Asus UX31 Ultrabook

I'm sorry to post again about this, but I'm still trying to figure out how to flash the BIOS on my ux31. As mentioned above, I unzipped the BIOS download (I tried both the most recent update and the first update released) to c:\BIOS. When I select this folder using the EasyFlash utility, it freezes and I am forced to restart.

I really want to figure out how to fix the trackpad. If I can't get it fixed, I'm just going to return this laptop and wait for the Dell coming out at the end of the month.

 

Hey m8! Well So far i've been doing 4 mans, questing, space combats etc. without any probs at all. I'm on constant 20-60+ fps and 20 fps does not feel like 20 fps in WoW for example. However I play in 1366*768 since the native res on the UX31 (it's not an Acer, this thread is about Asus UX31) makes fps go down 10-15fps in average. To be honset ux31 handles the game extremly well.

- Res 1366*768
- All graphic on low/none (though it is like Ultra quality compared to wow)
- RAM on the UX31 is 4GB
- Solo questing 30+ fps, depends on the environment
- 4 mans 20+ fps
- Space missions 20+ fps

Feel free to ask more!

 

Which trackpad?

What software version on the trackpad?

Actually, both the Elantech and the Sentilic, with their latest drivers, takes some getting used to for most.

Which Bios version are you attempting to upgrade to and why?

If you are attempting a bios flash from the NTFS hard drive using EZFlash you are asking for trouble.

Asus provides WinFlash, and when the support site is up and running correctly, (something it is not doing today) the latest version is available and works easily in Windows 7 although caution: Asus generally does not support a bios bricked by a failed flash and a fix is unfortunately at your expense;

I personally never would use a bios flash method not specifically recommended for this machine; imo, EZFlash was great back in the day before WinFlash, but in any event, it requires a properly formatted USB drive, not what you are apparently attempting to do.

Hope this was helpful!

 

Sounds pretty sweet. I think I might wait for sandy bridge in the summer, that boost in cpu speed and graphics might make it even better.

 

My order at asusparts.eu just got in(eu powerbrick plug) it was shipped by dhl in 2 days, it took about 4 weeks to get in stock, but just so you guys know, lukily it's not a scam.

 

Ok so i did as you suggested: reinstalled Power4Gear and Wireless Console 3 the only two apps which i removed.

I've already had the latest driver.

But now i cannot see the pop-up window that asks me what to do when i push the power button. I thought this is Power4Gear feature?

Anyone have ideas of how i can turn that "menu" on? Thank you

EDITED: Ah never mind. I've just found that the Power Option utility does the job, not the Power4Gear.

 

Good news! I was thinking it was something more involved with the ATK Hotkey or related services, but no need to argue with success!

 

Thanks for your reply.
That is exactly the case, I put my hands on the left/right side of the keyboard and the vibration stops.
But I don't hear any difference over time. I have a few more days for returning the machine.

Another thing is, sometimes the sound stops for a fraction of a second. Is this a driver thing?
But Asus live update installed all latest drivers.

Anyone can shed more light on the problems?

 

Sadly, like you and several others here and around the web have reported, I too have noticed a distorting left speaker issue--("crackling" as if the speaker is "torn", improperly mounted or just defective)--and the left speaker is louder. The balance issue can be fixed using the audio manager. I haven't found a satisfactory fix for the scratchy noise (other than headphones/earphones which work just fine .) Asus has offered to RMA, but I'm not certain that is worth doing. It is odd that there have been several nearly identical reports about this issue (a bad batch?)

Pausing sound is not something I have seen reported and possibly is a driver/install issue or if you are streaming, a wifi/network issue.

 

If I am looking at UX31, is there any way to determine if it's the updated version with the Elan touchpad (and fixes) or the older version?

 

so i asked asus a few days ago whether the ux31 will be featured with ivy bridge and they replied that nothing has been stated and that they will release the info once they will know... so they will probably continue with the sandy bridge. or does anyone else have any info regarding this topic? i personally don't think that i'm going to wait for ib as the upcoming ultrabooks may have great performance, but lack in physical appearance. with this said, i might buy rose gold in the following weeks

 

Control panel, system, device manager, mice and other pointing devices, finger sensing pad, driver.

I don't think there is a lot of difference between the two; both Sentelic and Elantech take getting used to, but YMMV. Rumor has it Asus is no longer shipping the Sentelic, but that is only rumor, afaik.

 

I am having a problem with the zenbook and im not sure why. I have been using it for a month and I updated my zenbook with asus live update, and its been crashing and rebooting to bios whenever I use VLC media player. I am unsure if its only affects VLC. I tried system restoring, but no luck...and I updated to 2.10 from 2.09 and still no luck. Also, I can never exit the bios...so everytime it crashes. I have to force shutdown. Anyone else experiencing this?

 

Hmm, it's at $999 again. For this price it's a good deal.

Did Asus fix any of the problems yet? Namely the wifi and the touchpad?

What about the whining noise? Or some high pitch sound coming from the laptop / screen?

If not I guess I have to get something else.

 

There is no wifi issue with the latest drivers; touch pads are personal preference: some like em, some don't; no whining or high pitch sound from the screen, but like others, my left speaker seems to sound like it is being driven too hard even at low volume.

 

I purchased one back in mid November. There was a high pitch sound coming from somewhere in the laptop.

I had a sentallic touchpad. I updated the drivers which was the most recent one at that time. Every now and then it would go crazy and just jump all over the place.

Maybe I should give it one more shot.

 

I think the newest ones come with the Elantech touchpad; I too used to notice jumping cursers, but that has improved, perhaps b/c of better drivers, perhaps b/c I have adjusted to the Sentelic pad, or both. The keyboard still isn't near the legendary IBM Thinkpad, but, few laptaps today are, and the Asus UX31e gets a lot of other important things right (screen, weight and size and overall performance) and that Amazon price seems pretty attractive.

 

BIOS ver 211 available for download from ASUS...

1. Download
2. Unzip
3. Put the unzipped file (UX31EAS.211) on a FAT32 USB stick
4. Reboot
5. Enter BIOS (by pressing F2 during startup)
6. Start EasyFlash
7. Browse to the UX31EAS.211 file on the usb stick
8. Start the update
9. I'm not religious, but here you get some time for a silent prayer
10. The computer will shutdown when done
11. Power up again and hope it still works

 

I also found "ASUS Virtual Touch Utility" dated 2012-02-10 in the utilities category. Anyone knows what that one does?

 

I'm not sure how anyone can get use to the jumpy touchpad from sentilic. It's not about getting "use to it". It's about it not working properly 15% of the time.

I mean, when it works, it's great. But when it doesn't you can't even drag the pointer to the correct location to turn off the laptop. It will take you several tries as the pointer would jump all over the place.

That's isn't normal. Maybe the driver fixed it. I don't know. But the Verge article claims all new ultrabooks will only ship with the elan version.

Never the less. I am going to wait it out and pass on the Ux31. Maybe the next version will come with a matte screen, black casing and a fixed SD slot where the card doesn't stick out half way when inserted.

 

I think I prefer this to the windows utility. Anyone have any other thoughts on this? still running 206..

Hope this helps with the sentilic trackpad.

 

Regarding Windows Winflash vs the bios based Easyflash, I take a minority and contrary view to the accepted orthodoxy here that prefers Easyflash.

I *much* prefer the latest Winflash (V2.32.3 updated 12/12/2011) for the UX31e, provided you have the default 64 bit Win 7 operating system as installed by Asus.

Back in the day when I was building Asus motherboard based desktops with Win98 or early XP windows, I would NEVER EVER consider flashing the bios with the first early iterations of Winflash. Back in the day every Windows session was a crapshoot, and bios flash was ONLY performed in DOS, booted from a trusty 3 1/2 inch floppy in A drive. (I seem to recall Winflash was introduced in 2004 or 2005 but that may not be correct.)

We have come a long way. Winflash and 64 bit Win7 are both mature and stable. I wouldn't hesitate to use Winflsh and the advice here to avoid it seems somewhat belt and suspenders and outdated and not relevant to the UX31e series notebook.

To be sure, if you have managed to screw up your operating system to the point it is no longer rock solid or is regularly blue screening and crashing, you have problems that a bios flash probably won't cure, and under those circumstances, don't use Winflash.

As for bios version 211, I haven't seen a list of fixes from Asus ; I noticed no change. The Sentelic finger sensing pad even with all the latest drivers remains what it is; a useful device with a long learning curve. Personally, I prefer my MS bluetooth mouse.

 

Hi all,

When I am home, I always plug my notebook to power cord. I noticed after a few days, battery capacity drops from 100% capacity drops to 96%.

Is this normal?

Thanks and regards
Incendio

 

Hi all,

Newbie here. Just got my UX31e here in the Philippines. Decided to get it over the Vaio SB36, and has not regretted it so far. All the drivers and the BIOS had been updated when it was purchased (save for the 211 recent BIOS). No problems so far. Specs are I5 2557, 128 Sandisk SSD, Elan touchpad. My WEI for data transfer is 5.9 though.

I've a question that I hope some of you could answer: what's the best way to prolong our battery life, I mean, is it ok to keep the Zenbook plugged in frequently like what Incendio reported..? TIA.

Best to all.

 

Hi,

This is absolutely normal. The capacity drops slowly over time, and to prevent "using up" your cycle times, your battery won't charge until it drops below 95%.

If it would not, your battery would start charging at 99.99% up to 100% all the time.

 

Thanks for your answer.

Best regards,
Incendio

 

Decworld said some useful information at post 2336. Furthermore, I think it's better to charge it while it's sleeping / off to prevent the battery getting excessively hot and also to decrease the charging time.

Once it's fully charged, I think it's better to work on it while plugged in if possible.

But how hard we try, a battery is designed to die.

 

I get 2c reduction in chassis temp with a stand that contains a fan.

But I am unsure if the metal chassis makes the battery hotter as it conducts heat quickly into every part of the computer, or makes it cooler as the chassis dissipates the heat more quickly as it has a larger contact area with the outside air.

 

Hi all,

I have a strange problem with display brightness.

I set it in Intel HD Graphics app, set brightness to -50. This setting is dimmer than every setting in Asus Splendid App.

On first boot up, brightness seems meets my setting, but after a few second, brightness increase. I think, this is because there is an app that changed it, I guess it was Asus Splendid App.

I have to set in again manually via Intel HD Graphics. On Intel HD app, brigthness setting still set to -50, but I have to push OK button to correct brightness level.

Any idea how to fix this conflict?

Thanks and regards,
Incendio

 

Remove or disable all the asus power managerment software.

It confuses me to death.

 

Hi all, I could use some of your expert help. I have a ux31e and a clean win7 x64 install. I updated to bios 211 and no longer can adjust the screen brightness using the function buttons. Anyone else notice this? I do not run any of the goofy asus utilities or extra power mgt stuff, but I'm burning out my retinas without being able to turn it down. Thanks for any help or suggestions!

 

@ferrisnox: You need to install the ATK package from Asus.

 

sorry if anyone already post it ... but just updated the firmware and found that my ssd was scored as 7.4:

usd to be 5.9

 

Thank you! This worked although I didn't have the goofy animations before. lol But I'll take it over nothing for sure ; )

 

Didn't speed up my SSD but my graphics score dropped to 5.6 lol.

 

Which firmware? Is there a new one for the Sandisk SSDs?

 

Thanks for the info.

Best.

 

Hi, have had my UX31E for about 3 months now. In general I'm happy with it but there are a few issues that I have not been able to solve that I hope that someone here might know how to fix. I belive they are all software related. I have the latest drivers, BIOS and utilities available from ASUS installed.

1) Every time I wake it up from standby, the wireless adapter has been turned off so I need to turn it on manually again.

2) The Fn+f2 function to turn wireless and bluetooth on and off works poorly. It is realy slow and I often need to try several times to get the mode I want.

3) I find the functionality of Power4Gear useful that
a) has a Win 7 gadget to switch power saving modes and
b) automatically switch between battery save and high performance modes when I attach / detach the power cable.
Unfortuntely I only get these functions to work properly when logged in as an admin user. When logged in as a standard user it doesn't work. I think it has something to do with the fact that standard users do not seem to be allowed to run the BatteryLife.exe process (which Power4Gear seems to rely on).

Anyone else seen this behavior and have any solutions or workarounds for them?

 

1. Remove the wireless drivers and re install using the latet installer to remove. This issue then goes away. Its caused when liveupdate fails to correctly update the wifi driver and it gets stuck in wifi off mode even after installation of the latest driver. No other way I tried resolved the issue.

2. Same here and never found a solution.

3. Try re-installing the power apps as an admin user and if prompted install for all users not current user, but have not tried this.

 

Thanks decworld. Removing and then reinstalling the wireless driver solved no 1. As for no 3, I have already tried your suggestion, but that doesn't help.

 

sorry bios

 

I believe uninstalling then reinstalling the latest Wireless Console 3 should fix the fn f2 wireless issue, but if it doesn't, I suppose the next question becomes whether other drivers need to be updated or re-installed.

Good luck!

 

Which update did you flash, 211 or earlier?

Because I just flashed the 211 -- which got out on Feb. 10 -- and I didn't get any evolution in the Windows scores. It is still at 5,9, and I use AHCI.

It would be nice, by the way, if ASUS gave its customers more details about what is included in the BIOS updates

EDIT: my laptop seems to boot faster though, and my Sandisk Firmware got updated to 10.01.02. The access times also seem to have improved, I have 0,411ms/0,888ms (AS SSD Benchmark).

 

Hi, could you please let me know how to use that function? I can only set it up as changing variants within the same power plan (such as batt saving or high performance) when attach/detach the cable. The machine does not automatically switch between power schemes as you stated.

Thanks in advance

 

I have just flashed the 211 BIOS, same WEI score though : 5.9

 

I think WEI is a bad way to test.

Crystal disk mark scores against multiple scenarios and breaks it down.

I will say what I have said many times before. The Sandisk reports as slower is WEI, but is 70% plus faster in sequential writes than the Adata, but slower in 4k.

 

Sorry for me not knowing but what write is "best" or what is used most in a computer, the seq write or the 4k write?

 

Hi there!

I'm a new UX31E user and have been browsing these forums for a couple of weeks looking for help but I've not found the answer to a few questions. If anyone here can help I'd really appreciate it!

1. Can I change the threshold at which the battery charges? I want to tell the battery only to charge when below 10%. I read you can do this in the BIOS. I got version 211 but haven't seen any battery-related stuff in there and I can't find it in the power options or P4G settings.

2. How can I replace ther battery when it finally dies? Do I have to send it to an ASUS dealer?

3. Can you install more than 4GB RAM in a UX31E? I fear this may be a 'no'.

4. Can I upgrade the SSD myself or would I have to send it to a dealer? 128GB is a biut small for me so I'm hoping to buy a 256GB.

5. Can the mini/micro HDMI be used to connect directly to a TV? I've tried this with my SONY Bravia KL-32S2010 and the resulting picture was awful resolution. Maybe I'm being stupid here, having not used HDMI before

6. After flashing my BIOS and upgrading to all of the latest ASUS drivers my graphics score on WEI went down from 5.9 to 5.5 (my lowest sub-score). I tried downgrading/upgrading the Intel HD driver and uninstalling/reinstalling ASUS Splendid but nothing improved it. Any idea why this happened or what I can do to resolve this?

Any help with these issue would be really great

Cheers

 

It really depends on what you do.

If you want to copy a HD video from an external HDD to your asus the sandisk would be substantially faster, maybe 10 mins down to 5 mins.

If you wanted to copy a large file locally and make a backup, again this would be much faster.

If you wanted to copy 5000 tiny files the adata would be faster.

A lot of OS stuff would suit the Adata, but the sandisk is still very fast by any standard.

Plus, us adata people loose 8GB of space for "internal ssd stuff".

 

1. Can I change the threshold at which the battery charges? I want to tell the battery only to charge when below 10%. I read you can do this in the BIOS. I got version 211 but haven't seen any battery-related stuff in there and I can't find it in the power options or P4G settings.

I wish. But answer is no.

2. How can I replace ther battery when it finally dies? Do I have to send it to an ASUS dealer?

Yes, you will be able to get them off ebay and fit them. The internal are really accessible as the entire base come off.

3. Can you install more than 4GB RAM in a UX31E? I fear this may be a 'no'.

No/Never.

4. Can I upgrade the SSD myself or would I have to send it to a dealer? 128GB is a biut small for me so I'm hoping to buy a 256GB.

any size in the correct form faster will work.

5. Can the mini/micro HDMI be used to connect directly to a TV? I've tried this with my SONY Bravia KL-32S2010 and the resulting picture was awful resolution. Maybe I'm being stupid here, having not used HDMI before

Change the resolution to match the TV. Will work perfectly.

6. After flashing my BIOS and upgrading to all of the latest ASUS drivers my graphics score on WEI went down from 5.9 to 5.5 (my lowest sub-score). I tried downgrading/upgrading the Intel HD driver and uninstalling/reinstalling ASUS Splendid but nothing improved it. Any idea why this happened or what I can do to resolve this?

See above posts. Not a real test.