Asus Model: Q501LA-BBI5T03

Hi all,
I just got this laptop refurbed off of newegg and updated it to 8.1. I unfortunately didn't check the touchscreen before updating but after the update its not working. Its showing up in the device manager. Is there like a switch or key combo i need to enable the touchscreen? I have uninstalled asus' power app and the balanced profile is active. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Try this:
asus vivobook S550C windows 8 touchscreen stopped working - Microsoft Community


FYI, I also bought mine off Newegg. I had some problems initially with the A and spacebar keystrokes not registering sometimes. I added a SSD and did a clean install of 8.1 without the Power4gear software and without the "keyboard filter" driver. All keys work consistently now.

 

I just received my refurbished unit from BuyDig. Everything seems to work fine except for the keyboard backlight. I haven't seen it go on at all so far. FN + F3/F4 do nothing. It has the latest bios already; the newest one you can download from ASUS is older than what I have even. I uninstalled the Power4PC (or whatever it was called) program. Being plugged in or not makes no difference.

Few questions:
1. Someone mentioned the backlight ribbon plug might be unplugged. Is that ribbon plug accessible from the bottom side or do I have to pop the top off to get to that?
2. Do any of you really miss it if the backlights are off? Is it that much of a difference?
3. Any other ideas to get this working short of exchanging it?

Thanks - Kevin

 

Kevin, the same thing happened to me. If your KB is lighted up during boot up then the problem is with the driver. If it does not lighted up during boot up then it is a hardware problem. You can fix the drivers problem by going to Asus and download their drivers for the KB. There are a couple of drivers which fixed the problem for me.

 

Did you ever get the M500 to work with the Q501LA? Did anybody know how to make a clone to the M500 work? I have the M500 and for the life of me, cannot make it work with the Asus. It did not even show up in the bios 209.

 

Hi NaplesBill, There are the 100MB, 900MB, C: OS 230GB (depending on drive size), 450MB and the 20GB partitions in that order. Am I correct that the Samsung did not copy the 450MB and 20GB? I have a Crucial M500 and the EaseUS to do backup copy everything from the Asus Toshiba. May be that's why the M500 has booting problem.

 

HELP

I notice a strip of green glow on the right edge of the screen. I cannot find anything about this on the internet.

It is not regular light-bleed.
It does not happen all the time.
I guess I notice it more when I wake the laptop from sleep.
It is noticeable on a black screen, like a normal black desktop background or from a dark scene on a video .
It goes away after 10 seconds or so on a black screen.
If it is glowing and I go to a APP, like Fresh Paint with the bright Yellow background or the Red background of the APP Start Screen, it instantly goes away.

Anyone heard of or have this?

It is right where the Windows 8 Start Strip pulls out. Can it be from that?

I tried to take pictures but it does not show.

 

Ordered this and it was in good shape except for the Atheros card ): it sucks, loses connection like crazy.

Anyways I found the Intel 7260 card on ebay through Newegg for only $15. It is on sale, they are normally $30 or $20 but you have to wait for it to come from China for the $20. Here is the link
Intel 7260HMW BN IEEE 802 11 N300 Mini PCI Express Plus Bluetooth 4 0 Wi Fi BL | eBay

I'd like to know how hard it is to install after getting the panel off. Those who have taken it apart have you seen where the wireless card is? I hope it isn't hard to access. If anyone has instructions I'd love to know how to do it.

 

Thanks for the reply but no go on your tips. The keyboard has never had backlights on for even a second. Guess I'll return it. Last night I tried to use it in the dark and it turns out, without any painted characters, the keys just look black. Can't see a thing unless the screen is facing downward. Boo.

 

You will see the 2 wire antennas attached to the wifi card. You will see it easily.

 

Thanks for the help! I saw that it is on sale again from Buydig for $470. Asus Q501LA BBI5T03 15 6" IPS Touchscreen Intel Core i5 4200U Laptop Refurbished | eBay.

 

are the ram and harddrive upgradable? how difficult is it to do?

 

Hey all, just got my Q501LA from buydig. All the hardware seems to be working fine. I instantly wanted to upgrade to 8.1, I had it on a USB drive (but not UEFI compatible at the time, didn't even know what that was or anything). Noticed i could not select USB as boot device, read up and saw i had to enable CSM mode and turn off boot security mode (or w/e it's called). Then i was able to boot from USB, but I saw that we have 4 or 5 partitions, and i didn't know at the time what GPT partition was. I deleted all the partitions, and installed windows 8.1. Then when i went to turn off CSM mode and turn back on the security boot mode, when it went to restart, it would put me right back into the BIOS, so i had to keep CSM mode enabled.

So now that I know that our notebook is UEFI compatible, i created a bootable windows 8.1 usb that was UEFI compatible by using the Rufus software. When I went to re-install windows 8.1, and formatted the harddrive and clicked "new" to create the partitions, it did not create the 4 or 5 GPT partitions that it should have created had it been in UEFI mode. I went back to bios and enabled/disabled all relevent looking settings in a few different combinations but couldn't seem to get it to boot into UEFI mode.

Can someone with experience help me on how exaclty to boot in UEFI mode and install windows 8.1 through UEFI?

 

You have to make sure the device you're booting from has UEFI next to it. Between UEFI and Legacy BIOS booting the font is different, UEFI looks less fixedsys.

I picked up one from BuyDig myself as a DVD-less IPS version of the Q500A I picked up off newegg back in December (not that I need a Core i7 in a laptop), but the touchscreen is screwed up, it keeps registering taps rapidly on one specific area of the screen even when I don't touch it, and it makes Windows basically useless. Since there's no actual drivers you can install for touchscreens, it's going back as soon as I get a RMA number/label.

I also had a stuck green pixel a bit southwest of the center of the screen, which was less annoying than the fault above.

Cracking open the bottom shell is somewhat a pain, but personally I wouldn't worry about breaking the clips, the screws hold it in place pretty well to me.

 

I have the newer version of this laptop with 8.1 preinstalled. I was able to clone the drive to my Kingston SV200S3256G SSD which booted fine but would go to into BIOS after each boot from a shutdown. I didn't see any strange settings in the BIOS but my drive was not listed. Reset BIOS to default and no luck, would boot to BIOS. I then selected SAVE and EXIT and the computer booted fine. However, from a boot after shutdown it would go into BIOS until I selected SAVE and EXIT (restart booted fine and I noticed in BIOS after a restart that my drive was listed whereas after a shutdown it was not).

I next tried recovery using ASUS Backtracker but ran into the same issue. Even running a recovery after this and I still have the same issue with that BIOS screen after a shutdown.

Device manager sees my disk fine. No available driver updates or firmware on Kingstons website.

Disk Management lists my SSD as a GPT. 100MB EFI system partition / 900MB recovery partition / OS (C / Data (D / 20.01GB recovery

This is the same setup as the original drive except for the data partition (however I have reallocated that to C: and I still have the problem).

BIOS is 212

SO - Any ideas as to why BIOS does not see or recognize the drive after the initial boot from a shutdown.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Has anyone successfully been able to boot from the msata drive and activate Windows? For some reason it's telling me my product key is blocked and is saying Windows isn't activated. When I boot from the original drive it says activated still. I don't get it. I have tried both a fresh install and cloning. When I clone, I can go to "system" and actually see the text shift from "Windows is activated" to "Windows is not activated". Called MS and they tell me the product key might be pirated. Trying to deal with buydig now and maybe Asus as well. Just wanted to chime in with you all to make sure I'm not missing anything obvious.

 

I just had this problem while troubleshooting my other problem. Removing and replacing it from the bay worked. Not sure why it isn't recognized but might be worth a try.

 

Hmm, I'll have to give that a try. You would think if its a connection issue it just wouldn't be found at all.

 

Hi all,

Very helpful thread, thank you very much.

My "B" key popped off unfortunately, and it seems to have broke so I can't put it back on. I called warranty and they told me I can send it in but they can't guarantee that it will be covered. I think it's quite absurd to send in a laptop over a key. I've tried looking for the keys online, to no avail. I was thinking of supergluing the key back on.

What do you guys think I should do? Any extra keys out there?

 

I think you are confused with different 7260 variants. The one you bought is 7260 BN and it is around that price everywhere.

The top notch model is 7260 AC, which is around $25-$35.


2013 Intel WiFi Card Models PCIe HMC # Dual Stream Speed Bluetooth 4.0 Cost
Intel Wireless-N 7260 7260HMW BN Yes 300 Mbps Yes $14.99
Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 7260HMW NB Yes 300 Mbps No $20.94
Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 7260HMW AN Yes 300 Mbps Yes $24.99
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 3160HMW No 433 Mbps Yes $23.23
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 7260HMW Yes 300/867 Mbps Yes $29.94

 

I bought mine a couple months ago, everything seems fine. Right a way I've switched to 240 Seagate SSD and installed clean windows 8.
Unfortunately, there is no socket for msata drive. But soldering contacts are there. I was wondering if I find socket will it work by simply soldering it into the motherboard?
Another annoying thing is Intel graphics drivers working with TV panel. After updating to the latest driver, it doesn't add HDMI sound into sound playback options so there is no sound through hdmi =/

 

Can anyone who added an 8gb stick of ram run the latest 3dmark and let me know what you get?

 

I'll run 3dmark after we get home after lunch.

Question for everyone. Does your notebook boot properly if you hibernate it? Mine hibernates properly, but when you hit the power button to boot it up again, it starts to boot and then shuts down. Pressing the power button again it boots normally.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

 

Cloudgate 1.1 - 4353
Icestorm 1.2 - 38935
Firestrike 1.1 - 600 *Said the driver was not approved on this test only

 

I switched my power plan to Windows Balanced and then back to Power4Gear.

That solved it for me.

 

I found that if I go to Device manager it would refresh constantly. I googled and found this means something is constantly reconnecting.... So I clicked human interface device and saw a grey down arrow. Once I reactivated this device manager quit refreshing and the touch screen worked.

 

I am having a very strange problem with this computer. If the screen is turn off either automatically by power option or by fn+F7, the screen can't be turn back on. I will have to force restart the computer.
All drivers are the newest. Bios is new. Windows 8.1 is up-to-date. Am I the only person who is having this problem??
There is no error in 'event viewer'.
Help!!!!

 

Can anyone let me know the models of the SSD Harddives that they bought for this im looking to upgrade mine. at least 256GB. I just don't want to make the mistake of buying the wrong one. Also how do i get windows 8 on there once i have the new SSD. Thanks.

Finally was the SSDupgrade worth it? Mine has been super sluggish lately. Thanks

 

I have. You've described EXACTLY the issue with the keyboard that I've experienced. Purchased the laptop in January 2014, perhaps one of the last few sold at (of course) Best Buy.

I am quite disappointed with the keyboard. I've gotten used to typing on it and constantly correcting the text owing to the faults. Just hooked up a wireless Logitech keyboard and voila no problem.

In addition, as one other contributor has noted above, the backlighting of the keyboard is not correctly designed. Yes, the keyboard is nominally backlit so one can enter passwords in the dark. But the backlighting is weird such that more light leaks around the edges of the "chicklet" keys, rather than creating a legible image of the font emblazoned on the key tops.

So, at least for my version of the ASUS Q501LA, the keyboard is faulty, limping along.

 

Do not use the Crucial M500 SSD line with this laptop. I spent all day yesterday and today trying to restore/re-install/clone Windows 8 on this laptop using the Crucial SSD I just bought from Amazon.

After spending more time than I care to admit troubleshooting and googling, I happen to found this thread on the Crucial forums. It never crossed my mind it was the SSD because it worked everywhere else while I was troubleshooting.

I don't know the reasons why, but this laptop and the Crucial M500 line of SSDs don't like each other.

I swapped my desktop's SanDisk SSD with the Crucial SSD. After cloning the stock Windows install on the OEM toshiba HD to the SanDisk, it worked the VERY FIRST TIME.

My jaw dropped. My headache was gone and now I'm able to get those SSD speeds!


In addition, I can confirm that after installing this 8GB stick of RAM, my total RAM to 12 GBs

 

As mentioned elsewhere, I don't think you properly prepared for a UEFI/GPT install like this. I had to with my Samsung 840 as the default BIOS settings require these additional partitions.

How to Restore an MBR System image to UEFI/GPT (Convert, GPT, MBR, Restore)


Rescue media created with v5.2.6249 or later on Windows 7/8 operating systems will be dual boot. That is, they will boot in both MBR and UEFI mode.

Please boot your rescue media in UEFI mode. Consult your Motherboard user manual for information on how to do this.

Open a Windows command window, and type:

diskpart

Note: To open a command window click the icon on the taskbar.

List the disks:

list disk

Select the disk number that you want to restore to. For example:

select disk 0

Clean the selected disk:

clean

By default, "clean" creates an empty MBR disk. Convert it to GPT:

convert gpt

Create the EFI partition:

create partition efi size=200
Format the EFI partition:
format fs=fat32

Create the MSR partition:

create partition msr size=128

Exit Diskpart:

exit
....

 

Would you mind giving me the Hardware ID of the screen? You can get it by going into Device Manager > Monitors > Generic PnP Monitor > Properties > Details > Hardware Ids. Will rep

 

Mine is a LGD0323.

 

Do you have the new model or the old one though?

 

I can't tell. This is all I get from EDID Viewer 4.0.0:

 

When you first bought it, did it originally come with 6 gigs of RAM or 8?

This is the newer version - Asus 15.6" TouchScreen Laptop Intel Core i5 8GB Memory 750GB Hard Drive Q501LA-BSI5T19 - Best Buy

The older one only had 6.

 

I see, you are talking about the system and not the panel.

I have the older 6GB version with mSATA upgraded to 12GB and SSD.

 

What size msata?

 

No mSATA just a 500GB Samsung 840.

 

Hey guys, I'm going to purchase this computer. So I have a question: I have a used ssd (Samsung Evo 840) from my current laptop. Is there a guide to correctly format and add the Q501LA's system to it? I'm curious as some folks seem to be having ssd issues and I just want to minimize errors along the way. Thanks.

Sent from my S4 through Tapatalk

 

If you want a UEFI/GPT install follow the instructions in my post:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/727557-asus-model-q501la-bbi5t03-44.html#post9644100

EDIT: Make sure you install first the FREE version of Macrium Reflect on your original hard drive.

Now create the rescue disk resulting in a bootable WinPE environment which enables the command prompt window on an UEFI reboot.

A full backup of the original hard drive is recommended.

p.s. WAIK is a huge download.

 

I have not used Macrium specifically but looking at your reply and the link you provided, I did in fact follow the proper steps to setup the drive correctly. In the attempts applicable, the drive was fully wiped including removing all partitions in addition the hidden ones.

The software I've used was Acronis, Asus Backtracker, Windows Recovery, and Paragon.

Not only did the clone process for each software fail, but even after the drive was fully wiped I could not get Windows 8 to install either.

Again it was only until I tried the same process with a fully wiped SanDisk SSD (only deleted the existing partitions) did the clone process work the very first time. In addition my SanDisk SSD was setup for MBR since I used Windows 7 without UEFI.

 

Note that in this particular case, I used Macrium Reflect purely to have easy access to WinPE in order to prep the drive.

The drive gets wiped here:

clean
convert gpt

After creating the UEFI partitions, using this method, you can either clone the old drive as described in the Macrium link or do a complete fresh install.

This also creates the correct SSD offset and should work with any functioning drive.

 

Do you know that if you select the "Performance" option of the Power4Gear "Power Options" you can increase the speed of the CPU considerably. Loading CPU-Z on my laptop, I can actually watch the mHZ increase from the core speed of 798 mHZ to 2594 mHZ. Of course, you can probably watch as your battery dwindles away also

 

So does Asus Backtracker back up your current install with all your settings/files/installs/changes or does it create the backup based on the recovery partition?

 

No Backtracker can only do factory restore.

 

Crossposted for completeness.

You should have taken a full backup first with Reflect.

Second, shrink your main parttition on the original HD down to approx. 100GB like this:

can not shrink my c drive - Windows 7 Help Forums

Then execute the diskpart commands as in my post.

Finally use Reflect and drag the 100GB partition to the newly created partition on the SSD as described in the Macrium link.

Do not use Easeus at all except potentially its partition manager to shrink partitions.

If it doesn't boot use safe mode to quickly repair the startup environment. This may also help you out of your current predicament.

 

How can I do a clean install of windows 8 on this laptop? Can I use some form of app to get my cdkey from within windows and use it with a copy of windows 8 on a USB or external drive? Since my unit was refurbished, it did not come with a recovery image, disk management shows the 20gb empty. I want to make sure I have some form of recovery option in case I need to fully restore.

Thanks guys. Laptop rules!! Screen is amazing.

 

Follow my guide. With Win 8/8.1 you need a UEFI/GPT install.

Make sure that your USB stick has the UEFI prefix when you boot the install.

 

Copy that, however where do I get the media for the install? Do I have to source that myself? Also can I use an app that'll pull the cdkey from the bios and use that cdkey on the windows 8 install or will there be any issues?

Thanks again.