Help! A8Js problems

Background:
Ok so I've researched laptops for months upon months and I finally decided on the A8Js for its portability + gaming performance all in one. I got mine last week, and couldn't be more pleased.. until now. I reinstalled windows, merged the hard drive into one partition, converted to NTFS, and installed the drivers and some of the software off the disc from Asus. The only things I have installed are Firefox, iTunes, and Supreme Commander (which I've been playing hours on end almost every day.. and it runs GREAT). I'm running Windows XP pro, and usually use my external monitor running 1600x1200 resolution (although I'll probably stick to the laptop LCD once school starts back up)

Problem 1:
Audio - sometimes I start up the computer, and for some reason it has no audio. I try and go to audio settings, and it says no audio hardware is configured.. it says the same thing when trying to play music, or reinstalling the audio drivers. The only thing that seems to get my sound working, is restarting the thing. This problem is more of a nuisance than a serious problem.

Problem 2:
Mouse / Touchpad - I installed the "Synaptics Pointing Device" off the disk, and also off the internet (after i found this problem). It won't save my pointer speed! I am used to a very sensitive mouse on my desktop, and i basically can't even use the touchpad without adjusting its speed to the max! So for me, this is extremely annoying!! Oh- I usually use the USB mouse that came with the laptop, and it's speed is controlled by the same programs setting as the touchpad.

Problem 3:
Low 3dmark score - Now the real reason I am posting. After a long game of SC, it seems to take my computer a while (10 seconds to a minute) to go back to the desktop when SC closes. The screen goes blank and them starts "loading" the windows open which usually stay grayed out, and i can hear the computer working pretty hard. I decided to see if my A8Js was up to par with the others, so I downloaded 3dMark06, and ran a test. All reviews and posts about this laptop on this website state the A8Js as having a score of almost 2700 out of the box. I scored 2393. I did disk cleanup, defrag, closed as many programs running as possible, re-downloaded the VGA driver, and tried again. Same score. What could be causing this low score?


I've ordered another GB of RAM which will be here tomorrow, and also a notebook cooling pad (it blows very hot air after long games of SC), but I've heard these things dont affect 3dMark scores.

I know how helpful everyone on this forum is, so thanks in advance for any advice!!!

 

I can try to help you with problem three. First of all, state what drivers you're using and then we can go from there.

 

Ok in device manager i'll just go down the list of which ones i think you are wanting to know-
Device : Provider : Version : Date
Computer : Microsoft : 5.1.2600.0 : 7/1/2001
Disk drive : Microsoft : 5.1.2535.0 : 7/1/2001
Display : NVidia : 8.6.0.2 : 7/20/2006
Touchpad : Synaptics : 8.3.4.0 : 5/19/2006
Processor : Microsoft : 5.1.2600.0 : 4/1/2004 (2 identical ones)
Motorola Modem Audio : Motorola : 2.1.2.5 : 7/31/2006
Soundmax Integrated Digital HD Audio : AnalogDevices : 5.10.1.4159 : 6/21/2006

Under System Devices, theres about 30 things listed, did you need to know any of these? I remember installing this one from the disk so i better list it:
ATK ACPI Utility : ATK : 1043.2.15.64 : 8/23/2006

Thanks for reading and if theres any other info you may need, i'd be glad to give it. Hopefully I don't have to send this thing in to get checked out

 

Your Video drivers should be the best performing ones (they are infact what i used to get the result in my sig when i had xp). Have you set Power4Gear (if you installed it) to Super or High Performance? If yes, it's likely that your card won't get higher stock. If you haven't installed Power4Gear, and you're not using another power-manegement app, make sure that the XP power profile is set to always on or something (right click on the power/battery icon).

The touchpad problem is documented and I believe a solution was found (not sure, never had that problem). Search the A8Js Owners Lounge for a soultion.

I had that problem with the sound. Not sure how i fixed but you can try to uninstall it from the device manager (right click and select uninstall), reboot and reinstall. It could also be because of the modem (which i didn't install the second time I formated, a few days after the initial install of windows).

The rest is unnecessery info. Hope that helps

 

I didn't install power4gear.. should i? I set the XP power profile to always on, and theres no difference.. any other ideas? Maybe I partitioned the harddrive wrong when I set it to NTFS? I read that its easy to accidentally set it to 512kb clusters when it should be something like 2mb.. but i never saw how to check if i did that.. the rest i followed step by step so I assumed i did it right.

 

The the clustersize won't affect your score that way (also had 512kb clusters when 3Dmarking). You don't really need power4gear. All I can think of is that your card doesn't benchmark higher.

 

Problem 1 might be related to buggy drivers or hardware glitches... I can't tell which. You could try newer / older drivers, I have no other idea.

Problem 2 -- see the solution suggested above, I also remember somebody fixed this.

Problem 3 is almost certainly related to RAM. Do you have 1 GB? If so, the Supreme Commander is probably gulping memory like crazy, and that's why it takes the Windows desktop a lot of time to load afterwards. I think this will be alleviated when you get your other GB of RAM.

There is also some aggravation of this effect due to 512bytes clusters, but I don't think it's really that noticeable.

Finally, I have always tried to discourage one-partition setups on computers. With everything together on the same partition, the stuff gets very easily fragmented -- which again contributes to poor swapping performance i.e. long times to load the desktop on game exit. Moreover, any data on the system partition is vulnerable to a catastrophic system crash.

About the lower 3Dmark score, I'm not sure. It might be connected to some of the issues above or it might not.

 

power for gear was pretty important in my system when i play games
i play guildwars quite often and if i do not set the performance to max (i.e. 100% processor usage) i will lag so bad until everyone start cursing me
so i reckon its best for you to instal the power4gear
as for the heat, i really think my laptop as really cool
compared to my mate's dell anyway
and btw, hot air comes out from the right side of your laptop which is good imo
as for ram, im actually using 2gb ram
but since you are using XP, i think 1gb should be sufficient in your case.
i think you should bring it to asus.
with the rating, my laptop is actually all 4.9 except for the ram ratng which i have no idea why eventhough i got 2 gig ram
(maybe because i use 1gb hynix, 1gb kingston,but the kingston modules is made by hynix anyway)

 

i would suggest a bios update, and to download the latest drivers from the net before assuming its something in the hardware.

 

Ok thanks for the ideas, i just downloaded the BIOS update on the top of list from Asus' website, not sure what to do with a 211 file, but i'll search around and probably figure it out pretty quick. I installed the new ram, got the laptop on the cooler, ran 3dmark again and got 2396. Sad day..


EDIT: OK found out how to flash Bios using the Asus utility, but i boot it up with the "newest" BIOS listed on asus' website, and it says, warning your current version is newer than the image loaded.
BIOS Rom info: A8JsvAS.213, Date 03/02/07
BIOS Image info: A8JsvAS.211, Date 01/15/07

Sorry im kinda retarded when it comes to this stuff, never had to mess with it before. Should I do this Bios change/flash/update? Fixing my comp to run at max potential is definitely most important to me... thanks!

 

since you seem to have problems with 2.13, i would recomend downgrading to 2.10 (me and other had problems with screen brightness on 2.11). First see if you can backup your present bios, than downgrade using the utility that's available in the bios (you can't go downgrade in the windows utility). Make sure your bios file is somewhere easily browsed to (i recomend c:\)