U30JC discussion thread

Ah crap already ordered. It says it works on UL30 so wouldnt that work? You said the UL30 is the same plug as ours right?

 

Yes, I *think* I'm right. Going by this page at Amazon HERE, why would they offer it as a spare ac power adapter for the UL30a & U30Jc if the tip didn't fit both.

But the China seller didn't specify that it fit the U30Jc (and no returns for wrong size), hence why I'd normally suggest asking first.

Oh well, you're at least 90% probably okay.

UPDATE: I just PM'ed eugenes in Beijing, as he has both the U:80Vt and the U30Jc, and asked if it was the same plug tip that fit both laptops. I'll let you know if he answers.

 

Hey everyone check out this skin for the u30jc:

SGP Laptop Cover Skin for ASUS U30JC [Deep Black]
also available in carbon fiber and 3D cube designs, and a faux suede wrist wrest:

SGP WristRest for ASUS U30JC

Any experience with these? The leather skin and wrist rest is really tempting, how good do they look IRL?

 

Ooh. Looks very nice!

 

All Asus power adapters (within at least the last 3 years) use the same voltage (19v) and power tip. The only difference is the power output, e.g. 65w (3.42A), 90w (4.73A), 120w (6.31A).

I do believe the U/UL series are equiped with a 65w adapter, so as long as you're using one that provides at least 65w, then you're ok.

 

I'm almost positive the u30jc uses 90w, doesn't say it on the adapter though. Hopefully it'll work for you.

 

Hey all, just got my u30jc today with an i5-450 in it today. Coming from a tablet (hp tx2500z), this is actually a massive upgrade. The hp had whining noises, fan just would not shut up and heat build up was terrible. The u30jc is totally the opposite, cool always to the touch, fan is audible but very quiet.

I have a couple of questions. First is, for those of you that kept the default asus partition, did you move your my documents, pictures, videos etc. to the data drive? If so, then did you move the whole user folder or just those mentioned above.

Secondly, those stickers that come with the laptop did not come of the plastic at all. And if they did, the sticky residue was left behind, so was useless in any event. Did any of you sucessfuly remove those stickers to use on the laptop? How?

overall it is one hell of a laptop. Lovin' it right now.

 

I stand corrected. U30JC does come with a 90w/4.73A adapter. UL80/30 comes with a 65w/3.42A adapter.

 

That 90W adapter that comes with the U30 sure is huge, compared to my old 65W Asus adapter. Surprised me, since I figured this model was made to be lighter. I guess the gfx just needs that little extra.

 

I did too, no reply yet. But ya thanks, let me know what he says. Like you said I should be ok.

 

THanks, ordered an outside cover. I believe you dont need skins cause laptop covers are pretty hard to scratch up but I got it cause it makes me laptop black (which i much prefer over silver).

The palmrest I find pointless though, plus it makes the inside look wierd being black and silver. Rather just keep it all one colour.

Now that I have a skin is there even a need for my laptop sleeve? Cause i got a suede one for $20 a month ago from dell and it fits and feels very nice.

 

My U30Jc-A1 came with ALL of the stickers on a plastic clear sheet over the palmrest. None were stuck to the chassis except the ALTEC sound sticker above the keyboard.

So all I had to do was remove the plastic sheet and all of the stickers came off with it. Very easy, fast and no sticky mess left behind.

 

anyone know how to run the built in webcam? I cant find where it is on Windows.

 

ASUS LifeFrame (if you left it installed) or Fn+V. This app turns on the webcam and allows for set up.

Video apps like Skype or Google video automatically try to turn on your webcam when requested as well.

A neoprene sleeve adds a small amount of extra protection, over a black suede one, if hit. But if it's in your backpack or bag, it should be fine.

 

I knew someone would misunderstand me. It did come on a plastic sheet too for me. But what I want to do is take it off the plastic sheet and put it on my laptop itself. That's how I like it. Have you been able to do that? Cheers.

 

^^ Yes - just peel it off of the plastic sheet and stick it on your laptop. At least that's how mine worked...

 

^^ tried that, but thing is, the stickers come off without it's sticky residue. As in; it leaves the sticky stuff on the plastic so basically useless.

edit: just so i don't double post, i have found that my mouse seems to jump quite a bit when my finger is tracking on the pad. Anyone know of driver updates? or any other solution.

p.s I do have the latest driver that asus has on it's website.

 

Oh, sorry I misunderstood. I've not met anyone who actually wanted those stickers on their palm rest area. I've no idea how to reaffix them to your palm rest and make them stay. I was just personally glad to be rid of them.

Poor ASUS. I suppose they can never make us all happy. Some of us want those stickers easily off, some want them on.

________________________________

On the touchpad, are you saying that while you move your cursor via the touchpad, it just jumps or skips at times?

Mine doesn't do that at all, but I have turned off the drag-&-drop feature on my gestures to reduce those kinds of erratic behaviour.

Still, mine will occasionally jump while I'm typing as my palm can accidentally move the cursor. Reducing sensitivity in "Palm Tracking" has helped that as well.

 

No worries Quatro, it's not a big thing really, but it would've been nice to be able to take them off the plastic.

For the touchpad, yes it jumps and skips at times while I'm moving the cursor as well as just resting my finger on the touchpad. It usually does it after a while of use of two finger scrolling. Does get annoying, but could be that the touchpad is new??
I might reduce the sensitivity and see what happens. The problem is intermittent, but there nonetheless.

 

Try visiting a local computer shop, if there is still one in existence near where you live, and ask if they have extra stickers

 

Ya ive never met anyone who actually wants stickers on their laptop lol. I personally find them pointless and tacky.

 

Help everyone, I'm having some serious problem with my u30jc. Almost every time I come out of hibernation the pc is slow, everything takes 1-2 seconds to respond, no CPU usage, nothing new installed. Had to force a shutdown more than once.

Later on it happened even after a clean boot! Tried switching the theme back to Aero and I got a popup saying the Intel driver crashed and was restarted, now everything runs normal again.

Should I try updating the intel video driver? Which version is known to work flawlessly with the u30jc and where can I get it? Do you need to uninstall the previous intel driver first?

 

Try something for me. When that is happening, look at your HDD blue activity light on the front. Working lots? Light looks like it just stays on? How long does it take from boot up for the blue HDD light to finally stay off (with no activity from you)?

If so, don't force a hard shut down or reboot. Windows is busy and can't "hear" you. Your impatience in forcing a shut-down will only make things worse. Such hard shut-downs amid extreme read/writes can cause important file corruptions (like your video driver). It's some program that is working in the background and keeping the CPU busy so it can't respond to your requests.

At first, mine did that because Windows was running it's indexing program in the background every time I rebooted or resumed from hibernation. I turned off indexing (you can read elsewhere how to do that.)

Then later, it began to do it again (and still does, especially on a reboot.) I discovered it was because I'd changed my AV app (Spyware Doctor to Kaspersky AV). Kaspersky, while a fine AV loads very slowly.

If I'm online at boot up, it then ties up the HDD while it updates the signatures as well.

Resume does it a bit, but not as bad as a fresh boot up. The best for me is just resuming from sleep.

Once I'd discovered that my AV was the culprit, I could change AV's (I just did that as my old AV didn't like Steam games) or I could be patient and plan on at least 2-3 minutes before the HDD light quieted down and Windows could take orders from me.

I chose the later. I can go get a coffee or something.

As an experiment, I removed Kaspersky AV and found that I could suddenly boot up to full operation within 60 sec. But I need an AV (that also plays nice with my Steam games).

With Kaspersky on, here's how my typical fresh boot up goes now:

• 25 sec - get to Welcome blue screen
• 40 sec - my Windows Wallpaper appears
• 60 sec - my gadgets and desktop icons are all there ... but HDD light is still constantly on
• 1 min 30 sec - Kaspersky suddenly tells me it is loaded and protection is on (!), but that blue HDD light is still working
• 1 min 45 sec - the HDD light is mostly off with occasional blue blips. The CPU is mostly free & now I can finally use Win 7.
  [*2 min - all HDD light activity is off and Windows is fully ready to listen to me.

See my point? All caused entirely by my AV.

But most of the time, I wake it up from sleep which is instant and no HDD activity. In the morning, I resume often from hibernation. This takes longer than waking from sleep but nothing like rebooting.

Resume goes like this for me:

• 20 sec - Windows is open back to my state at last closing (great) ... but my HDD light is still working hard in the background.
• 2 min (!) - my HDD little blue light finally finishes loading whatever it was loading (used to be indexing, now it's my AV)

If I feel the PC needs it, I reboot and go do something else for 3 min. It's not that big of a deal to me. If I am resuming from hibernation, I prepare myself to not have access to working on it for the first 2 min. Just the way it is for me. Hence why I usually wake it up from sleep during the day.

A fresh install might change that for me, but I doubt it since it is AV-related. Once I get a hybrid drive down the road, I'll see what my boot up times are like.

 

Hi guys, I recently acquired an U30JC (the version with 6-cell and 320gb 5400rpm) and I have a very bad problem. It came with bios 204.

After replacing the hdd to a Seagate 500gb 7200rpm of my own, found no problems till I updated the bios to 210. Then it doesn't boot up anymore. It hangs when showing the initial bios Asus logo (ESC or F2 don't work). Then I had to boot without hdd and reflash (from bios menu) to bios 204 or 205 in a pendrive and then put the hdd again after flashing, so it can boot. By the way, if I put the original 320gb hdd back, then it boots ok with bios 210.

It seems like this 210 bios is defective or maybe have some kind of protection against hdd upgrades.

Did this happen to anyone? Of course, I don't wanna lose future bios updates.

Thanks in advance

 

Several here use the 210 BIOS on their U30Jc (me incl) with no problems.

I still use the 320 GB HDD, but many others have upgraded to a 500 GB HDD. That should not be a problem.

If it didn't even go into F2 BIOS setup unless you removed the HDD, that's really odd. Sounds like it was hanging in the background (black ASUS screen) while it tried & failed to access the HDD. So that should mean it's something with your 500GB HDD (except that you said you used it okay under 204?)

1) Were you able to load the 210 BIOS and then go into it and select "default" boot settings and then exit and reboot?

2) Could you do #1 and boot up okay on the 320GB HDD?

3) Then put in the 500GB. Are you sure it was created both bootable and formatted correctly? You could boot into it using 204?

 

Am I the only one who ordered the U30 cover skin? I cant wait to see it in person. Leather on the cover will feel nice. I just hope its not too thick.

 

It didn't look too thick in the link you provided. I think it will look very sharp and feel nice .... but may take some work to put on perfectly.

 

I tried to upgrade from 205 to 210 bios again and this time it works with my 500gb 7200rpm !!! Seriously, can't explain why.

 

Well, that should be a relief! It may have been a faulty BIOS flash, but that is extremely rare, since 210 had been working okay with your old 320GB HDD.

More likely, there was something with your 500GB HDD, perhaps it was poorly seated in its socket.

No matter now. What's important is that it works. Congrats!

 

What kind of battery life are the rest of you guys getting? I ran mine down for the first time yesterday evening on Balanced and 70% brightness and I only got ~6 hours before it went to sleep, which is a far cry from the 8 hours that NBR review got with the same settings on

 

Tough to say as I don't ever use it at 6+ hrs stretches, so I'm left depending on the battery life estimate (which varies lots, depending on what I do.)

When I use it over 2 or more hours, my batt life estimate appears to stablilize to a consistent decrease, but I also set up nV CP to only use FireFox on the IGP for all things to avoid flash issues.

 

Exactly, while browsing Youtube only leaves me with 3-4 hours of batterylife on the 310m.. and the Intel card seems to play 720p clips without a problem - and (i think) the standard settings uses the 310m even when playing a 320p youtube clip, WAY overkill...

 

But streaming video on either graphics chip does push my battery down closer to 4 hrs. I'll test this and get back to all of you.

... okay, tested it in HULU on the IGP, and it jumped from 91% (6 hrs 48 min) to 4 hrs (90%) while watching a TV episode on the IGP ( not the nVidia GPU). I watched most of the episode (30 min) and the battery meter went down to 83% (3 hrs 30 min). Only if I continued watching until shutdown could I be sure if the battery meter is being accurate.

ANOTHER NOTE: after charging it a bit while surfing (but NO streaming video), and I'm back on battery to see what it says. I'm at 40% brightness, battery saving mode (CPU-Z reports CPU at 931 MHz-1.2 GHz), surfing on FF in IGP-only mode and no video ... and the battery is reporting 90% (7 hr 39 min) ... okay, now 89% (7 hr 32 min).

But streaming video on either graphic chip definitely sucks the life out of it.

 

I guess it just needed a couple of cycles because now I am getting ~7 hours

 

*sighs* does anyone know how to un-bend the keyboard? My middle section near the top is now popping up. (Note: this was after my father played with my laptop).

Also, after my father fiddled around with the laptop, whenever I press the Function key now and try to initiate a function, the hovering icons that used to appear on the screen are gone. They were there this morning, but are now gone. Anyway to get them back?

 

this is really pissing me off but i still cant get my webcam to work. I go on msn and it just shows green screen. My friends say they can see me but i cant see them or I dont even see me on teh screen.

I went to asus site and the ydont even have a link for lifeframe 2.0 so i downloaded it elsewhere. i even downlaoded the latest driver from the asus site.

 

ASUS LifeFrame is on your included driver DVD. Why not use that?

Or you can go to the ASUS driver download site HERE.

Put in U30Jc in the search on the upper left, select your OS when asked. Under "UTILITIES" next to the last (there's 19 of them listed) you'll see LifeFrame 3.

Download that. after you've installed it, Fn+V will launch LifeFrame 3 and you can tweak the resolution, etc in it. Skype & Google Video should just turn on your webcam, even without LifeFrame.

I see you've already installed the camera driver.

If you do a search, I have instructions on how to lift & unbend your keyboard on this thread. (Oh, HERE it is!) What many were describing as "flex" I found odd given that under the keyboard is nearly a solid plate of metal. Turns out the included keyboard easily warps and then sits uneven in its place. Fortunately, it can just as easily be unbent/unwarped.

As for the missing floating icons, that happened to me on the wireless. I just restored back to the day before the problem and all was good.

 

Hi there I have another question, I am getting pretty frustrated with Nvidia Optimus, as it is not turning on for any programs! A few days ago it would work fine when playing Starcraft 2, but now the game is rendered virtually useless with the Intel graphics. This problem occurs across all games, not just Starcraft. I have the latest driver and have tried restarting the computer, fiddling with the graphic control panel, and even told the program to run with the graphics. Help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks Quatro! I'll try that out.

 

Hello U30JC users. I had a question regarding the NVIDIA Optimus Driver updates. Has anybody tried upgrading their video card drivers? I currently use the U45JC (Slightly different, but still sporting the same Geforce 310m card) and there is slim to nil support for it whatsoever. I can't seem to get Starcraft II to work on my laptop and tried updating my video card drivers but eventually ended up in a sticky mess as my laptop would crash upon reaching the desktop. I had to spend an hour in Windows safe-mode downloading 5 different drivers (Supposedly optimus-supporting) just to have NVIDIA say that my hardware was incompatible. I managed to reinstall stock drivers with the utility disk but am basically back where I started. Does anybody have any suggestions/similar issues?

 

is it normal for the laptop to feel more warm than usual when using on my lap?

 

By the latest driver, do you mean the 258.96 WHQL drivers? They work great on my U30Jc but some (using the U35/45, I think) have reported that the latest 258.96 drivers cashed crashing on bootup(!) They had to settle for 257.17 or 257.21 to get Optimus to behave on the system. I'm unclear why. Perhaps the change of the type VRAM is causing it.

Those 258 drivers have made Optimus much smarter for me (hopefully the 257 drivers do too). In games, I set the global settings default to "High-performance nVidia processor". Then when I select the game StarCraft II (starcraft ii.exe), it defaults to "use global settings: high-performance nVidia processor". You can also choose "High-performance nVidia processor" as the standard.

It should work.

Do you use the nVidia Test Tool to see if the discrete GPU is coming on during gaming?

See my response above. On my U30Jc, I think I'm using the latest of all drivers: I'm using the 210 BIOS, nVidia 258.96, Intel HD 8.15.10.2182 (& P4G) and am having no issues at all. My latest Optimus drivers seem even smarter and have more templates to recognize more games & apps. Did you go HERE to get your latest nVidia drivers? Be sure and select 310M, not the 310 drivers and Win 7 64-bit, not the 32-bit drivers.

I ask because your sentence, "downloading 5 different drivers (Supposedly optimus-supporting) just to have NVIDIA say that my hardware was incompatible" sounds very odd. If you're downloading from that page (not some other location) and specified the "GeForce 300M series (notebook) > 310M > Windows 7 64-bit, it should indeed give you a choice of 5 drivers (two of them Beta) and they should ALL work and not say that your hardware is incompatible. That is not right.

What 5 drivers did you try and what stock driver are you using now?

** Also, you might try posting over on the U35JC/U45JC thread in case your problem is specific to that model.

If you are using it on your legs as I do, of course you'll feel more warmth, if there's any there to feel. Also, even just the plastic can make the tops of your thighs sweat a bit if it is on bare skin.

Are you having a problem with the heat while the laptop is on your legs?

I don't, but if you do, put a towel or jacket on your lap to give some air space for your skin.

 

About my Intel graphics driver crashing after startup issue I reported a few days ago:

I tried reinstalling and updating both drivers, and also updating the BIOS to the latest version, but I still had crashes. I uninstalled Power4Gear and it seems it solved the problem.

Can I live without Power4Gear? I'm using custom advanced power plans right now, but I don't know if I'll get the same battery performance with this.

 

Every setting in P4G, you can do yourself (and more) in the power setup options. P4G is just prettier!

Weird that there would be a conflict between the P4G and your Intel IGP drivers. It shouldn't be that way. Have you found others on other forums reporting this problem? I have nothing like this on my U30Jc-A1.

That's very odd.

 

You can live without p4g, I ran BatteryMon and checked how much powerdraw each of the modes had while idling compared to the default windows "power save" and "balanced" settings.

Even the battery saving mode in P4G with the ODD and webcam disabled AND lower brightness drew MORE power than windows "battery saving" mode. Even after making adjustments, windows own power manager is way more efficient. Get rid of P4G, its a gimmick.

Games work well in any mode, never found the need to switch to high performance.

 

Speaking of battery, I did everything Quatro suggested last time I raised my battery issue, and while my icon has stopped wildly fluctuating, I CANNOT eke out more than 4.5 hours from my laptop, which is intensely frustrating. I keep it on either Quiet Office or my own custom plan, with 30% brightness and have used my laptop to browse the internet, only keeping a max of three tabs open at a time. I do have the 8 cell battery, so I'm at a total loss.

Any suggestions?

Or could someone give me extremely specific settings for their battery plan, if it gets more than five hours?

 

I've been having a random issue with my fan going high RPM for no reason under no load and staying there. Restarting Windows will reset the fan, but I'm concerned that there might be some underlying hardware defect.

I bought my U30JC-A1 about a month ago. The problem happened a couple of times the first week I had it. I then updated the drivers and also the BIOS to the latest (210). But the fan issue happened again after a few days. I took it in to where I bought it and they ran a burn-in test but came up with nothing. A couple more weeks passed with no recurrence until yesterday. I've now left my laptop running plugged in so that I can investigate if there is any tool that I can use to diagnose it while the fan is running fast. Any suggestions?

Interestingly, I initially forgot to leave a program running on it, so it went into sleep mode (plugged in), and I thought I had "lost" the symptom, but when I touched the touch pad to wake it up, the fan immediately started running fast again. It seems like I have to actually reboot to reset the fan speed. Now I've left a video running endlessly on it to make sure it won't go into sleep mode, just in case it does cause the symptom to go away.

I just noticed on the ASUS website that there is a system monitor utility for the U30JC, so I'll try that first when I get home, but I don't know what info it will give. Any other suggestions would be much appreciated. Also, any other good forums I can try?

 

Just get rid of power4gear and use windows' battery plan. I get 4-4.5 hours with it and I'm using the 6-cell battery.

 

Yes, but I'm using the eight cell, which should be getting around 7 hours, which is what I need for all the traveling I'm doing next month. ASUS claims 9 hours, and all reviews recorded between 6-7, and that's at 50% or more brightness.

 

... and once again, you should get rid of power4gear. Uninstall it. Use Windows' built in power management and you'll get substantially better battery life. The default "max battery" plan gives me 4.5hrs at 35% brightness or more if I don't browse the web. About 3.5-4.5hrs with the "Balanced" power mode. All this using a 6-cell battery.

Also, make sure you disable the 310M from being used for playing video/webbrowsers/google earth. Integrated graphics run them just fine and use less power.

It doesn't hurt to try and disable some background programs that are of no use to you (especially stuff like Windows indexing service, which constantly works your hard disk). Using the windows classic theme will add a bit of battery life too compared to aero with glass effect, but that will be minor.

Also, how long are you charging the laptop? I think the AC charger it comes with charges too quickly, either that or the laptop incorrectly reports when its been fully recharged, requiring a little more time at 100% to actually get a full charge.

Give it a full discharge over the day then charge it overnight and see if that helps any