My joys & sadness with my new G2S-A1 so far...

Hi everyone:

I purchased a ASUS G2S-A1 on Sept 17, 2007 and it's been a bit of a struggle to get to truly enjoy this powerful lil machine. For starters, the first thing that the laptop did as soon as I booted it up straight out of the box was that VISTA blue screened on me. After 2 reboots it started normally. For several days, it would continue to do this on ocassion. Sometimes it would crash in Vista as well. I tried to do my best to tweak and patch the OS and drivers as much as possible until one day, it blue screened again saying that one of my files became corrupted. So, I bought a copy of Vista Ultimate 32-bit to try to do a clean install. I deleted the partitions, created some new ones and everything went well until it rebooted once and said windows vista was starting for the first time. Once the installer got to Completing installation, it just hung there for hours with nothing. I tried several installs and it would always do the same thing. I tried to use the rescue disc that came with the system and even tried to do the trick for installing the Vista OS clean from it and install the drivers manually. It worked and had a few bugs still, but it ultimately had problems again.

I was very disappointed. I started to like vista, but it didn't let me enjoy my new $2000 laptop. I tried to install XP, by downloading the compiled drivers that users have put together on the asus forums and creating a slipstream xp CD using the new Nlite 1.4 beta. My laptop was finally working great. Still had a few quirks, but it was lightning fast so far. I'm even playing Bioshock and it's running great. My only complaint is that I still can't get the webcam to work properly. I've tried a bunch of drivers for XP and when vista was installed. Either the image is upside-down and/or the frame rate is extremely slow and unusable. There is also one PCI device that it cannot identify. Can anyone help me with these two problems? I would really like to use my webcam and figure out what driver I am missing for both the webcam and PCI device.

I don't even know which driver I would need for the webcam since there is more than one driver available (D-Max and Chicony). I really wish ASUS would support XP on the G2 since Vista has been such a horrible experience for me on this new laptop. They should also give you the choice of having a full windows install CD instead of a Rescue Disc. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.


Sincerely,

Carlos

 

There is perhaps a software switch somewhere for the upside down image.

Too bad about Vista, you paid for two copies and can't use any of them... well maybe you can install the retail one on another computer. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise the laptop probably runs XP much better.

I don't know about the PCI device, but you could try seeing what devices are installed properly (e.g., Ethernet, Wireless, Bluetooth) and if you know there's some hardware that is not on the list, that's probably it.

 

Thanks E.B.E.:

Yes. I'm pretty let down about Vista. It's pretty, but still not yet ready for prime time. MS should've taken more time with it. Even having it tweaked for speed, it remains a resource hog (besides all the nasty bugs from hell). Too bad. Nah, I'm going to probably return the OS or sell it to someone else who doesn't care to deal with Vista's issues. XP screams on it. Especially after all my tweaks and updates. Too bad MS doesn't release Direct X 10 for XP.

As far as the cam, I've tried all the settings and different drivers. Even if i get the image to be normal, the frame rate is like 1 frame per 5 to 7 seconds. When I first got the laptop, the camera was smooth as hell. After the first Vista Re-install and then XP, it never was the same again. I don't know why. I have all the latest drivers, plus the intel usb controller drivers (since it's states it's a "usb" cam), but it's practically unusable. If anyone has successfully installed it under xp, please let me know. Maybe someone can post up a screenshot of their device manager with all the proper drivers installed. It can help me and everyone else that is trying to get xp installed properly on their g2s-a1's.

Thanks again E.B.E..

 

the not recognized pci device is probably the intel turbo memory, that doesn't work in windows xp, so as long as you have it you won't be able to use it (unless they release drivers for it).

 

Hi Pitaman. To fix this problem you need to download the SATA drivers from the ASUS website and put it on a CD/DVD/Thumbdrive. Then before installation there is an option to Load Drivers or whatever (Don't know the exact words) and just browse the location and install the SATA drivers.

After that the COMPLETING INSTALLATION screen will not stall at 75%. Grats.

 

this is a common symptom when trying to install a pirated version of windows vista(the ones you don't have to enter any serial number), and G1s only supports "Genuine" only...just a thought

 

I'm pretty sure the OP said he bought a retail copy of Vista...

 

The 32bit does not work on my c90s
the 64bit works fine though. But it says I have 11 days left >-<. Guess I'll have to buy a $117 copy of Vista HP

 

IF you do some date changing in the bios before installing Vista , then FIX it before getting any updates ... months become days times 30 as long as on time never passes midnite on any given day ;>) 2099 was a good year.