W3J out of Standby--anyone successful?

I've had my W3J for about a week and a half, almost 2 weeks now. I haven't been able to successfully bring it out of standby once. Hibernation works great. If I'm recording audio through the mic-in line, I need to either set it to the "always on" setting or disable standby altogether. It will go to the "dark screen" state and any combination of key strokes or "fn + key" strokes will not bring it out of that state. I then have to hold the power button in to reset and restart the computer. Then it runs into the situation where the hard disk gets checked for errors, and so on. I can live with hibernation, if I have to, but I'd prefer that the standby also work.

Is this a Windows XP thing, a hardware thing (with the computer itself), or a settings/software thing?

I'd appreciate any insights into this. Or smackdowns for stupidity. Or love letters for bringing this up. Or a cold beer and a pulled-pork sandwich with Georgia mustard on the side.

Man, I want some BBQ.

--KK

 

So that isn't just the notebook turning the monitor off?

Perhaps there's a conflict that gets set up when the actively running recording program gets forcibly shut down into standby while it's busy, and doesn't like it so it takes it's revenge when you try to bring it back

I sometimes get strange things happening if mine goes into standby when it's doing something else, like virus scan, which the system timer doesn't seem to recognize as active and so the time out clock ticks up until it turns off. I have to be sure it's always on or disabled, too.

 

kansa i would search the forums. This has been discussed before with the w3v i believe. THere might be solutions there. alot of times its and OS issue.

 

Hey, thanks SRD and ClearSkies.

I did a search (should have searched more carefully earlier) and found a few threads on the subject. I'm a bit confused, still.

I was able to put it in standby mode sucessfully, though, by going through START --> STANDBY and having it respond like it should.

I mucked around with Power4Gear after I found out that it WOULD go into standby. Maybe that will help.

Thanks for the suggestions. Appreciated.

--kk

 

i would have looked up the stuff for you but im really bussy.

 

As I recall... this used to happen with my Z70VA also. Turns out that I didn't have the wireless console installed. Problem fixed after I did. So for those of you having the standby issue... try installing the wireless console if it's not already.

Here's the link for the W3J wireless console:
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/W3J/W_Console_XP_060426.zip
(link found through Eddie @ Geared2Play)

 

Vista is supposed to fix this. It's primarily a windows issue.

 

No problem, SRD. I thought I was up to date on the ASUS forum, but I think I might have missed the pertinent thread. Still some questions, though.

ledzepp14--I already have the wireless console 2 installed via the factory.

stocat--Is this a known XP issue in and of itself? I'd prefer not to upgrade to Vista if possible, but I'll take a wait and see approach.

I have troubleshot the problem somewhat over the couple of hours or so. I've been able to replicate the problem and it is boiled down to the following. I have set the times as noted in an effort to replicate the problem as quickly as possible.


1 minute) Monitor turns off (no problem bringing it back)

2 minutes) System goes into standby/STR (light pulses appropriately at the power button and at the little “lightbulb” indicator on the lower left hand wrist pad, no problem bringing it back with a single keystroke)

3 minutes) HDD set to turn off (no indicator lights go off, since they all went out with STR except the far left “lightbulb” light that indicates there is power, and it continues to pulse)

5 minutes) System set to enter hibernation. The disk light suddenly shows activity, the wireless light comes on, and the power lights stop pulsing and glow constantly. After a few seconds, the disk light quits showing any substantial activity, and the system fails to respond to any keystrokes. Hibernation, when accessed through the start menu, shouldn’t have the wireless light on at the same time. It should also respond when you push the power button, but nothing happens when you push the power button unless you hold it in for 5 seconds (the “hard reset” and the computer completely shuts down. When it comes back up, often there are problems with my XP user profile in that Power4Gear won’t automatically start (and it won’t start even if you click on it from the start menu) and other little things like shortcuts for network neighborhood suddenly appearing on the desktop and the like. I know when the system is in hibernation it should start back up when you push the power button.

STR by itself (disabling hibernation in XP power management) is fine. Hibernation by itself is fine. I haven’t tried HDD suspension by itself as yet, but I may later tonight. Somehow, when the computer goes into hibernation mode from STR mode (with or without HDD suspend, I’m not sure) the fit hits the shan (W. Macy’s character in Wag The Dog). The wireless indicator light is a little baffling as well.

The built in XP profiles seem to override the Power4Gear profiles (setting the Power4Gear to max battery and the XP setting to always on will result in the laptop never entering the STR mode, etc.). Anyone see a conflict with the XP stuff and the Power4Gear?

It would be nice for the laptop to smoothly go from STR into Hibernate, but if it can’t I’ll take Hibernate. Ideally, troubleshooting this with help from the other W3J (and maybe W3V) owners could benefit the whole ASUS community here at NBR. Has anybody had a similar problem, and if so, would you be interested in coordinating various settings to see if we can get to the root of the problem?

Thanks, y’all.
--KK

 

Hey I have the exact same problem as you. Been kind of busy, but messed with all the power profile setting. Its a pain to have to hard reset out of the screen wont turn on problem. I can turn wireless and bluetooth etc on with the side keys, but nothing will turn the screen back on.

I am really suprised that more ppl havent had problems with this. is it:

a isolate to a few of us
b most ppl arent using p4g and using NHC or something similar?

ive just scrolled back and looked at gear2play's bios update post. I will fiddle with the options and give the bios a go later today. Still appreciate everyones thoughts on this
c every one forgoes hibernating/STR all together?

thanks and appreciate any tips

 

IM not sure but i think eddie said there was a new bios update for the w3j that fixed resuming issues. im not possitive it was that model. But its worth going to the asus site and checking out.

 

After fiddling with these settings quite a bit, Im not getting anywhere.. going to make my first tech support I think.

Since noone else has responded, I must really be the only person with these power management mishaps...boooo

 

No your not the only person. I've been having the same problem. Very annoying - lost a talk I was preparing today about 30 mins before I was supposed to give it! I've tried the BIOS update (to version 207), doesn't seem to help, although I'm not entirely sure that the update worked properly ... I seemed to work fine, but when the machine reset it gave a bad checksum error and said press F5 to reset to factory defaults, which is what I did. When I load up WinFlash, the version number of my BIOS has changed, but the date hasn't ... Anybody know if this is normal?

 

i hit the del\scroll lock key to get back into.
while i have not altered the default hard drive time outs in power4gear
i am running the latest bios.
no problems.
oh and, the obligatory i love my new w3j.

 

KansaKilla:
I've had this laptop on the road now on and off for two months. This laptop does have some SERIOUS power management issues. I have had the SAME issues as YOU. I think it is completely related to POWER4Gear and NOT windblows. In fact, it and another unrelated problem I was having with my network card not recognizing when something was plugged into it was SO MADDENING, that I reinstalled windblows from the recovery disks back to factory and started over. I had given up, but after reading your post, I dug back into the problem I believe I have a solution for you! It worked for ME:

In your Power4Gear Profile for Battery Saving, TURN OFF Hibernation TIME OUT. I believe that Power4Gear cannot handle being in Standby, then trying to turn back on the disk and save to RAM for Hibernation. That's where the problem lies:
Let the computer handle Standby, and you HIBERNATE when you want with FnF1 or the lesser known "Start-Turn OFF-Hold down the left shift key". This causes the Standby prompt to change to HIBERNATE.

DO NOT ALLOW POWER4GEAR TO HIBERNATE. When I did this, everything seems to work perfectly.

To sum it up, here are my profile settings for BATTERY SAVING:
Standby Timout Timer: 5 minutes
Hibernate Timout Timer: NEVER
CPU Performance Level: 25%
Video Panel Light: 13%
Video Off Timer: 1 miinute
Screen Saver: OFF
Hard Drive Timout Timer: 3 minutes

I hope this helps you. Like I said, it works for me. When I want the system to Hibernate I just use the keystroke, otherwise I let it go to standby on it's own.

TeF

Sorry if I have run on sentences, it's 2:30 am.

Sidenote: The network card problem did not fix itself after the reinstall until a month after that just on its own...wierd. I could only use wireless in order to surf the net. Yesterday it magically started working. After using the laptop on the road for the last two months, my impressions are MIXED. Great Screen, Fast Graphics Card and nice keyboard.
However, it's not as "FAST" as I thought it was going to be at multitasking. It just does not seem to be that snappy in the windows environment. I have leaned it out as much as possible too. I'm just not that impressed. It has power management issues, and I gotta tell you, I think it's kind of a brick. The size is right, but it seems to be just a bit on the heavy side. I use a Fujitsu 7110 laptop in the cockpit of the airplane and it runs 4.5 lbs, and man, that 1lb really makes a difference. They are essentially the same size laptops. The Fujitsu's build quality seems to be just a cut above the Asus. The Fujitsu even has a piece of lambskin leather on the bottom where it's hot spot is located. I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but it's just my impression. We'll just have to see how this laptop pans out I suppose. Goodnight.

 

Teflon,

Thanks, man, for the suggestions. I had been disabling the hard disk time out, so that it went from STR to STD. It would always catch when the HDD timer was set to anything other than "never."

The new bios -- I was just motoring along, okay with the thing in it's state, but I wanted everything to work. So I installed the new bios this past weekend, and it didn't help, made it all like it was before. I got the same "checksum error" as noted above, but I don't know that's what did it. The settings in P4G weren't changed, just the bios, and it's acting like it did berore I made those changes with P4G before installing the new bios.

I really love this laptop, but the power settings are a bit frustrating. Right now, I'm trying to cram for the board exam in 11 days (but who's counting, right?) so I can't give it or the forum the attention I want to.

Thanks a ton for looking into it and posting your experiences. Maybe we'll just have to settle for a workaround, but that would be a bit frustrating after the payout.

When you say you "leaned it out" as much as possible, what did you disable or uninstall? Are you using the intel wireless controller or the windows controller? I removed Norton, but Avast is also driving me nuts-- I think it slows the system down.

Thanks,
--KK

 

KK,
I'm not sure you read my post closely enough. You don't have to disable your Hard drive timeout. Just disable the Hibernation and handle that yourself. Standby works great then.

 

That's actually a great way to simplify it.

 

I leaned out my system by first going to MSconfig and stopping all programs that I found "unecessary" for me to run at windows startup. Also, going to the "Startup" folder and stopping all "unecessary" programs from starting there as well. I, of course, uninstalled Norton, but replaced it with Zonealarm Security Suite. That's about a wash.
In MS config I only have the following items starting with windows:
HControl
BatteryLife
SynTpenh
ABLKSR
ZcfgSvc
IfrMewrk
EOUWiz
zlclient

Obviously I chose to keep the Wireless Networking Utility in favor of windows. I'm kinda ambivelant on that one. I've only got 33 processes running after bootup which isn't great, but it's manageable. I think there were 50 something running when I got the laptop! This should make your system fairly snappy. However, as I said before, I was just using my friends Sony SZ160 today and it was loading programs and running multiple programs much quicker than my Asus. That's even with my Asus at "Super Performance." Why? I'm not sure. Maybe SATA? His laptop had a RIDICULOUS number of processes running too! Typical Sony. I know that his won't run a game as fast once it's loaded, but its just something I noticed instantly. As I said before, my feelings on this laptop are "mixed". Hope this helps ya.
TeF

 

The solution to the stanby problem was actually a new bios. I posted the info a few weeks ago. Just a simple bios update that all but i guess the ways above work too

 

Is this issue only witht he first W3Js? Is snyone with the refresh experiencing this? Also Powergear...that link does not work

 

Hey Eddie,

I've tried the new bios, but didn't make any difference. Mind you did have some probs doing the flash (see above).

 

Strange
Didnt have any problems with flash and bios did work for us numerous times. We install new bios for anyone that customized the w3j....

 

Well I don't really know if what I saw was normal or not. WHen I did the flash and restarted the system I got a "CMOS checksum bad press F(can't remember which) to reload factory defaults". Now if I check the version number of the BIOS it has changed to 207, but the date is still 29th May, and it won't let me try again.