Official MSI GE60 & GE70 2012 Owners' Lounge

Like I had not enough troubles with removing dust every day from my table in fair of sucking dust in my laptop through notebook cooler...

I like this model but there are 2 thing I don't get:
1. Why to make glossy finish??? If you know that glossy is wrong as you make matte screen then why do you make a mistake with case???
2. Why no backlit keyboard??? Do they think that gamers don't game at night???

P.S. Yeah, I found it on xoticPC and price starts from 70$ for a skin... I will better buy carbon fiber on eBay like this SAMPLE 1" x 8" BLACK CARBON FIBER Vinyl Sticker Wrap w/ Air Bubble Release Decal | eBay and will cut it myself.

 

marketing strategy my friend. of course if they put everything good in a 1200$ laptop then there will not be a need to go for the higher end/model(1500$)laptop which in this case is the gt60.

I cant complain even with this problem because its a minor flaw and the ge60s pros DEFINITELY outweighs its cons.

 

Any way to disable the blue LEDs in the front? I find them very annoying.

 

I don't think it's possible. You could just stick some tape over them is it really annoys you, but personally I hardly see them at all from the angle I'm using the laptop at.

 

After having my ge60 for rougly 15days now, I noticed my alt having a spot on it. This is because of my constant use of this button in dota2(inventory). I just have to say wow... it wears out fast. I thought it was just dirt at first and tried wiping it down with a towel and then with a wet towel and still it wont come off. any ideas on how to remove this?is this normal? and this did this happen to your ge60/ge70?....

 

Does anyone have a color calibration profile for this screen?

 

I have received my GE60 yesterday, and I am very happy with it, installed the msata Crucial 256 gb SSD, and did clone the hard disk to the SSD with Reflect, Now I am using the SSD for OS and HDD for documents, installed new nvidia drivers from their website, and played CoD Black ops and MW3 on high, every thing is fine, I had a Clevo W860CU with I7 740 and HD5870 before and I prefer the MSI a lot.

 

Yeah same thing with my S key...

oh well... its not like i like that terrible keyboard...

 

Oh its sad... I did not want to get an external keyboard to use for gaming because this keyboard is considered a "gaming keyboard" already.... This means i have to go get an external keyboard soon. oh well...

 

Oh God after wiping/cleaning/removing the dust from the laptop down with a tissue paper look what happend


The icon for the trackpad came off/ vanished. Wow just wow

 

Lol . Anyway, I have those fingerprint-like marks as well on a few keys, but they're much less visible than on yours (only in sunlight or when leaning close). I've had the laptop for about 2 months now and I used it quite a lot though.. it might be a difference is our gaming style or something, but yes, the keyboard does start to wear out quite fast.
(Also 400th post )

 

Any solution for this? like a silicon covering for the keyboard? Kinda sad that this is happening to the ge60 but its small things like this that makes or breaks a good laptop imo.

 

(Im using the on-screen keyboard for this.)

Lately theres something definitely wrong with my keyboard. some keys wont respond at all (the d key, the shift key, both my control keys, close bracket, print screen, the main enter key, the backspace and i think the semi-colons.

Any way to resolve this??? it just happened out of nowhere. It was working just fine for a few mins then this.

I dont know if it helps but i guess its worth noting that I cleaned my keys with a cotton and some alcohol and i think i may have overapplied the alcohol just a little. it didnt cause any problems before though - just now.

 

I don't think the alcohol would wreck the keyboard, though seeing the numerous different issues with it, it is clear is that it's quality leaves a lot to be desired.. (even though I like the feel of it)

 

Don't know if I should feel better or worse:

Most of my keys "work" now - everything but the " ' " key and the left arrow key's working BUT:
some buttons double-press (i press "M", it will read as "mx" and same goes with "X", also with "S" and "5", H & T, etc so on so forth. Only a few keys are affected though and they're patterned that way.

Going to leave the laptop overnight hopefully it's really just alcohol residue and will just go away (hopefully) Otherwise going to bring it to a repair shop and have it checked :|

 

do you have a barebones? if you do have the ge60, why not have it checked out over at a msi branch or service center?

Does anybody know how to remove the keyboard? I plan to clean everything atleast once a month just so that i will have a peace of mind that everything is clean.

On a side note i suddenly hear my HD spinning and kind of a soft creak like sound. is this normal? or is something wrong with the hd? is it possible that it is because its made of plastic/thin walls that is why I hear it?

 

I got mine from newegg. I don't think there's a service center in the Philippines anyway (unless you can recommend one )

 

oh wow you are also from ph?

MSI Global - Global Warranty Service for the Notebook

Philippine
Address:173 EDSA CSP Building, Mandaluyong City Philippine
TEL:+632-721-1981
FAX:+632-727-9649

 

Alright I'll give them a call thank you!

 

Hello everyone,
i not too long ago purchased the msi ge60 with 4gb memory. also i bought an additional 4gb to upgrade its performance. the problem i encountered is that although i unscrew it i am unable to remove the back of the laptop. i do not know if something is stuck but it seems to me that i have to use a lot of pressure to open it and i am afraid to break something. Has anyone had the same problem? issues with opening the laptop? pls help

 

A bottom panel will not just fall off if you simply unscrew it. Gently pry it up. There are some clips on the panel that help keep it in place and guide it when you replace it.

 

If I buy GE70 I will buy it without HDD and will need to update RAM maybe. I saw a warranty stick in the xoticpc review and it is impossible to open middle bottom cover without breaking warranty stick.

Is it possible to unscrew whole bottom part to exchange everything without breaking stick?

 

hey guys! After reading the entire thread AND the optimization thread, I just received my new GE60 and it came with a few surprises:

it's an i7 3630 (woo upgrade!) and it has the e2200 killer LAN (but centrino n-135 wifi).

I upgraded the ram from 2x4gb Elixir to 2x8gb G.Skill 1.5v. I also swapped the 750gb wd scorpio for a 256gb m4 crucial ssd. I initially wanted both the mSATA and the scorpio but I ordered the "wrong" SSD and to make a long story short, my brother will receive a 750gb scorpio for his birthday in a month.

Questions:
1- is it worth it to repaste using Phobya HeGrease ( EVGA Frostbite, Phobya HeGrease, and TIM Consultants Quantum Review | Skinnee Labs) for the gpu+cpu?
2- would you add a 256gb mSATA drive (bringing it to 512gb ssd)?
3- would you swap the n-135 for a killer 1103 or 1202? Considering I've recently bought a recertified E4200, I could either upgrade that too or forget the whole deal until 802.11ac

Much appreciated!

 

Breaking the warranty sticker will not void your warranty. And quite often the sticker is sitting on top of the last screw you need to remove to take off the panel anyways.

 

3) depends on you. I have the killer and i love the software and noticed a 20-35(conservatively speaking) decrease in ping so i guess its ok. obviously if you play wirelessly then get it.

Did anybody go for the free w8 upgrade? I kinda want to do cause its free but any reasons why i shouldnt? thanks

 

INSTALLING MSATA ON GE60-OND285UK AND MIGRATING OS

***************************************************
TLDR: Long post below didn't work when I reach Part 6.

If you want to install a mSATA card as boot drive AND keep your original hard drive and its factory restore partition, you NEED to clean install Windows 7 on the mSATA. Attempting to clone the hard drive system image to the mSATA using system recovery will not work due to disk signature collision.

If you don't mind reformatting your original hard drive after cloning its image to your mSATA card, follow Part 1 to 5 below. Once you successfully boot from your mSATA (without the hard drive connected), use these steps to change the disk signature of your hard drive so it no longer collides:
- Warning: This will remove your F3 factory restore
- Connect the hard drive.
- Boot into system recovery using repair DVD
- Go to command prompt
- Type 'diskpart' to launch the disk partition utility
- Type 'list disk' to list the disks. Note the id of the hard drive.
- Type 'select disk #', where # is the id of the hard drive. BE SURE!
- Type 'uniqueid disk=A9A6D7A3' to change the disk signature of the hard drive to A9A6D7A3. I think this new id can be any hex number as long as it doesn't collide with your other disks.
- Your hard drive will not boot up now.
- Boot into Windows from your mSATA. You should not have disk signature collision now and you should go into Disk Manager to repartition and reformat your hard drive as a data drive.

***************************************************

Hi all,

Just got my GE60 this morning and after 8hrs of frustrating trial and error, I finally managed to move my OS to my mSATA ssd card! I swear I must have hit every single pitfall along the way so I'm gonna share them here to save people some pain.

First up, the GE60 does contain an empty mSATA slot and you can buy a 256GB one for about 125 pounds in the UK. Mine is a Crucial M4 256GB mSATA card.

DO NOT GET A SSD DRIVE! IT IS NOT THE SAME AS A mSATA CARD!

Next, the instructions here are for:
- adding a mSATA card (ssd) to work together with the existing hard drive
- migrating the OS on the hard drive to the mSATA card so you can boot from it

You really want to boot from the mSATA card because my load time into the welcome screen is now only 4 secs!

What you need:
- mSATA card (as large a capacity as you can afford)
- 1 M2x3mm screw to secure the card to the motherboard
- External hard drive with at least 50 GB for storing the system image
- 1 blank DVD for the Windows repair disc
- Screw driver

Part 1: Installing the mSATA card

- Open back panel with screwdriver - you will need to break the warranty seal.
- The mSATA slot has a huge 'SSD' label beside it on the motherboard.
- Slot the mSATA card into the slot and screw it down securely with the M2x3mm screw

Part 2: Booting up and Preparing Hard Drive for Backup

- The BIOS automatically detects the mSATA card as another disk
- You can press F11 to select the disk to boot from, but for now, it should boot up from the hard drive automatically anyway
- Go through the usual Windows setting up procedure if this is the first time you boot up
- Once on the desktop, go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Disk Management

Here's the tricky part. YOU MUST SHRINK YOUR HARD DRIVE SO THAT EVERYTHING CAN FIT ON THE MSATA CARD!

- If you are not doing this on a new machine, make sure you backup important data to the external hard drive before continuing!
- You should see 4 partitions on your hard drive. C:, D:, a system partition (100mb) and your Factory Restore partition (13GB)
- Remove D: volume and delete the partition. It should show up as 'unallocated' if you have done this correctly in Disk Manager
- DO NOT REMOVE ANY PARTITION BUT D: Data
- Now shrink C: down (right click -> shrink volume) so that the total size of the remaining 3 partitions is smaller than the size of your mSATA card

REASON: Windows Recovery DOES NOT allow you to restore a system image created from a larger disk onto a smaller disk.

YOU MUST MAKE SURE THAT THE MSATA CAPACITY IS LARGER THAN ALL PARTITIONS ON THE HARD DRIVE!

You are now ready to start creating a system image or backup.


Part 3: Create system image and system repair dvd disc

- Go to Control Panel -> System Restore -> Backup
- You can choose to either create a system image or do a backup. Difference is that a backup will backup user files in addition to the system image.
- Plug in the external drive and create the image/backup on the external drive
- When the process is done, you should have the image in the root folder of the external drive.

DO NOT MOVE THE IMAGE FILES OR SYSTEM RECOVERY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DETECT IT!

CREATE A SYSTEM REPAIR DISC USING THE BLANK DVD. YOU WILL NEED TO BOOT FROM THIS LATER.


Part 4: Remove hard drive

Shut down.

YOU MUST NOW REMOVE THE HARD DRIVE FROM THE MOTHERBOARD.

SYSTEM RECOVERY WILL NOT LET YOU CLONE THE IMAGE ONTO THE MSATA CARD AS LONG AS THAT HARD DRIVE IS CONNECTED.

- this has to do with disk signatures. the system image is created with the disk signature of your hard drive and System Recovery will ALWAYS restore to the disk with a matching signature if it can find it
- the only way to force it to restore to another disk is to disconnect the original disk
- the hard drive is mount on a tray, which is mounted onto the casing brackets by 2 black screws. you only have to unscrew the black screws and slot the hard drive (together with tray) out gently from its motherboard socket


Part 5: Restore system image to mSATA card

- You should now only have the mSATA card installed (no hard drive). Close the back panel.
- Connect the external hard drive to a USB 2.0 SOCKET
- There are 2 USB2 and 2 USB3 sockets. Check the manual to figure out which one is USB2.

WARNING: USB 3.0 DOES NOT WORK BECAUSE SYSTEM RECOVERY DOES NOT CONTAIN DRIVERS FOR IT. IF YOU CONNECT TO USB 3.0, SYSTEM RECOVERY WILL NOT DETECT YOUR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE.

- Boot up and press F11
- Insert the System Repair Disc into the DVD drive and choose to boot from the DVD
- You should load into System Recovery mode
- Choose Restore from a System Image
- If you have done your backup correctly, System Recovery should detect the image on your external drive. If not, check your USB port to make sure it is USB 2.
- Also note that the option to format and partition C: (now your mSATA card) is checked and grayed out
- Start the restore process
- If you are successful, System Recovery will start cloning the 3 partitions in the image onto the mSATA card
- If not, you will get an error. You probably did not follow instructions in PART 2 correctly.

If successful with the OS migration, reboot, press F11 and boot from the mSATA. Eject the Repair DVD disc.

REJOICE AT YOUR BOOT UP TIME!


PART 6: Tidying up

**** this section removed because I ran into unrecoverable problems ****

Please see TLDR above and my subsequent postings.

 

Ok, it seems that I rejoiced too early

Please ignore PART 6 of my previous post.

After I connect my hard drive back to my computer, I am getting a disk signature collision.

I cannot boot from my mSATA if my hard drive is installed - I get a blue screen.

If I boot from my hard drive, I can get into Windows, but my mSATA is offline because of disk signature collision.

Apparently, the image restore cloned the disk signature onto the mSATA as well... shucks.

Also, factory restore (F3) doesn't work with the mSATA - complains about not finding the BOOTMGR.

I can't think of a way that they can both coexist, since I believe changing the disk signature of either would make it non-bootable. Also, changing the hard drive signature will most probably break factory restore, which i really want to keep.

Perhaps the only solution is to reinstall windows on the mSATA and not try to clone the hard drive image....

 

Factory restore is nice and handy, but I would generally recommend a clean install of windows on any new performance laptop, to keep it as a slim, lean, and high performing as possible. Also you can tweak it from the ground up to work best on the mSATA SSD.

 

Wouldnt be easier to just ghost one partition to the other? than change the boot sequence to SDD only...

What about TRIM and all those optimization... does it detect it automatically? too bad newegg canada doesnt have nice 128 or 256gig msata ssd...

 

Had to use the diskpart command to change the disk signature of the mSATA to another id before doing a clean install of Windows from DVD over it. No longer getting collisions now.

I can now boot from both the mSATA and the hard drive. Used Disk Manager to unmount the OS install drive of the opposing config and vice versa, so I don't accidentally write to the other config.

Will use the mSATA boot as my main config and the hard drive boot as a backup. They both share D: now but my hard drive config will never install anything on D:, to avoid program collisions.

Boot time from mSATA increased quite a lot after installing all those windows updates Around 10 sec now.

Attached a picture of my current disk partitions.

 

@panache76 That was the longest and most complicated way to screw up everything and get nothing.

Maybe you just edit and delete whole your post if you understood all that was useless and you used clean install?

 

Hey guys I noticed when watching movies from my hd i get sudden spikes like every 1 minute and i can hear the hard drive kind of choking. Is something wrong with it???

 

@jspm I noticed this too a lot, however only while using Windows Media Players; if I used VLC media player, I actually do not have any lag spikes at all while watching a movie. Dunno what causes this behavior in WMP, anybody got some ideas?

@panache76 Man, I was looking forward to repeat your steps to plug in a SSD and swap my HDD content to it. You posted some fixes in your last posts, but it was not fully clear. Maybe you can edit your original post, and add the extra steps.

@Community I want to plugin a mSATA disk in my GE70, if we get the Windows 8 upgrade next week orso, can I perform a Clean Install of Win 8 on my mSata/SSD disk, and then reformat my HDD (except the recovery part of Win 7), or can I only install Win 8 on the HDD (do I need a valid Win 7 to upgrade to Win 8 to be "seen" by the software?)? Basically performing a clean install on a SSD is much faster and reliable I think; if not; I need a simple way to transfer all content of my HDD to my SSD (including the Recovery part). Keeping TRIM and alighnment into account as well Any tips?

Awaken

 

No clicking here, but I have my own drives on mine. BTW this laptop holds up very well in Borderlands 2, Tera, and GW2.

 

do you have the choking hard disk sound? hmm you are correct, i tried it over at vlc and i did not have any spikes. maybe a problem within wmp i guess.

 

Hey all,

I just scored a MSI GE60 0ND-042US and I've bought a 512gb Crucial m4 SSD to replace the HDD that comes with the machine.

Other than upgrading my SSD's firmware and doing a clean install of Windows, what are some things I can do to get the most out of my new laptop?

 

So i purchased my ge70 and i am attempting to overclock my geforce gtx 660m using.. well i've tried several, and it seems to be locked/revert back to the 135mhz after about 1-2 seconds after i hit apply my overclock settings. its almost as if it is locked and unoverclockable, but i have read that several people have managed to overclock theirs. can anyone assist me with how to go about this? thanks..

 

I am thinking of buying the MSI GE60. I was wondering if the laptop had some sort of battery care function that allows you to limit the maximum battery charge to 80% or 50% of the full charge. Alot of the newer laptops of have this to prevent the battery from overcharging if left plugged in (as a gaming laptop obviously will).

 

I recognize Sony VAIO owner

 

Former Sony Vaio owner. I didn't like their notebooks too much. But my questions still stands. Anyone have an answer?

 

I think i asked this question. " should i leave my battery in the laptop while gaming" and somebody replied that msi has solved(not sure if this was the term the person used) the circuitry/flow of electricity(again i am rephrasing). So i guess you have no problems with leaving the battery inside the laptop. But someone also responded that if you want to remove it then its ok but make sure your area does not flactuate much/dont have powershortages. hope that helps

 

I'm talking about battery charge thresholds, not overcharging the battery. Limiting the charge maximum to say 80% can lengthen the batteries life, especially if you will used in plugged in for most of the time. But nevertheless, it doesn't seem that MSI has implemented this feature in their laptops.

 

I'm having an issue overclocking my MSI GE70 GeForce GTX 660M. I have tried several overclocking programs, and as soon as I hit apply my new settings they revert back to default after 1-3 seconds. It seems like it is locked for overclocking, how do I get around this?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...guide-workaround-max-clocks-oc-stability.html

 

That's interesting because the stock allowed 135MHz on the core should work without a problem. I'm using MSI Afterburner, maybe you could try OCing with that (if you didn't already). Also update the GPU driver as some older drivers had this problem if I remember correctly.

 

I hope I am posting in the proper place being new here............

I just received my GE60 and have a few questions about my storage drives. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have the 750gb hard drive and I am considering an SSD.
1) will I see a performance boost going to an ssd?
2) can I put a laptop size ssd in the spot of the hdd that is there now? or do I have to get an msata ssd and place it in the open spot?

My goal is to have 2 drives inside... one for the os and programs etc and one for data etc. So basically I am looking for the best way.... knowing that.........last question

3) if I put in an ssd (msata or whatever you all suggest) and keep my regular hdd for data do I have to change or do some raid settings or whatnot

Thanks to any who provide direction for a noob.

Regards

 

Depends on what you define performance as. Will it increase your FPS in games? No. Will it make booting and the general Windows environment feel faster and more responsive? Definitely.

You can put a regular 2.5'' SSD where the normal HDD is.

You would not need to. I don't think the GE60 supports RAID, anyway.

Just make sure to set up your mSATA drive to be the boot drive.

 

Excellent. Thanks Forge!

One more... Would it be wise from a performance perspective to put the programs/ games i plan to use regularly on the SSD Drive. Ie: world of warcraft/guild wars/ skyrim etc?

 

I put my MSata SSD in my GE70 this week, cloned Windiws 7 and performed some Windows/SSD tweaks to increase SSD performance. Now the thing about the SSD is that it has a limited life performenace, however you need to put this in perspective. Eg it can last 5 years if you write 10-20GB each day. Nobody writes that much every day on average, and in 5 years it will be replaced by another one. What does this mean for you? If you use programs that regularly need to read your SSD while in program, then they definately need to be on your SSD, eg WOW, Guild Wars, should be on your SSD. Even with the updates they receive it should be, since your load times between areas will be faster. Now, what you do not want on your SSD are data files, documents etc, temporarily files from Windows/users, swap/page files, indexing from windows, windows recovery, hibernation file, IE history/temp files. You wan to put these on either a HDD or switch them off, to max the life cycle of your SSD.

So in short put programs you use a lot on SSD, and move the rubish to the HDD

I found out an improve in Win load and shutdown times, but also a load improve in GW2 between areas/warping, since this reads data from your SSD.

Check out this link for optimal SSD settings.

Can You Get More Space Or Speed From Your SSD? : Optimizing Precious Solid-State Storage

In advance to this google for the IE hostory files and temp files to move to the HDD

Cheers,

Awaken

EDIT|: I have both the mSata (256GB) and the stock HDD (750GB) in my GE70. Cloned Windows to SSD, and formatted the HDD to use as backup/data storage disc. I kept the recovery partition and created an external backup of my system before cloning to the SSD (just in case)

 

Definitely. Most of the games I play regularly (like Killing Floor or Stellar Impact) load fast enough on my HDD that I just keep them there. For specific, beefier, games that I'm working on, like Metro 2033 or Crysis 2 or Xcom Enemy Unknown, I'll move them to my SSD and then move them back to my HDD's Steam folder when I'm done playing them.