cant go from ac power to battry power?

So much talk going on in our c90 threads that I think a problem question will get lost. So here is the deal.

I cant have my c90 pluged in then pull the power cord out and go from battery. The screen dims and the computer is totally locked. It doesnt shut off but your forced to manually power it down, causing a bad windows shut down error.

I have left it in this state for a good 15 mintues now and it just stays frozen. I originally thought this was just some sort of power managment problem.

Worse yet tho is... well it doesnt seem to run from battery power at all actually. I cant boot into windows without the power cord.

It post, it goes to my boot menu, it will even install windows but soon as it goes to boot into windows (the loading bar) it freezes.

Windows XP you can barly see a dim lit version of the xp logo and it freezes there, on vista it just freezes as a black screen when the loading bar would be comming up.

The computers running, it has power but its not loading or accepting any input.

What in the world can be causing this and how do we fix it. Its doing this for all my windows installs so its not related to just that windows and a software problem. This is definitly hardware/bios related.

 

Is it an isolated issue?

Hmmm, there could be various reasons for that happening, I'd think getting it RMA'ed would be the best option right now.

 

Well Ken from gentech says the reason the computer is crashing in game mode inside windows is from incompatible ram (odd tho why it would run in normal mode just fine usually incompatible means it wont work at all)

So my only guess right now is that if there is indeed some kind of ram issue it runs diffrently when under battery power instead of power from an outlet.

I officaly have a desktop at this point not a notebook since it cant run off battery.

I think what i need is some ram that is known to work to test it out, but I am way out of funds so I cant buy anything. I hate to rma it untill I know whats wrong. Not to mention half of it is my parts, the cpu, the ram, the hdd, taking it apart will be a pain, and all the boxes and things it came in are already trashed because I have no room in my house with 4 kids to keep things :/

Im rather stuck right now.

I think maybe just maybe Ken will have some spare ram laying around he can send me to test, and then I can confirm just how much of these problems is indeed the ram thats my only hope right now

 

Its mostly likely NOT ram at least not in the sense we think. I tried the following already: ddr2-667 512MB, ddr2-667 1GB, ddr2-533 1GB, and my original 1gb and 2gb sticks one by one. It may be a problem with memory but it may be an issue of the bios not recognizing memory correctly. It shows pc2-5300 at pc2-4300 and pc2-4200 as pc2-3200 in bios post screen AND clocks it as such in windows. in other words it doesnt run the ram at the correct speeds NOR recognize it correctly. therefore, I need to know when Ken is going to give us the new bios he has from asus. I also need to know if somehow Alex's c90 somehow shipped with the new bios...ill ask.

 

The C90S runs a 1:1 ratio with the ram because when you turn on overclocking mode it boost the ram speed.

My ram is correctly identified with a program like cpuz, it knows what speed the ram is, and what its timings are, its just being run at a lower speed.

I think your getting confused with what speed the ram is being run at and what its being identified as.

They are not one in the same.

Still tho with that many diffrent ram modules it would be a very very slim chance that all of them would have compatiblity issues that lead to a restart in game mode. Did you try them all and still have that crashing problem?

Please try to get back with me on if you can boot with just the battery and no power cord.

 

Check cpu-z when you overclock, I forgot what tab but it says its running at a diffrent ratio not 1:1.

I am still installing drivers (restaring after each one), I havent forgot to check the battery.

 

I think it was a different ratio, I dont remember if i was on my desktop or the c90 because ive been jumping back and forth. regardless of what it says it still coudl be wrong because of the bios issue.

 

Im really sure mine was still 1:1 almost 100% positive on this one.

maybe because you were using one of your slower rated sodimms so it couldnt use 1:1 without going past its rated speed

 

yeah that may have been it

 

things are more screwy now tho, you have tried several different ram modules and still had the crash issue in game mode. And all fingers point to heat in your case.

I however found in game mode the heat levels were actually LOWER, because the fans run faster. So for me its not a heat issue but probably a bios/memory issue. The only thing that changes in game mode is the cpu speed and the fsb, the fsb also means a ram speed change.

To even further make that point clear, if it was heat, I should get a crash when I overclock the video card, but I dont. I can overclock it and increase the heat and its stable.

So game mode is the issue, and what ever it does to the system, not the heat. Of this I am almost sure.


Now the no battery thing... I have no freakin clue what to base that on, and its by far the biggest problem too. Im running the battery calibration right now, just hopeing it fixes something. The battery is working, other wise the system would die when I remove the power cord, or it wouldnt attempt to boot. For it to freeze like it does again says system problem, probably related to the bios. I think the key here is that trying to boot from the battery it freezes at the point when the bar comes up that shows windows is loading.

What happens in this moment that doesnt happen when you turn the computer on, or go into bios, or run the battery calibration tool???

Is it initating some part of the bios? Somebody who knows more about this kind of thing may have the answer and can lead me in the right direction.

 

It really sounds like a BIOS issue, before Windows boots Turbo Gear is not in use, so it isn't that. And the BIOS handles the powersaving features through the BIOS boot API. so if the only difference is battery or AC, then it must be a power source thing, and if it is a powersource issue before the Windows boot, then it must be the API. Of course it could be something else entirely, but my experience leads me to that.

 

Worse case scenario: out sytems are crashing for different reason.

 

I was thinking that too alex like a faulty power brick or even a faulty power connection ont he back of the laptop...maybe not enough juice to run everything overclocked....

 

I have to stress when it freezes, its instantly when the first windows splash screen comes up and the loading bar is there.

For windows xp you can clearly see the windows xp logo and the little bar at the bottom of the screen that usually moves to show that windows is loading. its on screen about 80% opacity and frozen.

For Vista it freezes in what looks like a total black screen, however if you change the angle and look at the screen from above or something instaed of head on you can see a very faint image of the loading bar and vista logo on screen. Its feezing so fast that the stuff isnt entirly on screen yet and thus at like 5% opacity.

The only thing I havnt tried yet and I have a very strong feeling it wont work, is to go into hybernate while ac power is on, then unplug it and try to wake it back up in battery power.

But if it freezes at windows boot, and freezes just during windows opteration. I already pretty much know that wont work and I dont really want to chance it.

 

well it wont be the power brick, thats for the ac power and it runs fine when plugged in. however what part of the system that is responsible for handling the power when on battery mode that could be messed up and would explane alot. Windows operation requires alot of power, and just as windows starts to load it must initiate the hdd, ram, video card, ect all at once and its too much power draw and causes a system crash.

bios, and the flash screen, the boot menu, and the calibration tool im running now have one thing in common, they dont mess with the HDD.

 

Well what windows is doing at that point is switching from low level processor power running everything to turning on every device in the computer. Now I don't know what the order is, and I don't know if it changed from XP to Vista, but if I had to guess it would be the initialisation of the memory controller and the northbridge. I would venture a guess that Vista would load this earlier so that it could utilise the pre-fetching feature, whereas XP would execute it later, as it was more processor driven, and didn't really need the GPU as Vista does. That is a way out in left field guess though. That is really the little bit of sense I could make out of a crazy situation. it could be RAM and Vista locks up earlier because it is more intense. I dunno...

EDIT: Just realised both of my suggestions point to a RAM problem. could be memory controller, it could be the FSB itself.

 

i think there be gremlins in its lower decks, arg

 

your going too deep on when they freeze alex its pretty simple its instant, just the xp logo is nearly instant while the vista logo fades to the screen.

so there is almost no vista logo/load bar to see.

 

I guess my gremlin theory had to walk the plank....

 

it is the process though. I think it is getting to a specific step and something is messed up and freezes it, puts it in an infinite loop or something.
EDIT: I wish it were gremlins, then we could just do a little bit of genocide and be done with it. You know a Final Solution to the C90 problems.

 

logical seeing as it occurs at the same point everytime. its a good think actually

 

Vicious, im doing updates now. ill test the battery very soon

 

K thanks, I still have.... about an hour and 30 min before i need to do any work

 

Ok, I finished updates, restarted, shutdown, unplugged ac power from back of laptop, put in battery, pressed power (for some reason there was a split second delay from me pressing until it powered on though), and it booted right up. I went in and changed the power settings so that it will stay on until the battery dies. no screen saver, no reduction in brightness, no sleep mode, no turning this or that off after time, no nothing. i set it up so that when the battery goes dead it cuts off. right now it reads 1 hr 13 min at 92% power.

 

sorry for that unfortunate news...but it looks like you have more problems than we though....

 

lol, well bad news for me good news for you.

Now I guess I just need to track down if its a absolute hardware issue that requires a RMA (its looking more like it) or a ram issue.

 

I can see why bad ram would prevent boot up, but I cant see why it would only effect me when i run from battery and not from power cord.

well good night.

 

Can you run memtest to check your ram if there are errors?

Have you checked the event logs if there are any errors?

Have you tried to boot in safe mode?

 

yeah safe mode is a no go, mem test shows no errors.

the event logs dont exsist if you dont even get into windows.

 

Vicious, I am experiencing the same thing. When I boot via command line, the system hangs on crcdisk.sys. There are tons of threads related to this problem, which all seem to point to the sata drive. I am continuing to troubleshoot this myself, but I am getting frustrated seeing as I just got this laptop last night.

By chance did you do anything with the battery calibration?

 

Vicious, right after I posted this, I figured my problem out. I removed the 1gb stick of ram I installed leaving the 512 stick that it came with and it booted fine.

I purchased Patriot ram model PSD21G66782S (1gb PC2 5300 CL5). I will try another stick of ram to see if there is any difference when I get a chance.

Fry's originally gave me an AData 1gb stick, which is on the Asus ram list for this model. I'm kicking myself now being a Patriot fan.

BTW, I am using 5300(667) ram but it is posting as 4300. Any ideas?

 

Im fixed aswell, with a new stick of ram from gentech that is using nanya IC's the OCZ has ICs that I am not familar with, infact I cant even find them when looking them up with the model numbers online.

Im sending the OCZ back to fries for a full refund and getting another stick of ram from gentech to put me up to 3gb.

So problem solved everybody its the ram.

BTW the reason for it is because the c90 uses diffrent "modes" game mode, normal mode, power save mode ect.

My ram worked fine in the normal mode, but would sometimes crash in game mode, and wouldnt run at all in power save mode.

If you pull the ac cord out, it will go to power save mode automaticlly and it would case a lockup.

So the fix is to find a way to disable power save mode, or get ram that is compatible.

Im sure given time new bios will come out to fix this, but for now thats not an option.

 

You need to download BIOS V 502:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=141730

 

Eek, I have patriot waiting to go into mine as well...
*crossing finger for BIOS fix before shipment arrives