe, I finally got my W3J Just had to revive this thread to say it.

Any tips/helpful advice?

 

Hey Guys,

Can anybody tell me what the part number is for their battery? Mine is 70-NEX1B1000, but everywhere selling replacement batteries for the W3J lists it as 70-NCB1B1001M or 90-NCB1B3000. I tried buying one listed as 70-NCB1B1001M, it didn't fit. Did the battery change between revisions or something?

Just to add, there is definatly something wrong with my battery, when I first started noticing that it wasn't preforming the battery wear was at 45%, by the time I got my replacement (which didn't fit) it was 55%, and now its 67%, all in the space of 2 months.

 

New question: on XP, why do all of Asus' utilities suck? Hcontrol, to Power4Gear, to Wireless Console, they ALL look like they came straight from 1996...

My W7S has some of the prettiest utility messages and animations I've seen on a notebook, very slick, but the W3J took me back into the friggin stone ages....Time to install Vista on there?

 

Yes Redline, I recently installed a tri boot XP, Vista and Windows 7, I find my self using W7 the most, and whenever I go back to XP, the graphics are poor in comparison, but performance is good.

I would reinstall with vista, if you have it.

 

Yeah, I decided to install Vista, except that I can't find my copy of Vista 32bit. I've got an x64 copy of Vista Business though, how does it work for you?

 

I installed Vista64 a few montha ago, all seems to run fine apart from one problem... I can't get the audio to work??? I tried various drivers but no joy, although I have a creative X-Fi express card, which works fine under 64, but that only gives my audio in and out via the jack and still does not play audio through the laptop speakers, so for now, I mainly use Windows7 (32bit) as my main system.

So if audio is not a problem, go for it, I might have another dig around and see if i can get it working because Photshop CS4 is one of the first common commercial software programs to run natively 64bit! so would like to use it when the Windows 7 Beta runs out.

 

Yeah, screw it, I installed Vista Ultimate 32bit. Everything works perfectly, gotta say. I'm not using it for much intensive stuff, I mean, I just needed a mobile computer for $500 and decided to go for the only used W3J i could find instead of a netbook.

 

Probably doesn't matter at this point, but I use Win 7 on my W3j, have since the beta started and its fantastic.

 

I'm still interested in finding a replacement battery. I had the same issue Sudders did.

Also, anyone have any idea what I might sell W3J for these days with no battery? (Core Duo 1.83 GHz, 2 GB RAM, and Warranty good through the end of May)

 

I would actually be very interested in buying it, if the price is good. PM me if you have a price in mind. I'm not worried about the missing battery, just so long as it's in good condition.

 

You can get batteries, accessories, and replacement parts directly from Asus at their Estore, but they only ship to US and Canada. So for Sudders at least, hopefully you have a friend in North America than can mail it to you....

The main W3J page is here and the W3V page is here. You can get some replacement parts like the LCD screen and LAN card...

The original 8-cell 70-NEX1B1000 battery is here for $139.

The 6-cell optical bay battery is here for only $67.50.

The optical bay housing kit for a second hard drive is here for $15. Remember it only supports PATA hard drives.


The optical bay battery and hard drive kit are both listed under W3V but they work on the W3J as well. Earlier in this topic people posted saying that the W3V optical bay parts from the Estore worked in the W3J but were a lighter silver color. However, I just received the optical bay battery and hard drive kit from the Estore today and both are perfect color matches for the W3J. On the sticker for the battery, the product number simply ends in -W3 and my main battery ends in -W3J. This leads me to believe that the optical bay parts they are sending out now are newer versions with the default coloring changed to the W3J's darker color, though I don't know why it's still listed under W3V only....

They also recently cut the price of the optical bay battery from around $100 to $67.50, which is what prompted me to buy it. It's possible this price change coincided with the switch to the W3J's color, which makes me happy if it's true since it means I got a very new battery which hasn't been sitting on a shelf for 2 years (still charging up, don't know how much charge it gets yet).


EDIT: Has anyone tried the new 320 GB Western Digital PATA drive on the W3J? It's listed for $100 on newegg and should be the biggest, fastest drive we can put in the W3J's now (even higher platter density than the popular 250 GB one). I'll probably get one eventually and stick the old 100GB in the optical bay kit, but if anyone bought it already I'd like to see an HDtune graph.

 

Hello everybody,

I haven't posted here in a while but I have to say that my w3j is still alive and well (and me too). Only thing wrong with it at the moment is the battery = kaput.

So... I have tried to read a bunch of pages in this thread and other parts of the forum to find an answer to my question but haven't really come across anything definitive.

I am looking to replace the battery and I am wondering if the w3v battery will work. There were a few posts about this before but someone was trying to use the w3j battery in the w3v (the opposite of what I want) and it didn't work. I also saw some posts that said the w3v battery and w3j were compatible (in terms of cells, mAh, etc.) but there was no mention of actually trying it in the machine.

I have found this battery ( http://www.intelligentbatteries.ca/order.asp?ID=N149ZZZZZ695) for the w3v and it is much cheaper than an w3j battery from the asus estore.

Has anyone actually used a w3v battery in their w3j? And does anybody think or know that the battery in the link will work or not?

cheers,

Dan

edit: Oh yah I am also trying to find a replacement battery within Canada as to avoid any brokerage or excessive shipping costs.

 

Yeah, my battery is pretty much dead too .. guess it's to be expected after 2+ years of daily use.

If I remember correctly, I believe the W3V battery is compatible with the W3J .. it's just a different color. You should definitely confirm with someone whose actually tried it though.

BTW, had anyone tried running Windows 7 on the W3J ? I'm looking to format soon, wondering if this new OS would be worth a shot ..

Cheers.

 

yah there's got to be somebody who has tried it before, just need them to pipe up!

 

I'm going to install W7 RC (build 7100) next week, after my exams are done. So much for all that work getting a 32bit copy of Vista installed

 

N72, thanks for the heads up on the drive, im surprised as I emailed both Seagate and Western Digital a few months back asking if they were going to release a larger drive than 250, they both said NO as they are being phased out, maybe more people bugged them.

Anyway I ordered them and will install next week, let you know how it goes, annoying thing is that I just purchsed a new drive last week!!!!

I have windows 7 (been running since it was first released) works extremely well, I woud deffinately give it a go.

I have a dual boot and finally got my Audio to work inder Vista 64bit, so PM if you need the drivers.

But to be honest W7 is faster and better user experience than vista, I think I will upgrade as soon as it gets formerly released.

I have also upgraded wireless to Wireless N, its an easy upgrade.

I had the W3J since it was first released and my first battery is dead, but when i purchased it I brought a second main battery, so still going strong.

 

Win 7 runs great on my W3j. Im interested in selling, so if people around here can give me some ideas about price (or if I'm lucky, interest), that would be great.

 

I already ordered the 320gb Western Digital from newegg. Got it for $89 and newegg threw in an external USB hard drive casing for only $1 as a combo deal.

Here's the HD Tune graph for the WD3200BEVE in my W3J (T2500, 2GB RAM), it's a massive improvement over the stock hard drive, probably the best drive we can put in the W3J right now.

 

Any thoughts from someone as to the value of a W3j now?

 

One went on eBay last week for £311 GBP (thats about $500 US)

 

A brand new unit was just sold on ebay for $430 + shipping. Take note that notebooks sold in the UK tend to sell for a higher price compared to the US due to the nature of their market.

 

I tried putting the part numbers on that page into the estore and couldn't find anything they matched. The closest I could find was the p/n for the W3V optical bay battery, which is 70-NCA1B3000, where as the site lists 90-NCA1B3000 as the p/n. The W3V main battery p/n is 70-NCC1B1000.

I reckon that the battery on offer here is probably the optical bay battery. Further, I tried buying a battery for my W3J which wasn't quite the right p/n, but which it was claimed would fit. When it arrived it looked as if it would, but the mouting pins (which hold it in place) were about 2mm off and so it didn't fit!

 

Like $450. Its what I paid for mine, though I didn't bargain hard for price or anything, and it was in nearly perfect condition.

All you guys running 7 on your W3J's, what audio driver are you using? I still cannot get it to recognize analogue audio outputs (internal speakers, headphones, regular speakers), which means, for all practical purposes, I have no sound. I'm running the x86 version of Build 7100 (7 RC1)...should I switch to the 64 bit/x64 edition?

 

I am also using Windows 7 RC 7100, and all is working fine, I used the following audio drivers

AUDIO_ADI_Vista32_070313

I also used drivers from here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=100357

but if they don't work PM me and I can email you the drivers I use, I also have Vista64 Audio drivers (which work) unlike various other audio drivers i tracked down.

 

I think I dl'd the audio driver from that page, but they didn't work. I also tried the HD Audio Win 7 drivers from Realtek's site to similarly futile results. Lemme try the 070313 drivers and see what happens.

Audio is the only thing not working, everything else works right now.

EDIT: AWESOME - the SoundMAX 070313 drivers worked for me, so my W3J is now fully functioning. Thanks for the help, NZ.

 

Enjoy! good to hear youre up and running, let me know if you ever feel like installing X64, I looked high and low for 64bit drivers also, but funny thing is i downloaded Driver Detective softwre, and guess what it got the correct drivers, so also have audio under Vista 64.

 

I have no need for 64 bit, I think. Does it really make much of a difference with 2006-grade hardware? I mean, my CPU is 64bit compatible (Merom T5500) but I dunno, I guess I don't really see a need for it, especially with the chipset's memory limitation.

Also - is it worth upgrading from the T5500 (to one of the T7x00 chips), or should I just leave it be for now? I'm fine wih the 2GB memory and 100GB hard drive (most of my storage is on externals anyways, and the W3 isn't my primary computer), but 7 sometimes has lags which are probably CPU related, so I'm tempted to upgrade that maybe this winter.

 

Yeah you can upgrade the CPU, although are you sure the lags are not RAM-related? I don't know about Windows 7 but I'm sure the bloated Vista would feel a bit tight in 2 GB at times.

 

I see that your W3j is maxed out! would you be kind enough to post your windows experience scores?

 

Hey guys, still have my Asus W3J, and its still going strong! Im after another battery now as well though, for the guys who are in the same situation, care to share what you ended up doing?

 

Nearly a year ago I bought a battery off ebay from a reputable seller from somewhere in Asia. I bought my W3J day one, that could be the culprit but the battery didn't fit quite right. I sawed off some plastic and jimmy-rigged it so it would actually fit but it isn't quite flush and is a bit wobbly. The battery also worked well (3 plus hours) for a few months and now I can't even get 20 minutes out of it. So, all said, I wasn't happy with the purchase.

1) I'd make sure the battery you get fits properly. How you achieve this without actually trying it in a store or matching up the Item # exactly I don't know, which leads me to 2) also look for places that have a good replacement/exchange policy (though I think most are 90 days or less). I don't know why the battery I bought didn't fit, it was clearly a battery for the W3J and I bought the right one (it was the only option). Others have had the same problem.

 

Unbelievable, my Dell XPS M1730 (which I've owned for just over 1 year now) battery is completely dead. Yet my Asus W3J is still completely fine?! I've had it since it was released in Australia! Still getting 2.5hours + out of it...

 

I am going to install the Windows 7 RC someday soon. Just wondering what steps I should take beforehand aside from backing up my files that I want to keep. I am mostly curious about drivers.

My plan is to download all the w3j Vista drivers from Asus' site and go from there. I saw that I might have to hunt down some audio drivers. I also wanted to confirm whether or not the shortcut buttons on the fringes of the W3J still work in Windows 7.

Thanks, that is all.

 

according to latinoheat, everything works. let us know your progress.

 

My laptop was constantly rebooting after trying to install the Win 7 RC. I will try to update the bios to the Vista bios and see if that fixes the problem - if I can even get XP back installed!!!

 

Maybe it was a 3rd party battery (not made by ASUS)? With 3rd party battery you can sometimes get into this kind of trouble...

 

I had exactly the same experience. I have a day 1 W3j, and I bought a battery from a reputable dealer. Was listed as fitting the W3j, but had a slighty different part number. Didn't fit becuase one of the bits of plastic was not quite in the right place. In fact it seems all the batteries on the net listed as fitting the w3j have list slightly incorrect p/n. Still got my money back in posting so all was okay.

Ian

 

I'm almost positive it was a 3rd party battery. I would have returned it but I sawed off that bit of plastic to make it fit . Like I said, it never fit flush and was always a bit loose but that wasn't a huge issue for me as long as it was working, and it did very well for a couple months.

 

Yeah, well the battery was probably of a poor quality, and the few months of lifetime reflect it.

 

Hey when you upgrade the HD on this notebook and use the Asus recovery disks, do you need to convert to NTFS again?

 

Yes you do, formatting with the original XP discs will format the drive as Fat32, follow the instructions here http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.htm , will ensure youre drive is formatted with 4k clusters.

PS why dont you install Windows 7 ?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/download.aspx

ive had it running since January, runs fine on the W3J, just use vista drivers.

 

I dunno, 7 has a 700MB memory footprint, so I don't think its the memory....maybe its just because 7 isn't fully optimized yet.

But I've been running Vista Business on my W7S with 1.5GB of DDR2 since I got it, and I've not had a problem with that yet. I still do want to upgrade to 2.5GB though.

 

anybody have problems with the fan no longer spinning up as it should? or sometimes not at all?