W3J Screen not "waking up"...

Hi guys,

I've had my W3J since launch, and I've had some issued before, but they were fixed by Asus, and since it's been running good for about 7 months.

Just 3 days ago I found that the laptop was sorta asleep after leaving it on for the night, so I tried to get it back up, but the screen never turned on (it looked as if it was fully working but only the screen was off). So after trying everything I could think of to get the screen back on I turned it off and restarted (I forced it off by pressing the power button until it turned off). The laptop did not have the battery on, it was plugged to the wall. It rebooted but the screen still did not turn on. I restarted again and it did not turn on. I then put the battery on and unplugged it from the wall, restarted and the screen worked.

This happened again, but now it wouldn't turn on with the battery OR the wall. I inserted a live CD with Knoppix linux on it, and the screen worked (took out the cd before it loaded so I went into windows normally), and then it happened again but after one reboot it worked fine, with the battery on aand plugged to the wall.

When the screen turns on, there is nothing weird with it, it works perfect, and there are no flickers or distorted colors, it's just that it doesn't seem to turn on sometimes.

What do you guys think I can try to trouble shoot this? I really haven't installed any new drivers, and the only software I can think of is Bioshock, winamp, and upgraded stuff like itunes and bit torrent...

Thanks for reading and even more for comments! =)

 

Regardless of whether or not you played with any drivers, I would reinstall with the newest video drivers. See if that changes anything...

~ Brett

 

I agree that it could be the video drivers, however I find it strange that the problem lingers even after the computer has been rebooted (!) Or is it that you see the ASUS splashscreen and the POST listing and everything, and only when it wants to go into Windows the screen turns off?

If: you don't see the ASUS logo, it's something firmware or hardware.
you see the ASUS logo but not the Windows XP logo, it's something wrong with Windows
you see the XP logo but you do not see the logon screen or desktop if you have auto logon, it's video/ACPI/video+ACPI problems.

I would first try to update the video drivers, or revert to the stock drivers if you have updated recently.

If that doesn't do it, perhaps you should consider a BIOS update as well...

 

I've had this problem for a long time, never found a solution though .. It's definitely a software-related issue when going in Stand-by mode, but I can't be anymore precise. I tried a number of ATI/Omega drivers to no avail. So I just disable Stand-by all together. At the moment I'm running the latest ATI drivers and BIOS.

Please post here if you find a solution. Thanks.

Cheers !

 

IIRC this issue is related to post 6.8 version of ATI drivers (PowerPlay function maybe) and W3J's standby feature.

 

Hi guys,

Thanks so much for the responses, this is why I LOVE these forums! =)

I am d/ling the newest omega drivers, so I'll let you know if there are any positive (or negative) results. However, answering E.B.E.'s questions, when the problem occurs (it doesn't happen everytime I reboot) I cannot see even the ASUS splash screen. The laptop acts as if the screen is on (I can hear all the components firing up and see all the light blink normally), but the screen will not turn on as if it was unplugged.

I had already set up the laptop so that it would NEVER go to stand by, and I almost always just hit Fn+F1 to hibernate it when I want to take it somewhere.

I have noticed tho, that power4gear seems to get all screwy from time to time (especially when switching from battery to A/C) and it "forgets" the settings I had chose. Another thing I've noticed is that when I switch from A/C to battery, the laptop sometimes still thinks it's on A/C until I actually go to the control panel to look at the power settings, and then the icon appears showing the power profile for battery and the battery icon shows up on the taskbar.

Hasn't Asus issued a newer bios or fix for this? I can really feel myself get the shivers if I have to deal with this endlessly...

 

it seems your computer has problems with the ACPI. It really seems it's not only drivers if the problems linger after reboot.

I suggest reinstalling or upgrading video and ACPI drivers first.
If that doesn't cut it, try a BIOS update. See the link in my signature to the guide about how to do it.
If that doesn't cut it either... post back.

 

I used to see this before. It was a bizarre problem that got fixed when Asus replaced my video card since it was causing BSOD. However, I found a work-around by experimenting with the S-video cable as the computer started up. Sometimes having the cable plugged in made the screen go on when I could hear the laptop but not see anything happening...

Hope that helps...

~ Brett

 

"I suggest reinstalling or upgrading video and ACPI drivers first.
If that doesn't cut it, try a BIOS update. See the link in my signature to the guide about how to do it.
If that doesn't cut it either... post back."

Well, I upgraded to the latest Omegas, and the laptop seemed to work fine for like a day. Then yesterday I left it on for a bit and it rebooted on its own. When I saw the windows login screen it was with like a 640 resolution, so I logged in and windows started popping up all these messages of finding new hardware and asking if I wanted to install the Ati Omega drivers... WTF!

So I did, rebooted, and everything was back to normal. I started burning a few DVDs with all my stuff just in case the laptop never turns back on, and as I was burning the second one the screen went off! It seemed like it was still burning the disc, so I left it like that hoping to hear the noise of the burning being done, but about 10 mins passed without any change (even on the noise from the DVD drive). So I turned it off and rebooted about 3 times (battery and A/C on, just battery, just A/C) and the screen wouldn't come on. I even tried to put in the linux CD and the S-video cable as suggested, but to no avail.

I'm pretty much certain it must be some weird hardware glitch, which in about a year and a half is a lot (I already sent it to Asus in January/February and they "fixed" it for me under warranty, now I'd have to bite the bullet)....

And I love my w3J too

 

Well, the 640 and finding the video card afresh might have been due to incompatible drivers...

But I agree, I start suspecting hardware, as well...

Does it boot up at all? If you leave it be, does it work the HDD just like Windows was booting? (even if the screen doesn't go on)

Am I to understand you're out of warranty?

 

I can only assume Im out of warranty as I've had the laptop for over a year and I didnt buy an extended warranty. I got my W3J from MilestonePC.

The laptop does turn on sometimes. If it get screwy, I let it be for a while (anywhere from an hour to overnight) and it does work... but so far it's been going off at random (it's not just when Im doing intensive stuff or anything like that).

Now that I think about it, I did reinstall DirectX to play the ET Quake Wars demo or something, so maybe that caused issues?

 

At this point, I would suggest the following.

Use the cleanup guide to clean your laptop of dust. The problem might be GPU heat-related.

Do a clean Windows recovery with stock drivers.

If that doesn't solve the issues, given that warranty is over, you can try taking the notebook apart, removing the GPU heatsink, cleaning it up, and applying a new layer of thermal paste.

If the problem still occurs, maybe you need to RMA and pay for it...

 

Hi guys,

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I went away for 3 weeks (back home to Mexico if you wanna know =) and my lappy is still giving me headaches.

Just earlier I was trying to figure it out when the laptop froze and a blue screen popped up saying that there was a fatal error caused by a driver caught in an infinite loop. The file was ati2evxx.exe, which is running now (as seen in the windows task manager).

Im going to install the newest Omegas that just came out and then see what happens. I'll clean up the laptop to make sure it's not heating (so far it never felt really hot, just normally hot), and report back. Do you guys know what file is that? Is it the Omegas?

Thanks!

 

Yes it's the ATI graphics driver.

Did you check your RAM by any chance? It's not difficult, use memtest86, or Vista has a built-in memory tester. You're at least sure that it's not the RAM if memtest86 passes.

 

its in a comma

 

Huh?
==============

 

this happens to me soemtmies, i move the mouse around a lot and the screen doesnt wke up.


however, when i close my laptop, and open it back up, the screen comes back... and when i say close, i don't mean shutdown.

i mean flip it closed.

 

i had some bsods related to that file, I fixed it from moving from omega back to the stock drivers and havent had that problem since, it might have been just that set, but I know mine works now so I will use the default. what it was was that particular set of omega driver (dont remember the version) was using an older file that didnt handle transparencies properly, so anything using it (windowblinds, games, etc) would eventually crash the comp. hope that bit of info helps.