v1s issues

So I got my V1s today and everything started out great. I got rid of all the bloatware and installed the latest drivers. But I do have some questions:

1. The HD came in 2 partitions. I tried shrinking the OS volume in the administrator controls, thinking i could add it on to the other partition. But it won't let me extend it, so now I'm left with 3 partitions. It's not major, but is there any way i can combine a raw or formatted volume with another without losing data?

2. The notebook gets very hot on the right side. So much so that it gets uncomfortable to use my external mouse near the vent. The fan never gets very loud, which is both a blessing and a curse. Is there a way to manually turn up the fan speed? What's a recommended program to do so?

3. Vista feels very sluggish. The shortcut buttons on the keyboard to change volume, change splendid setting, brightness, etc... sometimes take a while and many presses to work.

Strangely, the laptop runs Bioshock (full non-demo) on high settings pretty decently, however i had to quit 3dmark06 by the second demo since it was just too slow (<9fps).

4. I noticed that the V1s has a hybrid HD, however I need to enable the nvcache in "group policy controls". I have no idea how to do this or a way to check if it's working.

 

I haven't noticed the notebook getting hot. It seems to me that the cooling system is very effective; it's hot outside the notebook, but the keyboard/chassis seems to keep surprisingly cool even while gaming.

I did notice that my lowest vista experience score was in desktop graphics. It could very well be on Vista if Vista is sluggish; I haven't noticed because it responds quicker than my desktop that runs XP.

 

Wait, are you sure it came with a HHD? I have no heard this. I thought that the only laptop that came with a Zepto...

Are you sure you're not talking about the turbo memory?

 

1, Umm. If you shrunk one partition, you should still have 2 partitions, plus some unused space. You can only add from unused space to existing partition, not from other partition in Vista partitioning tool (which is the only software you can use on Vista partition).

2, Asus engineers are infamous for being left-handed. Actually, component temperatures (that you can see on nTune etc) is more important than temperature of the shell. I believe speedfan can let you control CPU fan, while Rivatuner can let you control GPU fan, but that can be tricky and you may want to wait for BIOS update. You can also ensure your CPU/GPU is running at lower clock when on idle - support of GPU automatic underclocking seem to be depending on hardware vendor, though.

3, Vista is somewhat sluggish, but shouldn't be that slow with C2D+2g ram system. What anti-virus do you use (Norton is known to be the resource hog)? Have you toned down your Vista indexing settings? Oh, and you'll need something more than 8600GT to get stable 2digit FPS in 3Dmark2k6.

4. I have no idea. But Google suggests this may be what you are looking for.
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/9c7ecc7d-8784-4b8d-ba1f-ba1882ba83741033.mspx

BTW, how is the build and LCD of V1s?

 

Stunningly beautiful

 

this is making the wait for my v1s even harder

 

Bad news fellas, it could just be my V1S but be warry of the modular battery labeled V1JP, i installed this on my machine, on wed of this week, but didnt notice the issue until this morning.

My machine will not use the stock battery anymore only the modular, im in the proccess of getting the notebook RMA'd i dont know for sure if it is indeed the modular batterys fault...a faulty stock battery, or just a lemon....

the power wont turn on unless its plugged in or the modular battery is in, so right now i only get an hour and 15 minutes of battery time...sucks because i fly out the week after next and i hope to god i am able to get a replacement...

this good not have been a worse week, 1st my car breaks down on monday, and now my poor v1s is a lemon...

im hoping its just a lemon, and non of you guys suffer from this, if any of you are running a modular battery let me know how goes it? or have any advice for me im here to take it

 

Anyone else notice this problem? Hopefully it was just that notebook, otherwise I think many people are going to be mad.
Tim

 

well I've seen one myself and heard of others talking of similar things. Lady came into the shop two weeks back and was amazed how easily i brought her sleeping beauty back to life. Some people have this problem that their Asus just wont turn on from the battery. usually taking the battery out, waiting a minute , putting the batter back in will amazingly bring it back to life. Just some silly totally RANDOM issue, and doesnt happen all the time.

sorry cant speak for modular batteries though. try the same , or try power the system up with the AC + modular battery. shutdown, start system up with AC + main battery. restart and startup with only main battery.


let us know how you come on?

 

yeah i tried many different combos of ac power and stock battery no module, but to no avail....windows recognizes the battery and says93% charged, the bios does not recognize it though, the calibration utility only shows up in the bios with present batteries, it works for the modular but not the stock...

also after a while the charging LED will start to flash...im guessing this means DEAD BATTERY!!

im gonna try and flash the bios see if that helps...

ive also had problems with improper shut downs, sometimes it will completly shut down from vista, when the screen goes black it still stays on, i have to force power off by pressing the power button...and then when booting back up it says improper shutdown, and asks for if i want to go into safe mode...

i really think i may have a lemon...i am beyond aggrivated right now...2300 bucks later..!!!!!


edit: bios update didnt help at all, battery is still un detected...damn!

i did a search on the forum and this seems to be a really common problem for asus notebooks, if you let the batter go dead, ie from my computer not shutting down completly, it can ruin the cells of the battery...causing it to be worthless...

some people have said that keep plugging it in and out a few times will get it going again, after letting it sit with out the battery for a bit, but i have yet to succeed...

this is really poor on asus's behalf since a few posts ive read on their forums were notebooks from 2 years ago...

 

jourabchid can you check your laptop's battery wear levels? You can use Notebook Hardware Control to check. I am starting to wonder if this is the same problem that was happening here. :/
Tim

 

im guessing this is the app... http://www.pbus-167.com/
i am installing it now...will let you know

i called asus tech support i have to send in the battery to get a replacement...i also emailed excaliberpc to see if they can do anything, but they dont open for a few more hours...

 

says voltage is 16344mV capacity 67830mWh full capacity 73155 mWh

the wear level is 2%

i wish there was a way to jumpstart a battery...so rediculous for this to happen...but i guess its better then the battery blowing up right...

anyone know where i can order extra v1s batteries? it wouldnt hurt to have one u know...

 

I have the modular battery and havent had any issues with it and the 8 cell yet.

 

Strange, those figures actually spell 7.2% battery wear. Why would it report it as 2%? The max capacity looks about right for a 8 or 9-cell main battery; are you sure the wear level reported isn't for the bay battery?

I suggest not ordering an extra battery, if the problem is not with the battery (but e.g., the logic on the mainboard) the money is wasted and possibly you damage the second battery as well.

Just RMA it.

 

There is a safetly mechanism in all Lion batteries to stop them charging if the safety circuit no longer receives power.

 

yeah the modular battery was just a theory, since i posted that befor i did the search, i would say its definatly not that, just a crappy stock battery, i am really pissed about this though, not even one week old...

Matt, im curious to see if your V1S has the funky left click button the keyboard, doesnt make the same sound as the right click and is very touchy as to where you press it

 

Yup! its really annoying me, Ive been cropping images all night and it keeps dropping them because im not forcing the button down hard enough, Its really starting to annoy me.

 

Same here with the button. Will Asus replace the battery for free? They should. Another reason not to buy another battery is that they wear out if they aren't used, and if you get a good replacement It will just be a waste.

 

Wow...sounds like Asus didn't fix the battery wear problem. You definately shouldn't have 2% wear in one week (unless you used the batteries constantly). Matt are you experiencing the same thing? I will test my battery out when it gets here.

Edit: btw try Mobile Meter just to make sure NHC isn't giving the wrong readings.
Tim

 

No reason to worry right now, it might very well be the battery wore down 2% in a week, and settles at this amount and then works properly for 2 years.

 

What really worries me though is the fact that he can't charge his battery to 100%.

Hopefully it is just one faulty battery. You think Asus would be smart enough to fix this problem in before releasing V1s...but you never know.
Tim

 

yeah the guy i talked i could barely understand, but i think he said its free to replace i just pay for shipping out and the turn around is usually one week. he said with in 24 hours i should get an email with the RMA information, i plan on overnighting it tonite because i have a business trip in a lil over a week that i must have battery power on my 5 hour flight or ill be one bored mofo...

what i dont get is if the batter is dead, why wouldnt the charge light constantly flash, instead it stays lit for an hour or so and then it starts to blink....doesnt make sense...

i was thinkin of getting an extra battery anyway so id have it for my flight...but i am not having any luck finding any...

as a heads up guys, when you goto power down make sure your machine turns off, mine hangs ocasionally with a black screen...u have to force power off, im sure this will be fixed with a bios update...

yeah the left click is pretty annoying but mine seems to be getting better as it breaks in...

 

Mobile meter wont instal, Gives an ACPI error

 

same here, NHC is nice software though, didnt even know about it before...

 

After running the battery tests for my review I left it to charge, When I got back both batteries said 100% and charging. I didnt trust this so I checked with NHC and it showed both batteries with idenitcal capacities (~3800mAh) So I took out the 6 cell, Restarted it now shows 90% and charging, In NHC I can see it slowly go up, Now at 91%. Not sure whats causing this.

 

NHC is reporting 6% wear!! I will finish letting it charge and see what happens, This happened once on my sony but a restart fixed it.

 

All "extending" options for any of the volumes are greyed out no matter if I have unallocated, raw, or formatted space. It's not a big deal right now for me though.

I definitely have a hybrid drive. I have a 513mb "disk 1" nvcache under my normal hard drive in disk management. Also, my hd properties in device manager says "this device has 387mb of non volatile cache..." I still can't figure out how to know if it's working.

After downloading rivatuner, ntune, hardware monitor, and speedfan, I know my gpu and cpu are not being underclocked. After running 3dmark, my temps are:
GPU stays consistently around 63-65C
Core 0, core 1: 38-39C
HD: 38C
temp1: 70C !!! <--- speedfan has a flame icon. that can't be good?

I ran a full 3dmark06 at 1280x1024 and got a decent 3071, despite the slideshow.

If all this is normal, then I guess I can be happy. I'm still annoyed by the heat coming out of it. Speedfan won't detect any of my fans. Is there some setting I need to change?
BTW, The LCD is very nice.

Thanks guys.

EDIT: What's the key to access POST and the bios? I can't find it anywhere.

 

F2 goes to bios Tab to access post view

 

Drained my battery to 90% then restarted, Battery wear is up to 8% as shown by NHC and RMClock

 

Vista is really worrying me. Sitting there, doing NOTHING, even with antivirus disabled and indexing disabled, the HD light is going crazy and task manager reports CPU usage jumping between 10-50%.

Then 10 minutes later, everything calms down, my fan speeds up and my temps go down. But then it starts up again. Right now, with only firefox open, my temps are rising about 1 degree every 3 minutes (I do have the notebook raised up on blocks).

I don't understand it. Looking at the reliability monitor in admin control, the programs taking up my hd and cpu are just random vista services like "trusted installer", dwm.exe, mmc.exe, and svhost.

(Now my notebook is calming down again)

 

Which anti-virus are you using, Norton? If it is disabled it should still continue to be a resource hog, try uninstalling it and it should help. Also, clean up some of the bloatware (use the G1S bloatware thread and do a clean-up). that should do the trick

 

As for Anti Virus programs, do uninstall Norton and instead use AVG Free, Avast or Kaspersky.

With regards to the temps slowing creeping upwards, this is normal. Temps can start at something like 48C for the CPU, after regular use it can climb slowly up to the mid 50's depending on usage. So this is normal.

 

Alright i think I solved the problem: Aero-Interface!!!!!
Apparently, aero tries to constantly update it's previews of all your windows (or something like that).
As soon as I disabled "Enable Desktop Composition" in performance options, ALL my problems went away. Now my computer runs cooler, i can play movies full screen (which i couldn't before), and my hd isn't going nuts.

 

I went to PCvillage today and tried out the new V1S. Its extremely beautiful, but there seemed to be some problems:

1. When we turned it off, the power light and the indicator lights (wireless, bluetooth, etc.) were still turned on. The employee had to take out the battery out in order to fully turn it off.

2. After setting it up, we restarted the computer and it approximately took 2 minutes for the V1S to boot up. With 2 gb of ram and 2.2ghz c2duo processor, I expected it to be much quicker than that. My crappy dell laptop boots up faster than that V1S.

To those that have the v1s, do you guys have similar issues or is this just an isolated incident.

 

mine does the not turning off thing every now and then, but only with the stock battery plugged in...when using my modular battery it never happens, im sure this is something that i bios update would fix....

mine has never taking 2 min to boot, 30-45 second average

 

1) He must have put the laptop into sleep mode (or something like that...I don't really understand Vista yet ). Although I have had some trouble shutting down my laptop. I still don't have it set up exactly how I like it so I am saving my judgment until then.

2) Yeah there is a lot of bloatware pre-installed with the V1s. Like I said above, once I get this configured how I will like I will make up my mind about that.

I have a couple of questions myself that I was wondering if you guys had figured out yet.
1) Have you had your screen automatically dim without you telling it to do so? I have had this happen to me a few times while I was on battery, and I was wondering how to make that stop.

2) Do you guys know what Intel Active Management Technology is? And should I enable it?

Thank you,
Tim

 

Didn't put it in sleep mode. Shut it down twice and it still would not turn completely off.

Jourabchid, was the start up time with 30-45seconds with or without the bloatware installed?

 

bloatware is minimal... i unstalled splendid, norton, power4gear power4phone and a few others i dont remember...the comp runs quite smooth...except for the random power turn off issue...

mine was definatly using the shut down comman, i changed all power settings for the power button and start menu to "turn power off"

 

supposedly, an aero feature also slows the laptop down, check post #34

 

yeah i saw that, thats vistas nature it takes a few boots and runs befor it is done running....i always just let it boot and sit there for a while befor i use it for the first couple days befor it really settles down...

 

I don't have a V1S, but I could tell you what I get on my V1Jp:

The P4G profile you use seems to control the fan speed. When I use Quiet Office, the CPU fan won't kick into high-gear until 80C. When I use Super Performance, it kicks in much earlier (~65-70C). The fan is noticeably louder when it's running faster.

Vista is a resource hog. No matter how fast the system you have, it will always seem more sluggish than an XP system.

This is also normal, since 3DMark has always been made to stress the hardware as much as possible. You won't have anything running super-fast unless a) you have a super-high end system of the generation when it was made, or b) you have a system from 3-5 generations later. When I used to build PCs for the computer store, we would run 3DMark 2001SE on basic systems as a basic test and you'd see immediately how fast it ran on systems with integrated graphics that had been made in 2005. Then you run 3DMark 2003 on it and it immediately gets beaten up.

 

http://www.intel.com/technology/manage/iamt/

It's part of vPro, IIRC. Not necessary unless you are a remote admin or from a big enough company that they have their own IT dept.

 

Don't bother. The battery has a 1 yr warranty on it. IIRC, the pricing is about 150$.

I would try to get a modular battery first, though. (edit: oops, I see you already have gotten one... the batteries should be interchangable with V1J and V1S).

 

i know i just dont know how long asus will take on getting me the replacment, and with me going on travel soon, i dont want to be screwed on these long ass flights with only an hour battery, i called asus on friday morning, they said they would email me the RMA info with in 24 hours, and i still havent received anything....

i just want it fixed you know...i also emailed excaliberpc.com but they still havent responded....im just a lil pissed as im sure you guys could feel my pain...

 

Jourabchid, Its the weekend, They wont respond, I emailed them late friday night and got this response

"Hello Matt,

I just read your entire V1S battery Wear Problem thread and I will ask Asus USA to look into this issue as soon as we get back to work on Monday. I'm really sorry to hear about the problem, but let's see what Asus has to say first since this is a known problem from before. Thanks!"

I was extremely happy with that level of service, If you let them know its an urgent matter they might be able to help out, But remember to be nice, Its not their fault you got a crappy battery and they are just trying to help, We see stuff like this at work all the time, And we are more motivated to help friendly happy people than people who ring up and abuse us.

 

oh yes i know, i was extremly nice with them on the phone and as nice as could be in email form. Im just aggrivated...im sure you understand...

 

I'm having a new small issue, sometimes when shutting down the notebook doesn't power all the way down.
The power button and I believe headset button LED light sometimes stay on, and system won't shut all the way off.
I end up having to do a hard reset.
Anyone ell experiencing this? Or have a fix I might be missing?

Also does anyone know what folder Light Scribe is in the recovery CD?

 

The default setting in Vista is to go into Standby when you hit the power button, Could that be the problem?

 

Hmm I don't believe so.
I'm actually hitting shut down.
Also it doesn't allow me to turn it back on, it just sits there with the LCD off and the 2 LED lights on.
Not sure what the issue is.

Edit: Well it's not happening now, and it's only happened a couple of times, so maybe it had something to do with what I was doing at the time.