Uh oh - W3J heat problems? Now video problems?

Hello,

I used my new Asus for the first time earlier this week with an all-day session with clients. The machine was hooked up to an LCD projector and was running PowerPoint slides all day as well as the occasional video. In mid-afternoon, the notebook suddenly shut down. The underside was very hot, in fact, the table it was sitting on was extremely hot. It started to run again after about 15 minutes and I put 3 coffee dishes underneath to let the notebook breathe. We finished the day OK then. Room temp was 70F and the LCD was at least 2 feet away and blowing air in the opposite direction.

Next morning, my videos stopped working properly with half of the video image distordted and unviewable. The notebook kept freezing and I had to keep on restarting the videos by removing the DVD and returning it.

I have been using notebooks for years and have never had any problems like this, I do about 100 workshops per year and I cannot afford to have an unreliable machine. Before I call Asus, has anyone had this sort of problem? I got the extended warranty, so I guess I will find out how well they can help. Thanks all for your input and suggestions.

 

I haven't heard anything like that. Sounds like you should contact Asus ASAP. With an issue like that, I'm sure they'll be quick to work out the issue and get you computer working properly or get you a new one.

Good luck,
~ Brett

 

Did someone mod this notebook for you? Was this a fairly new purchase? Did anyone go inside the notebook to tinker with it? What is the average cpu temp while the nb is on? Can you install notebook hardware control and get the medium temp?

 

mine gets hot occasionally when left on for very long periods of time (as in the fan stops coming on at 60)..conversely other times the fan still stay on keeping temps at 48..if someone can figure out why it does this i would like to know..why not give users fan control like lg..cmon asus

 

Same problem here, sometimes the system fan doesn't kick in.
I own a w3j now for a month or three and it happened to me three times so far. I use everest to monitor the temps and never leave my w3j alone for to long. I also contacted asus about the problem and they told me to RMA the system. For me it's not an option yet but i definitely will do it later. Reinstalling the system will not solve the problem because the fan is controlled by the bios. Hopefully they will release a new bios version that solves the problem...

cheers,

c

 

You guys ever think that the reason the fan doesnt kick in is becuase you have fan modding and monitoring utils installed?

 

the reason i use this software is because the system run very hot...
and like I (asus) said, the fan is, as is expected, controlled by the bios and not affected by the system software.

 

That is not true. I have seen numerous of times user cause error in fan because of the soft they were using. On this forum it self. I know someone here have seen it. I just cant recall which model and which software.

How hot? 60-70f while idel and up to high 80's when gaming? Thats completely normal. There is no reason to use fan modding software. I am just saying. You and what you installed may be the cause for the problem.

 

yeh i know...

but when my hdd is sudenly running 70c and cpu and gpu 90c when idle... system fan still off.. thats not normal.

 

my "fix" for now

i run udagent something (cancer research) so the fan is always switched on (only when running on the mains)

btw your right about software controlling fans on system... i just remembered that after installing system drivers on a compaq dl360 (yes..i'm a sys admin) all fans suddenly quite down a LOT..

 

If that happen you should restart and remove all traces of whatever fan mod you got there. Although its possible for a bios to slip up and fail to control the fans, it is highly unlikely. I belive the problem you have is with something you installed (like everest)

 

like i said before, i installed this software after the system run very hot the first time. so i pretty sure it's not everest causing the problem
only thing i can think off is removing the hitachi 7k100 hdd and putting back in the original drive... but somehow i cant imagine this is causing the problem (the shop i bought my system also ships it with hitachi 7k100 drives and i called them if this could couse the/any problem). the weird thing is it only happens once a month

btw everest is only capable monitoring temps on my sys.. is doesnt see the fan speed (i wish it did).
btw2 only sys software i installed was hdd tune 2.52. system was pretty clean when it happened the first time. i'll remove that!

 

the drive wouldnt cause it to heat up but an overly hot cpu would cause the drive to heat up some. 70C for a drive? Only in hot weather with 100% load. Otherwise i dont know what you have on your hands. Have you tried reformating? Does the fan problem go away after restart?

 

hdd tune = gone...

and now we wait....

 

hd tune? Thats just a benchmark nothing else. I think

 

it monitors the systemp like everest... and bech indeed
the reason the hdd was 70c was because the fan was off and the cpu heat couldn’t go anywhere and heated up the disk..
the current install is an asus system install.. i still have to get my hands on a regular xppro cd (i used to have one but don't have a clue where it is ) and do a full install by my self

 

Hmm, this is something I'll definitely make a point of keeping an eye on.

I want to be able to monitor my system, without necessarily changing any settings. I always run stock settings for hardware (though i may switch out for Omega drivers), just because I prefer stability.

Eddie, what monitor software do you recommend for seeing temperatures on an Asus W3J?

 

well, i prefer everest because it shows you a lot of info and can show all systemps on the systray (handy to kep an eye on things). it has also a system stress test function.
downside... it not free.
btw it not oc software.
http://www.lavalys.com/

 

yup running everest only here too..its definitnely not that causing the problem

 

I use mobmeter. From what I can tell, it gives decent stats while not actually having an impact on any (maybe a tiny bit of the cpu but that's it).

~ Brett

 

Just a FYI... I ran Everest on my z70va and it would constantly cause my machine to lock up and freeze. Once I uninstalled, all was back to normal. I would follow G2Ps advice and remove all monitoring software and see if the problem(shutdowns and lockups) goes away. It may be hot, but most of these asus's generally run hot compared to previous laptops u may have used.

 

Hello everyone,

I have been on the road for a couple of days and am just now getting back to the forum. Thank you all for your input and suggestions.

I have not made any modifications on the system except for adding an additional 1 Gb of memory, bringing the system up to 2 Gb. I checked with Asus when I bought the machine and they are fine with it and also took the extended warranty package - which in retrospect seems like a good idea.

I am concerned that one of you has reported similar problems.

Aside from some utilities (EZ antivirus, Spybot and Spyware Guard) the only sofware sitting on the system is Office 2003 for Small business and skype. No games, nothing else.

I will monitor the heat as suggested - I assume that I can get this information from one of the Asus utilities that came with the system?

I am planning on contacting Asus at the end of this week, after I have monitored the heat for a couple of days and will run the system with video and LCD projector to try and recreate the problem.

I will let everyone know about what Asus has said so that you will be able to monitor and correct on your end. Thanks again!

Stu

 

OK I have used my W3J at work, ambient temp was 95 deg F! (35 deg C) (yeah it sucked middle of London in summer no air con!)
I had an external monitor running, sorting out a 30+ gb image database, the W3J cranked along pumping heat out the side, it ran slighly hotter than normal @ 60 deg C but it was like this all day, stable no problem.

Did you let your W3J go into hibernation or standby at any time of the day??

OK this has happened to me twice now, but the only time I had a heat problem is if the W3J goes into hibernation (for some reason there was a problem and it did not go into full hibernation) and did not turn completely off but the fans were turned off, I went out to get some lunch, came back half an hour later and opened my W3J expecting it to be in sleep (hibernation), to find an error message saying something about a problem with hibernatin, and the cumputer was still running but the fans were off and the system was HOT, the CPU was at 90 deg C!!!!!, I restarted and the fan kicked in untill it dropped down to 58 deg C (normal).

today I left my W3J for a while, i came back and I must have disrupted it while it went into hibernation, it poped back, and I worked on it for a while longer, it locked up, so I shut it down, upon restart the fan kicked in at full speed, I am assuming similar thing happened there. (had two external drives runing and one was locking up so it could have been the drive, but it was funny that I didnt recall the fanns running before i shutdown, and then when I restarted the fans were running full speed for a bout 2 mins untill it cooled down)

Personally THIS IS MY OWN WILD GUESS but I think that sometimes if there is a software problem as it goes into and out of hibernation it shuts down the heat mangement before it shuts down the system, thus the fan does not run causing an overheat.

Can I just say that I have used this W3J for 2-3 months now it is very stable and runs well under load in high ambient temperatures and I have sent it into and out of hibernation plenty of times with no problem at all, this is an isolated problem that I only see with hibernation, I dont see it as a problem becaue I am aware of it and keep a close eye on my system to make sure when it hibernates, it hibernates fully before I leave it, and if there is a problem, a simple restart resets the system.

Thats my 2 cents

 

If i remember well, the first time i experienced this problem was also with hibernation...

 

Thanks

I will keep my eye on this. I do recall the system not going into hibernation properly during the day (I think that it was before the problem with the heat shutdown). It's too bad that this has happened with this machine, I dont like to think that there is a pattern here.

My second problem with video playback (noted at the very start of this thread) has come back with a vengeance - the audio track starts playing then the video pictures starts about 2 to 5 seconds later. Tonight, while preparing for a workshop, no LCD external projector, just my computer playing the videos on the screen, suddenly this started. The problem is so bad that I will have to rent or borrow another machine until this problem is fixed. Anyone else have this problem?

 

Well that confirms it for me, from all the times it has happenned, which is only twice over the last few momnths, was when it didn't hibernate properly.

For me it is not really a problem because I know what causes it and a simple restart will reset the system, the other thing to do is to disable the hibernate feature within your P4G settings, so then you can be sure it will perform when you need it too. (mind you it is something I see as very important and Asus should really have it operating correctly straight out of the box)

In terms of video playback, what are you using to playback on? WMP Asus DVD? I did have a problem with my Asus playback stalling every 10 seconds, but as soon as I installed a new HDD and wiped the dual partitions and converted to ntfs it has been fine, I can play DVDs AVIs MPEGs through WMP and Asus DVD with no problms at all.

Sometimes you need to check all the playback settings on whatever you are playing it from, but it should be ok.

 

well, hibernate = gone in all p4g settings for now (don't like hiberation anyway). hopefully this will solve this rare problem. if it hapens again i'll let it know.

cheers

c

 

Well, so much for the hibernation.
today, after walking the dog, my lappy was running hot again. first thing i noticed was the sound wasn't working and there was an error message with "not enough system resources" after a reboot everything was fine again.
But again after leaving it alone for a while the “fan not kicking in” issue again, really weird…

 

There were 3 things i adviced everyone who had standby issues. They always worked one was to format and reinstall to a single partition.
Here they are
1. Update bios
2. Reinstall using the factory provide restore cd to the whole disk instead of using 2 partitions.
3. In power options in control panel uncheck the checkbox that says prompt for password on resume.
Now your problem is clearly with hibernate not with standby. Can you confirm that this was the case with the system out of the box or after some use?

 

I am just wondering why you wont give #2 a try. Seems like you are spending alot of time on what seems to be a soft conflict

 

Actually the onl time I had a problem with the sound is when I was booting up one day I tried to use the Fn + mute to kill the sound whie the laptop was still booting up, and then the sound didnt work, simple reboot and it was fine.

I would have to agree with G2P, my hibernation/shutdown problems were fixed when I installed my new drive with a single partition.

Even though you disabled hibernation, I could see the same problem happening with the standby (as the laptop is entering and resuming from a sleep mode).

if you do what G2P suggests you will find that your suspend and hibernation will work much more reliably, my W3J suspends and hibernates probably a dozen times a day, and the heating problem has only happened once in the last 2 months, obviuosly a software glitch, maybe someting is still running that stops the laptop from completing a suspend or hibernation action?

Just make sure that if you are going to leave the laptop push Fn+F1 and watch the laptop fully hibernate before you walk off.

 

Actually, i did reinstalled the system... i also upgraded the drive. It was asus support that told me reinstalling does not solve the issue. According to them software has no influence on the system fan.

I’m planning to reinstall the system anyway, but I’ll do my own install, not the asus install. Only thing is that I need to find my xp pro cd don’t have a clue where I left it. But since I’m in the middle moving to my new apartment I guess it will pop up anytime soon.

 

Try not to listend to everything they tell you. There is a reason why i say this. Dont want to bash anyone but do take my word for it.

 

I know you are very right about that

i used to work on a gateway helpdesk (quite a while agao), and some people didn't know sh#@! about computers...

 

and remember if you reinstall, try reinstalling using one single partition not two partitions.

worked for me

 

Well, I have contacted Asus this evening to try and find out what can be done about the heat issue (left a message and will call tomorrow). I cannot afford to have a "hibernation / fan problem", stability is really important as I use the laptop in work sessions that last 8 - 9 hours, sometimes for 3 days.

After reading what Culture said happened after heading for a walk, this is exactly the scenario I want to avoid (after coming back from lunch for example). I am going to update my bios also as several of you have suggested and will backup my data on the drive and do a clean install and go with 1 partition - this seemed to work for at least a couple of W3J owners.

Video playback is very unstable and I found the following article that may help:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27

When the video problems started, I was using both the screen on the laptop and the LCD projector. All ATI says is that they are looking into it - what driver version is everyone else using? The Asus support site still has the version that came with my system

I will let everyone know what Asus says.

 

Oops - link does not work. Here is the article in question:
737-22836: Switching display while running a full screen D3D application results in corruption with mobile products
The information in this article applies to the following configuration(s):
Full Screen D3D Applications with secondary monitor
Catalyst® Mobility Display Driver 6.7
Mobility Radeon X1800
Mobility Radeon X1600
Mobility Radeon X1400
Mobility Radeon X1300
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition
If the user is running a D3D application full screen with two monitors, using a hotkey to switch monitors may result in display corruption.

ATI Engineering has been advised of this issue and is investigating. Any updates will be published when they become available.

 

Nice one, I would be interested to see what they have to say BTW I had a small playback prublem with the Asus DVD it paused for a split second every 10 seconds, dam annoying, but that was gone after i reinstalled to a single partition has been fine ever since.

once again what are you playing video on? windows media player?

In regards to drivers I am using ATI tool 0.25 Beta 10, omega 3.8.252 drivers

Let us know what they have to say

 

that sound like lasting damage, is the coruption temporary?

 

Corruption continues until system shutdown and rebooted. Does not seem to have affected either the Asus screen or the LCD.

 

Turns out that the video problem was based on directX which had become corrupted. After I refomratted and reinstalled everything onto 1 partition and then converted to NTFS, the video problems disappeared.

Even with the ATI mobility card in this machine, I still need to "dumb down" the settings in troubleshooter so that I can play videos on my screen and on the LCD projector - while using presentation software.

There certainly seems to be a problem with hibernation and system overheating - as several of you have noted with Power4.

While delivering a workshop today, the system suddenly flashed the blue screen of death, crashed and rebooted itself - we had to take a break in the presentation to deal with this. This occured when, yup, I alt tabbed to go from a presentation to an online web site (using firefox)... while running two monitors - just like the problem stated in the ATI bulletin that I posted a few days ago in an earlier message. Anybody else have this problem?

The Asus support was actually OK - someone hung up on me when my call was forwarded out of the queu to a tech. I called back, got a tech right away and was told that the best way to reformat and reinstall was to hit the F9 key during bootup. This worked very well.

Hope this helps whoever is faced with a similar situation.

 

you should download the catalyst 6.8 drivers, use this direct link: http://www.ati.com/online/mobilecatalyst/.

id also like to point out that the heating/fan issue happened to me 2. and it didnt invlolve hibernation, but standby instead. asus should really fix all these little bugs. they get really annoying. and for the record, im running on a single partition ntfs.

 

Hi all,

well, laptop is working fine now, reinstalling didn’t solve the problem, new bios neither, but this is what did the trick:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909095

I believe issues concerning this patch are already discussed in other threads. But my advice to those with weird heath issues… install the bloody patch!!!!!

Cheers

c.

 

You legend, thats great, maybe I should have just googled it myself ha ha

 

Will this fix fix the issue related to the catalyst driver?

 

No its a problem with how windows hibernates, details from Microsoft web site

To prepare the computer to hibernate, the Windows kernel power manager requires a block of contiguous memory. The size of this contiguous memory is proportional to the number of physical memory regions that the computer is using. A computer that uses lots of RAM is likely to use more physical memory regions when the computer prepares to hibernate. Therefore, a larger amount of contiguous memory is required to prepare the computer to hibernate.

This is a windows problem, nothing to do with GPU

 

Go to Microsoft page download SP2 upgrade and the problem is gone!
I had this problem and the upgrade helped me

 

Well, good morning lads!

I think it was time for another real Asus W3J owner to participate in this thread's discussion!

First of all, I have to sadly admit that I cannot really understand this thread existence in one sense, simply because it's only natural for Asus W3J to do these things!!!

Overheating is the first one, breaking down is the second!

True advice to all professionals: as Asus had hinted in the past but none of US noticed carefully enough this is a GAMER'S laptop not a laptop for professionals. -- So, I have been wondering whether it was also partly my fault purchasing an extremely expensive laptop which it is broadly advertised for games (but not for WORK).

P.S. I have great difficulty in coming to terms with some people's persistence on software issues. O.K. lads, things are simple....There are software problems and there are hardware problems (although I am not an official expert guy I can easily discern which is the bush and which is the tree). So, problems are not always software ones right? Bad manufucture underneath super-stylish designs and overheating cause hardware problems, alright folks!?! So can you please stop preaching about software and start preaching about hardware!?! that will surely be an improvement!


Asus W3J overheats and this damages first the motherboard and the battery. Period! --- You can change programmes, utilities, drivers or...lighters, but the only thing it can cool Asus W3J (for all objective posters please note I am explicitly referring to Asus W3J solely and not to any previous W3 series, ) is either moving to Alaska or buying an extremely well built aluminium laptop base (the second solution will make Asus W3J live longer, but please,please do not expect any miracles!)

P.S.2 Second advice to professionals and myself as well: instead of buying one very expensive laptop what about buying two average laptops (one extremely useful for the months it might take to Asus or any other company fix your laptop!) Alternatively, let's move back to the safe desktop era!!!

 

Gaming means extensive heat production, so saying that laptop is a gaming one and it's overheats (i.e., not merely runs hot) is somewhat....

I'm real owner of W3J too...

 

Dear LucasD,

This is an extremely fair point you make........but having heard so many dubious comments so far, I had to make this straight..... Actually, this was exactly what i thought when I first bought my Asus W3J, namely that if it's good for games it cannot be but good for work!!!

However, please note that playing games with the laptop (ONE could argue) implicitly means playing games for a couple hours per day and not for the whole day (otherwise why you not use a better desktop right???) ---- Certainly, I do not agree with the aforementioned inference but still one could cogently endorse this position.


P.S. Having got too many bad points lately just for telling the truth about Asus W3J, Asus after-sales service and Asus V.I.P. membership (alas, a wonderful thread that just closed!), I would dearly aPPRECIATE IF ALL objective posters , i.e. not resellers, could consider giving me some points of merit for wasting my time and advocating the truth so that customers are well aware of these "minor details" before investing their money.