A6Ja BIOS FLASH I/O Error

I wanted to flash the BIOS to the newest version 207 from the ASUS website.

When i select a drive in easyFlash it says I/O Error. The BIOS version is currently 205.

Any ideas?

Second problem is that i wanted to use the .bat file to convert the fat32 to ntfs, anway i want to format all and make a real win xp home cd out of the recvoery cd. now searching for tutorials.

 

Why don't you just use Winflash in the ASUS Utility folder? It works great.

 

was told easyFlash is really easy to use. didnt really knew about that tool, im installing linux/win xp since this morning because i had some problem.

 

I agree... you should just use WinFlash to flash you BIOS. It's what Asus provides on its website, afterall. It's a very easy program to use.

 

I would not flash it at all, unless there is some update that fixes what you have a problem with. As they say, if it aint broken don’t fix it.

But like everyone above said use WinFlash.

 

Well there is something wrong with the 205 BIOS, it puts the LCD in 16-bit color depth mode all the time, so the colors are not smooth, its like watching images/videos in 16-bit color mode.

This was fixed in BIOS 207.

And btw, Winflash that is included from Asus (and downloadable on their site) is much easier to use than EasyFlash

Just start Winflash in Windows mode, select the BIOS file you extracted, it checks the checksum of the file and matches it to the BIOS and checks if it is correct, then just click the "Write BIOS" button and reboot when it is done.

 

Agreed I have used winflash when I had to load a Beta BIOS on my Z81 and did not have any issues at all. Flashing a BIOS should really be done is to fix an issue or a hardware upgrade.

 

Just use winflash and your problems will be solved. Simple as that.

 

i used Winflash and it worked.

It also should increases battery to 3 hours as i heard.

 

Yes it increases the battery time.

Before with the 205 BIOS that shipped with my A6Ja, in battery saving mode and brightness almost at minimum, i got about 2:45 in standby time on full battery. Now with the 207 BIOS and with the same brightness/battery saving mode, i get around 3:30, even upto 4 hours almost if i underclock the X1600 chip to 120MHz on the core and 120MHz (240MHz DDR) on the memory. ATI's PowerPlay actually sucks to be honest, since it only downlocks it to 324MHz on the GPU and 150/300MHz on the memory.

Too bad it is not possible to undervolt the CPU itself, cause this would probably help alot too. I can run my Core Duo undervolted at full speed at 0.975v for several hours doing SuperPI and Prime95 without getting any error. The default voltage for full speed on the Core Duo is 1.266v. Running it at 0.975v really decreases the heat and fan noise when doing CPU intensive tasks.

 

Im quite interested in how to underclock the x1600 in my a6j too, i hoped it could improve the lacklustre battery life of 3 hours.... So i went to download ATT to underclock, but was encountered "unable to retrieve information from BIOS" which basically meant it was unsupported. Then i tried NHC ( notebook hardware control) but the option to change the video card clocks was also unavailable ( greyd out)..

Hope you can help in underclocking my a6j . PS, my video card drivers are unchanged from purchase.

 

ATITool supports over/underclocking of all ATI chips, even undetected. Download the latest beta.

 

Is anybody writing a review about our notebook? =) If not i would like to try

Have you ever heard your fan? in these 2 days i heard it like 30 seconds. The most loudest thing is the DVD combo drive and then the HDD (which is very quiet).

 

A review would be nice Wish i had a camera and that i was better in english writing, then i could have tried to make a review.

Try playing a game for 30 minutes or so, believe me, you will hear a very loud fan when it starts blowing at 4800rpm. I've opened my A6Ja up (the cpu cover) and looked a bit inside it. There is only one fan in this laptop, in charge for both cooling the CPU and the X1600 GPU. The CPU is a copper heatpipe solution that is hooked up directly to the fan, and the GPU is located to the left of the CPU, under the cover there, if you look there is a aluminum sink and a heatpipe also going to the same fan that cools down the cpu.

The problem is, there is absolutely NO air intake for the X1600. When the X1600 reaches 83 celsius (which it does quite fast if you play a heavy game for 30+ minutes) the fan starts blowing at 4800rpm no matter what temperature is on the CPU itself.

I tried undervolting my CPU successfully, lowering it from 1.266v at full speed and load - to 0.975v. This helps the CPU to keep ALOT cooler under heavy load... Sadly, this also means that the CPU fan is blowing alot less air, making the airflow for the X1600 cooler alot worse, resulting in that the fan will start blowing at 4800rpm very often (like once a minute or something while playing a game like WoW, Oblivion or NFS Most Wanted).

I found a solution to keep the fan from going up to 4800rpm though (at 4800rpm, the fan sounds like a loud hairblower at full speed, seriously) by using the application Speedfan and Rightmark CPU Clock Utility. What i did was use Rightmark CPU Clock Utility to undervolt the CPU to 0.975v (at full speed) so the CPU generates alot less heat than normal. I then used Speedfan to manually set the fan speed to 3500rpm, and after about 1 hour of heavy load to both the graphics chip and the cpu, the cpu has a temperature of about 65 celsius (which is very low, because it is undervolted, at full volt it would atleast be 10 celsius higher in temperature) and the X1600 would be at between 80-83 celsius in temperature.

3500rpm is also very audible, but it is ALOT more comfortable than the constant spin up-down-up-down from around 2800rpm to 4800rpm constantly.

SpeedFan does not detect this notebook properly yet though, so to get Speedfan to detect the fan/temperature/etc sensors, you need to launch Everest first, so that it detects the sensors making them visible for Speedfan... You can also set Speedfan to control the fan speed automatic, but that only resulted in a very variable fan speed, simply because there is only one fan that is supposed to cool both the cpu and the gpu, and there is no option in speedfan to actually make that program understand that, so it treats the X1600 and the CPU as if they had their own fans...

This is probably "confusing" Speedfan a bit, because it has to adjust one fan to cool two devices... Something like: The cpu gets below the temperature threshold you have set, the speed of the fan is then automaticly lowered, the gpu temperature rises, the fan is then adjusted to a higher rpm, but still sees the cpu temperature as low, so it adjusts it back down again, and keeps on doing this over and over and over... Which is really annoying to listen to.

I actually wish there was a separate fan for BOTH the CPU and the GPU, it would have been so much easier keeping this notebook both very cool and very silent then, under heavy load of both the GPU/CPU. One fan to cool both devices results in very high rotating speeds, and one fan that is blowing at 4800rpm (which the fan does at full speed) makes ALOT more sound than two fans blowing at 2000rpm each, sadly...

And the fact that there is NO air intake for the X1600 aluminum cooler is just weird... cause they could have made airintakes for that on both the underside of the notebook (like on the CPU cover, the GPU is just left of the CPU cover, where my Windows XP Pro License sticker is located) or they could have made an air intake on the back of the notebook for it.


EDIT: If you have this notebook, and want to test how the fan sounds when playing a game, set your notebook to either super performance, gaming, quiet office or any of the other performance modes offered by Power4Gear. Then, download the latest beta version (totally safe) of ATITool - install it and run it, and then just press the "Scan for Artifacts" button on the bottom left.

You don't have to overclock or anything, just launch the application and hit that button. What this does, is stresstest both your CPU and your GPU at maximum, just like a heavy game that uses heavy graphics does. You will probably instantly hear the fan noise go up, and after about 5-10 minutes MAX you should hear the fan really start spinning fast...

You can also use Everest or some other application to monitor the temperatures yourself. This is totally safe, it just demonstrates how loud the fan actually can get if you use this notebook to play newer games that pushes the cpu and the gpu.

 

Hmm, i played css for a while and the fan really was -loud- for some seconds only. It only happend 3 times or so that the fan really starts getting loud. And that was not even annoying because it stopped after like 4 seconds.

The notebook really gets warm but it's ok, I just hope that the nb is not going to explode someday.

I am not going to change any of the voltage or clock settings because of the warranty.

I have got a 2 megapixel cellphone camera, itshots quite sharp pictures at low distances.

Do you have this ugly sticker on the top of the keyboard too? I do not know exactly if that is a sticker but have you tried to put it off? It is really looking ugly

 

Yea that would be when it goes up to 4800rpm... Pretty darn loud indeed, it woke up my girlfriend the other night when i was playing WoW on a table like 3-4 meters from the bed

Undervolting with Rightmark CPU Clock Utility does not void the warranty. This is a piece of software that just adjusts the powerschemes, basically.. It is undervolting after all, if it was overvolting it would probably void the warranty =) The only bad thing that can happen if you undervolt too much is that the computer just restarts by itself (and resumes to normal power/voltage control by the BIOS).

One of the first things i did when i got this notebook was to rip off _all_ the stickers. The big ones (spec and webcam sticker) and the Radeon X1600, Designed for Windows XP and the Intel stickers... Looks much cleaner and better now. If you decide to tear of all the stickers, all of them should come of easily without leaving any sticky glue, except maybe the Designed for Windows sticker, but if it leaves som sticky glue just use a moist cloth to rub it off easily.

 

well, i don't touch the voltage and clocks for now since it's ok for me at the moment =)

I mean the big sticker on th TOP of the keyboard, notbelow it. I ripped the webcam sticker and the nb specs sticker. i like the atiintel and winxp sticker =)

But again, i ment the sticker ABOVE the keyboard, between keyboard and display, that goes around the buttons, i m going to -shot a picture

 

there you go ( see attached thumbnails)

do you also have the white core duo sticker, and not a blue? because it sais only Centrino Duo, not Core DUO like the blue stickers do, now i am confused again

 

I don' have a sticker there, i think. It feels like solid plastic, and i don't think mine is so carbon-looking as yours are around the buttons..

My intel logo was the same as yours, white Centrino Duo - and they are placed exactly like they was on mine.

 

Winflash is ok
but how to change the bios to HP or DELL ?