Question on W3V

Just got my W3V last night and have been toying with it for a few hours. My first impression is the machine is very well built and its really very neat. I'm quite happy with it

However, I've got a few questions about the machine and I hope someone can enlighten me as I'm not very technically inclined, especially when it comes to PC

1. When I check the C:\ drive it said the total size is only 32GB with about 26GB free space left. Isn't the machine come with a 60GB drive. How can I access/reclaim the other space if they're not being used by something else.

2. There is an icon on the desktop saying "Convert to NTFS" I realize NTFS is a more advanced file system compared to the preconfigured FAST32 file system. So are most people actually converting it to NTFS?
I've actually tried click on that icon once and a macro is running in a DOS window. But it stop midway saying somthing like ".... process is in use. Do you want to dismount and continue" or something of that nature. What's exactly does that mean and should you click Ok and continue?? Btw, I don't intend to run any other OS or multiple OS in my laptop. I'm planning to stick to the Window XP.

3. Speaking of OS. There is a Window XP Recovery disk come with the machine. When will you need to use that disk and how??

4. Is our optical drive able to burn DVD or just CD only?


TIA,
Pete

 

ok howdy! I can answer question 1 and 4 for sure!

1. Look for another hardrive appearing in your my computer folder. ASUS partitioned the drive in two, not so sure why though...

4. Yes, your cd drive DOES burn DVD's. In fact, it burns dual-layer DVD's

for question 3, if you kill your computer with a virus etc... use that cd to re-install your computer to the state it was when you first got it!

 

Yes, dismount and continue.
NTFS is the way to go, dont know why they kept it FAT32 anyways.

 

Thanks guys for your response ;-)

>ASUS partitioned the drive in two .....
What's in the other partition?? Can I merge them into one or should I?

 

The second partition should be empty and formated. Whether you merge them or not is up to you, there's no real advantage either way for typical usage. For me, it was more trouble than it was worth, so I just repointed my "My Documents" folder over there so my data is there, and all my apps stay on the C: drive.

FYI:
How to Change the My Documents Folder Storage Location
When the properties of the My Documents folder (the desktop icon) are displayed and a group policy has not been established to redirect the folder, you can change the path to the My Documents folder and you can move the contents from the old location to the new location: 1. Right-click My Documents (on the desktop), and then click Properties.
2. In the Target box, type the new path to the My Documents folder, or click Move to browse to the folder and if needed, create a new My Documents folder. If the path you type does not exist, you are prompted to confirm that you want to create a new folder.
3. Click Yes to move files from the old My Documents location to the new location, or click No if you do not want to move these files. Note that if you click No, the files in the old location are not deleted, but they are no longer visible from My Documents after the change.

 

Now if I've converted the FAT32 file system into NTFS, that means the Windows XP Recovery disk will be no use in the future as it'll only reflect the old FAT32 format. Am I correct? In that case, can I create my own recovery disk based on the converted NTFS file system??

 

No, you can still use the recovery disks. They'll set it back to your original settings and you just have to redo the NTFS conversion again. It's no biggie.
And when you do, you can make it one whole drive instead of the partition... that is, if you want to.

 

>And when you do, you can make it one whole drive .....
Do you mean you can merge the two partitions while performing the NTFS conversion with the macro on the desktop??

 

No, when you're doing the recovery, you can set it for 1 partition instead of 2.

 

I've tried again last night for the NTSF conversion on my new W3V. As someone here mentioned previously, once it prompts whether you want to dismount and continue with the conversion process, I click ok.

But right after that the next message pops up and said something like "Cannot gain exclusive access to the C:\ drive and cannot continue with the conversion process. Want to schedule to try that again some other time ......." or something similar.

I haven't done anything prior to that. All I did was turn on the laptop and jump right into the NTSF conversion macro on the desktop. So its not like I'm running something at the same time. So can someone tell me exactly what's going on in here?! How can I able to perform the NTSF conversion successfully.

Btw, I realize ASUS has partitioned one drive (c:\) as FAT32 while the other (D:\) as NTSF. While on earth do they want to set up the machine like that to begin with??

 

Does anyone run into problem while their machine try to go into standby or hybernate mode? Mine pops out with a message saying "the device for the keyboard will not allow the machine go into standby mode. Please try again and it it persist, you may need a new device driver installed ........" WTF?! I just have this machine for 2 days and I hardly use it. Is there a more updated device driver for the keyboard out there that may resolve the conflict??