W5A Questions...

It's been a while since I've checked the forums, basically since I first got my W5A which is a great notebook for sure, gotten a lotta good comments about it

Here's question 1:
Recently my asus icons all disappeared from the right corner in the taskbar. i dunno why it would suddenly do that, but now that they're gone i realize how important they were too me haha.

The ones that disappeared include the battery icon, the wireless console icon, bluetooth, power4gear, and asus liveupdate (which isn't too important). Any idea how to get em back?

Question 2:
If I'm upgrading the bios could i just skip all the other ones and just upgrade to the latest one? Drivers also?

Question 3:
I've been webcamming and taking pictures of powerpoint slides quite a bit this semester with the built-in cam.. i was wondering is there any way to shut off the blue camera led. it's such a pain in the eyes when i'm typing and this blue light is shining in my eyes.


Hope you guys can help me out! Thanks in advance guys!!

 

hmmm... I can't answer #s 1 or 3, but for #2, yes, you can (and should!) just update to the latest BIOS and drivers. You don't have to go through them in succession.

 

1) That is an odd thing to be happening... sounds like Windows is screwing up a bit (or something has screwed up Windows).

2) Yes. All latest BIOS releases contain all of the fixes from previous BIOSes (they're cumulative)...so you'll be getting all of the most updated fixes with the newest BIOS.

3) Not so sure about this...

Do you by any chance go to UBC? I've seen a few W5A's around campus lately.

 

... to answer #1.. are they gone or hidden? Is there an arrow to the left? Windows hides icons of programs that aren't used often so that you don't see them... a lot of smart people miss that... but you've probably checked that.

#3... I believe there is an option somewhere to shut it off....... obviously it's there so that you know when it's on and don't sit infront of your computer naked and not realize people are watching you..... look around...

 

1) yeah haha i checked that it's not just "hidden" because it's not inactive.. usually i could go to like the battery settings or whatever and untick the button to show the icon reboot and check it again and it'll be there.. but not this time

2) Thanks to everyone for answering so quickly for this question!

3) I hope an option for this does show up eventually. it's driving me insane! i might even just pop it out manually!!


AuroraS: I go to SFU actually.. only seen one other person with the W5A.. white one also!

 

The icons disappearing is a weird thing that happens to me sometimes as well. Just log out then log back in and you'll be fine.

If it keeps happening try reinstalling everything, but first uninstall everything, including device drivers.

It's a really annoying software conflict.

Hope that helps,

Cheers,
Mike

 

Alright so after updating all this and that the icons came back!! However I ran into more problems...

Firstly.. The shutting down time and booting time and restarting times are ridiculous.. it may take like a good 6-7 mins to restart.. 5 to actually shut down and another 1 or 2 to boot up

So I found this site to possible make my W5A faster.. i did most of the things on that page except the prefetch stuff and anything that requires me to touch the registry.. still with no luck
http://www.activehowto.com/how-to/4/11/414.htm

Secondly my sound is out of wack now.. the system and windows sounds would play... and winamp plays as well.. but i don't get any sound from wmp or any other videos.. furthermore when i double click the sound icon on the taskbar i would get "there are no active mixer devices available.."

and third.. after windows is loaded a "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services" always crashes on startup..

anyone can help me out here please?! thanks!