V6J Problem

My V6J has started to continuously reboot itself. The usual sequence is as follows:

Reboots
Black screen asking if I want Safe mode, etc, to normal restart

Choosing safe mode gives me a blank screen

choosing normal restart gets me to a blue screen wanting to check the disc

After disk checking it reboots to black screen asking me how I want to start

This will usually go on for at least 4 reboots then I get XP to come up with a note telling me that a major memory error has occurred do I want to tell Microsoft

Things go along normal for about 15 minutes then it starts over again, the last time blue screen flashed, couldn't read it, then sequence started again,
only it ended with a screen telling me it was beginning a physical dump and there was a terrible thumping sound which continued until the notebook was physically shutdown.

Have had the notebook since Oct, it just returned from ASUS in CA. I told them the problem but I had tried to do reinstalls and could not get it to reinstall. CA told me they reinstalled XP and there was no other problem.

Sorry this is so long, any ideas?

 

Oh dear. More V6J woes

Which bios version do you have? Check if it is 303
Also, can you try booting into safe mode? Press F8 just after the bios sequence.

 

have you by any chance changed your video drivers or installed any new software?

 

Bios is 303
will not go into safe made

some message came up about truncating when I first tried to start this time, not it's rebooting itself again

 

Have you tried a live CD? Thats the real test to see if it is the software. If it can boot properly on a live CD, then you need to work on your windows install. If thats not the case, then Asus screwed you up.

P.S. - Bender, to add to your woes, Albert has basically said that there isn't a problem, that batteries should do this, and that a year is more than enough life out of a battery (completely ignoring the 6 week issue). He also said that no one else has contacted Asus about this, so it must be isolated. I know that you, EBE, and I all have this problem, and countless others. I'm ready to march over to Taiwan and demand this be fixed.

 

May I recommend a pair of these for your journey.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3816586898193159775

 

They are washing their hands too easily. I've got a couple of dead pixels on my lcd and they are asking me for money to change it while i'm still on warranty. Looks like they've dropped support for the V6J. No more updates since last year while other barebones got theirs. I have to scavenge around to get vista drivers for my V6J Well it might be the first and last ASUS i buy Its a pity though. ASUS is a really good brand but they really have to work on their people issues.

If you hear about a rampage in OZ, you'll know it was me

 

Stay with it. Persistence does pay off.

 

well, isn't the zbd policy only for 30 days?

anyway, it sucks that they aren't fixing this issue for you guys. i am betting that there is a problem with the way that the batteries are being recharged that causes the battery to wear so quickly? maybe you guys could request that your motherboard be replaced?

if you can get albert's email, perhaps it would be a good idea to send him a link to the forum post talking about the problem to show that it isn't an isolated issue...

 

I agree the ZDB is for 30 days, but the lcd is also covered for the whole duration of your warranty if you have a cluster of 3 or more dead pixels together. I have a cluster of about 13 dead pixels on my lcd and still ASUS persist these not dead pixels. Blind SOBs. Oh well...

ejl, i had a friend who had his V6J motherboard replaced twice and still the same battery wear issue. Even the V1J owners experience this issue. The culprit has been identified. Its bad ACPI coding. Either its a conspiracy to get us shell out $$ to buy batteries or the ASUS techies are just plain dumb

 

I have Albert's email address, thats how I communicate with him, and I sent him a link to our battery wear thread, he basically said it was too long for him to sit and read through it.

 

Sign me up!

 

wow....13? that's insane. you should call them and read your warranty directly to them. that sucks.

maybe if the v1j owners get their problem fixed it will fix you guys' problems too? here's hoping...

to caleb:

perhaps you can make a truncated version for him to read using the posts of a variety of different users.

 

I might do that sometime. I sent him an email tonight asking how many people it would take for Asus to consider this a problem. Maybe between NBR and anyone else we can find online, we can make them believe us.

 

i think it would make a statement if you just counted the number of users on that thread. perhaps if you could compile a list of names and maybe even serial numbers so that albert knows that you aren't making it up.

 

We may have to start a new thread and sticky it so that people notice, maybe send out a few emails. I will get started on that tomorrow, tonight is for homework! Thanks for the suggestion.

 

nuff about the rant. Let's help our fellow V6J user =)

mlg, try running memtest86

Read here how to use it: http://www.memtest86.com/

Also, try running the HD diagnostic utility. Go to the HD manufacturer's website and download the utility. If you have seagate, click here and select SeaTools Desktop =)

Caleb, go ahead. I'm following behind

 

Go to system properties>Advanced>Startup and Recovery and click on Settings>"System Failure" uncheck "Automatically Restart", next time the blue screen comes up it'll stays there so you can read what it says on blue screen that'll help us understand problem.

 

Yeah do that. And check the event logs for any errors or warnings. Windows usually log its BSODs there.

 

As to the problem stated in the first post on the thread:

- agreed try first thing booting from Knoppix or SLAX liveCD; google for them they're not far away . If problems do not persist, it's the software/OS/drivers configuration that is the issue.
- it might be memory problems; use memtest86+ to eliminate those, as suggested above;
- it might be HDD problems, if I read you correctly about "truncation"; try running chkdsk /f/x/r on all partitions, see what comes out of that.

As to ASUS refusing there is a problem with the V6J:

That doesn't surprise me, I got the email "ignore" here in the Netherlands as well, after sending several well-argumented, detailed emails with among others links to about 15 posts on the Battery Wear thread, each post of a different person, each talking about the same issue.

I have given up trying to rise awareness of the issue, I don't think ASUS intends to acknowledge or solve it. Instead, I will try to get a different type of notebook. Right now, my ASUS V6J is in RMA a third time with the battery issue. Since they have acknowledged three times that there is an issue with the battery, and have changed battery and motherboard three times (which means I will basically be at the 4th set of battery+motherboard) without solving the issue, I will have quite clear arguments after I get the notebook back from this third RMA that they are incapable of solving the issue.

In addition, I have accumulated during these RMAs 9 weeks of downtime on a 2300 EUR flagship business notebook out of which I am entitled to expect 18 hrs of uptime a day for at least the warranty period of 2 years. That is nearly 20% out of the 50-weeks period of the year since I bought the notebook. Moreover, I have spent close to 2 weeks with trying to debug and possibly solve the problems locally, and with data backups and restores every time I sent it in.

So, yes, I do have a strong case with this issue, and I am going to push it quite strongly. While still hoping that after returning from this 3rd RMA the battery issue will be solved, I do not expect it to be solved. And if it is not, I will request either a complete refund or a replacement with a different type of notebook which is not plagued by these issues, and which comes about or at the same price.

 

Have them give you a VX2 for your woes

 

Update: they changed the adapter this time instead of the battery and motherboard like the other two times.

Oh well, that's a step forward. A futile one however, since I have tested the battery with my M6Ne adapter, which has the same specifications, and it did the same thing...

Supposedly I get the notebook back next week. We shall see...

 

Thanks for all of the info. The notebook started rebooting itself and would not stop, I manually stopped it, restarted and again would not load. Tried the recovery (F9), told it to recover windows partition only, seemed fine, went to bed leaving it in hibernation.

This morning came out of hibernation, continuously rebooting. Tried the F9 again, now it says error #1802, image file is invalid or corrupted.

This was my first Asus, friends told me not to get it, now I know it will be the last, lost work, downtime, etc. You guys have been great. Also starting to have battery issues as well.

 

Hey, now don't get overly dissapointed by our ranting. I still think that the V6J is a great machine, and I love it despite the problems (which would be so easily solvable if someone at ASUS just sat down and searched for the bugs in that BIOS...)

 

Yeah, you'll get used to our rants. We may curse ASUS a lot, but we still like our system even with its flaws. That's what i call tough love

Have you tried the memtest86 and the hard disk diagnostic utility?

 

Still trying to get it to reinstall windows, got error about no image file, then error about no disk selected. It did get really hot; turned it off, will try to reinstall a little later.

Please refresh my memory, how do I do the chkdsk /f/x/r? Sorry, it's been a long day and night, I am an old person.

Thanks again for the suggestions, if I ever get running I'll try the suggestions.

 

chkdsk /f /r is enough

i think you'd better off downloading the hard disk diagnostic utility and launch a full scan. Tell me the make and size of your Hard disk and i'll link you to the utility.

 

In order to run chkdsk you need WinXP... so you can't do it prior to installing. If the HDD utility suggested by Bender can run from a bootable CD, I recommend that instead. Also, do not skip the memtest86 memory test, if it's the memory it can result in random errors like you seem to experience...

Also try the Knoppix test, download Knoppix burn it to a CD and try booting from it, see if you can boot normally. If you do, then the problem is still software (although judging from the symptoms I do not believe that's too likely).

 

ok, I finally got win xp to install, am not downloading any updates, not running any virus, etc, keeping my fingers crossed. will try the recommended suggestions and get back to you.

Again, thank you so much for your help

HD info is HTS541010G9AT00 100.03 GB

 

Okay. Your hard disk is a Hitachi. Download Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test and manual
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/downloads/dft32_v408_b00.iso
http://www.hitachigst.com/downloads/dft32_user_guide.pdf

The iso file is a bootable cd image which you have to burn on a cdrw. Let it do a full scan to test the hard disk.

Then you try the memtest86 to check the memory =)

 

Yeah, I am starting to think this might be a hard drive error if you have had multiple versions of Windows get corrupted.

 

ok, you guys are going to think I am a total idiot, but remember I did say I was old.

Made a bootable cd with the iso image, even remembered to change the bios so would detect the cd first. The screen is

[DR-DOS] A:\> with a flashing cursor, what do I do now?

 

That's a question for BENDER or for the PDF manual
Doesn't the manual say what utility you should run from the DOS prompt in order to check your HDD? It should give that info.

Otherwise, do a DIR and follow your common sense If there are .exe files, usually running them with the /? switch gives some info about what they do.

 

Wasn't this system already at Asus? Didn't you ask me to check on the status of it? If so, I recall Asus' response which was:

"Customer said unit will not start without recovery disk, always get same error regardless of recovery choice. We do an F9 re-install okay, and did not find anything wrong with ODD. Unit will be return to customer today"

If Asus is given a specific problem, it gets a specific solution. I'm not saying you're dumb or anything like that, but when they get the system in and the customer says they can't boot without using the recovery disk, then they get it in and do an automatic recovery off the recovery parition and then find nothing wrong with the optical drive... they return it to the customer as is they were just "stupid". The issue you're explaining now would and should have popped up while they recovered your OS. Something else is going on here and I'm not sure what it is - which isn't good.

 

I sent the above mentioned info in an email to Jon Yen, then also included it on the paper stating the recovery problems.

 

Weird...You should have got something

I can say with 99% certainty that faulty memory is definitely the culprit. Let's test the memory first. Download http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.2.iso.zip, unzip and burn the image to a cd like you did for the HD diag software.

Boot from the memtest86 cd and it should start testing your memory sticks automatically. Let it run for a minimum of 2hrs or 3 passes. In the meanwhile, you might want to read http://www.memtest86.com/

 

Not sure who Jon Yen is, but I certainly know I wouldn't talk to him. I give people on this forum contacts at Asus that I'd trust with my own stuff.... yet no one seems to use them. I'll send an email over to them and let them know they're the idiots. Something isn't right here and if it was an Asus tech that didn't do something, I'll have his ass by the end of the day.

 

Hey Justin I bought a Lenovo T60p and they really ****ed up on turnaround time. It's literally been months and I still don't have a computer. Do you know if there's anything V6j-like that's coming out soon, like an update? Also what about the V2, is there going to be a cheaper non-lambo version of that? I really like the non-ugly hinge that the V6 has and I like the fit and finish. Thanks!

 

Klez, let's keep MLG's thread on topic. I'd be glad to talk to you about it, you know how to get a hold of me.

 

Finally got the hard drive test to work, after I checked the right area the disk burned correctly. E.B.E. I have no common sense. Hard drive test came out "Operation Completed Successfully,
Disposition Code = 0x00" Ran the advanced and quick test.

Have been running the memory test for 3 hrs now, so far it says no errors. Notebook is starting to get hot.

Maybe it is software. Prior to the rebooting the first of the month I had not downloaded anything for 2 months except the windows updates. After getting the notebook back from ASUS I only downloaded Java, iTunes, and AVG. They were loaded for over a week before the problems started again and were some of the first things I loaded in October when I received the notebook new.

I still need to try either knoppic or Slax Live CD.

Any new ideas?

 

I want to say a public thank you to Justin at Proportable. He contacted ASUS and they will be picking up my notebook.

Thank you to all of you who helped with my problems.

 

Don't sweat it, Asus feels bad about it and it'll come back better than ever.

 

That's good to hear Justin =3
Now if we could just get them to iron out that ACPI bug from the bios

 

Bender i somehow don't think they're going to do that

mlg: Glad you're able to get your issue solved.

Just one farfetched idea. One remote possibility due to which the notebook might have worked at ASUS and not at your home would be the quality of the power fed into the notebook. That;s very unlikely though, because for a notebook the adapter should "take all the heat" in that case, but I've seen it happen with desktops - bad power supply resulted in random errors.

 

Plausible theory. Could be a lemon power adapter...

 

I would be surprised, because I would think the battery would iron out those problems.

Speaking of battery problems/solutions: Albert is getting to the point where he says that this is just my problem and that there is nothing that can be done. So, I will keep talking to him until a better solution materializes.

 

I had another (very, very brief) talk today with a service guy at the phone. They realized it wasn't my adapter at fault (see my next-to-last post) so it's back in repairs.

I tried to offer him some info on what I thought was wrong (ie ACPI code) but he cut me short: "I'm sure our service guys will manage it". Well, I'm not sure they will, and that is my issue I am quite aware that he wouldn't know what to do with the info - but he could have written it down for the guys actually trying to fix the notebook. I don't think refusing customer input is a too hot idea, at least not so directly - although I can imagine some of the ideas being quite stupid... But at least now it's clear that all my efforts to communicate with ASUS in this matter are quite futile.

Oh well... then let them bang their heads against it, and change the battery, and then change the motherboard, and when that won't work we'll see what happens.

 

They never learn

 

Three things: (unrelated to any one person)

1. When a customer complains they can't do this or that and preach about being so computer literate that it must be a problem with the system..... When it gets to Asus and they do exactly what they explained to the customer to do - I know it's not mentioned to the customer, but I'm sure they think their an idiot and probably don't go beyond that point because the customer didn't have another stated problem..... and the customer already proved they didn't know what was going on.

2. If a customer simply admits they don't know have a clue what's going on.... they shouldn't assume or pretend and come up with "it must be this or that". They should simply give all the symptoms they've stopped or heard and let Asus take care of it. If you send it in for one problem and then something else is also wrong but it's not found in whatever testing they do for the other issue and it starts up and runs....... they're not mind readers and shouldn't be. It's unlikely and unfortunate, but there are things that could easily be missed and they "fix" the system and test it out and everything is fine.

3. Any customer they whines about lost time and big projects, they're all a real pain in the rear - for Asus, for anyone. A warranty is a warranty, not a guarantee. It's everyone's luck that you'll have a problem with something right before something important is due... we all know that.. No cell coverage when you get lost, a dead battery when you're late for work, a virus when you have a report due. It's life. We've had customers tell us they're sending us a bill for the laptop they had to rent for the time their system was in for service. Now, our service guys are paid to do their job and not pay attention to that stuff, but if it were me or most of you guys/gals.... wouldn't you really want to make sure that system was working right? I mean, really, really test it.... for a long period of time, just to make sure everything was perfect?

 

Not necessarily in answer to ProPortable's message, I want to clarify my position on the ASUS handling of the battery wear issue in my case.

The objective truth is:
1. ASUS is a big multinational company, which, as any company, only cares about its clients as far as they transfer the money to their accounts. This is the reality of economy, I don't argue with that. Warrany specifications adhere completely to this statement - they are only a way to maximize company profits, really, like anything a company does.
2. As a result of 1. above, tech support guys are working 9-to-5; it is not stated in their job description that they should put passion into what they do, or make extra-sure that the client gets a sparkling-running system back They only care (and only should care) about making the problem in the RMA sheet go away, and if some standard amount of testing says that it's gone away, they will send the notebook back.

These things are normal, and understandable.

However, it is also true that:
3. In some cases, such as mine, the items above lead to the system being returned several times with the same malfunction as that with which it has been sent, simply because the malfunction is well-hidden and either (a) the standard testing is too short/limited to discover the malfunction hasn't been fixed, (b) the tech support guys are cutting corners in the standard testing process. I don't say (b) is true, I have no idea whether it is or not, so I'm not making accusations. I'm simply stating facts.

Now, this thing, although it's normal and understandable because it's the result of 2. above, is also unacceptable from the customer's perspective. That is, from my perspective.

That being said, I do not take the luxury of ranting to ASUS in a biased fashion, either by phone or in the RMA sheets, as I did in my posts above. My communications to them are as objective, unbiased, and dry as I can make them, while still being able to convey point 3. above.

Also, I do not think it's a good thing for them to simply label all customers which are calling or submitting RMA sheets as "stupid / computer illiterate", and to (perhaps rudely) ignore their suggestions. That might be understandable and accepted practice in the sense described above - but it's not a good thing to do. Because:

A. The customer simply may not be computer illiterate, and he/she might have a lot of experience with the system -- he's been after all testing the system by running it during every day of using the notebook. Therefore, in some cases at least, the suggestion might be correct and save them a lot of testing work.
B. The customer will feel pi__ed off, as I did, and will rant, as I did, and the company will lose some points in the customer's eyes, which just might lead to a corresponding drop in sales, either because that customer won't buy another company product, or because he will not advise other people to buy a company product.

So, at the very least, I think the guy answering the phone should have politely said that he wrote the suggestion down - even if he hadn't actually done that.