Asus W3J goes to black screen as soon as power cable is removed! PLEASE HELP!

As soon as I remove the power cable from my Asus W3J, the screen goes to black and the whole thing freezes. This just started happening today. It's been working fine for the last 4 months that I've owned it. I don't know what the problem is. It works fine when plugged in,its just when its running on battery. The problem started happening after I upgraded my firmware to the latest one on Asus's website and after I got the latest Omega Drivers, Catalyst 6.9. I downgraded my firmware to what it was before the problem started happening, but it still happens. Could it be the Omega Drivers? What is the problem? The way it is right now, I can only use my laptop when its plugged in, which defeats the purpose of even having a laptop. Please help! I am a student and I need my laptop to be working on battery each day. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

With that firmware upgrade and the new drivers the screen's power settings could have been set to do something odd like kill the screen when the system goes to battery. Omega drivers have a tendency to do weird things because each laptop is designed with special workarounds depending on screen, cpu, etc.

Try plugging in an external monitor (if you have one) and enable video out to it. See if it's the output going down or the screen going to powersave.

As a generic fix, uninstall the Omega drivers according to the documentation (dont think you're done until you follow all the steps) reboot, and then try the mobility drivers Asus has on their website.

EDIT: Did you install the mobility drivers or the catalyst drivers? I don't think you can install the 'desktop' drivers on a laptop but it's pinging around in my head that they might have...

 

I think I remember seeing a post which mentioned issues between the W3J and the Catalyst drivers. I would suggest rolling back to your last working set.

~ Brett

 

If you read the thread about Catalyst 6.9 issues, you can conclude it yourself... The BIOS does not do anything wrong, it's the Cat 6.9.

 

I dont't have a W3J, but I have been watching these forums and there are a lot of reported problems with the 6.9 drives. Try rolling back to plain 6.8 drivers. The latest drivers released by Asus for W3J video are here:

ftp://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/W3J/VGA_XP_060426.zip

 

I had that and same issue and went back to the omega (cat 6.7) drivers. No dfference in 3dmark scores between the two so no reason to upgrade anyway.

 

If it ain't broke, why fix it?

~ Brett

 

You can also try disabling Powerplay to see if that is an issue. If the ATI/Omega Drivers were doing anything to cause this situation, that would be the cause (since powerplay enables on AC/DC switch).

Cat