Nox A15 new BIOS 4638 (26/05-2009)

Zepto notebooks are starting to leave a bad aftertaste in my mouth. I had a dell and it didnt give me any problems.

 

Why don't you guys send in the machines as it seems you actually have problems with your machines? Why just wine about it if you don't want to have Zepto try and fix it?
I just don't get it

 

Im in asia and the warranty covers only hardware defects, not software.

 

I have done it and my machine has been in repair 4 months during the last 6 months (totally 3 times). I cannot say that I would be pretty pleased with Zepto. Also it's good to let people know about the problems with the machine, why should we just stay quiet?

 

crapp0 what is the version of mobile utilities you installed? Have you installed the touchpad drivers from Zepto, or are the touchpad drivers from Synaptic? Please use the Zepto ones if you can. Which version of Vista are you installing it on? For the mobile utilities on 64 bit, you might need to go into the CD directory to manually reinstall from there.
In the past, we used to update BIOSes using CD media and putting the SATA controller on IDE mode instead of AHCI.

@kadett2k8: If the machine has software issues, the standard thing for all brands would be a full clean Vista install again

@nox_user: Do you still have your battery in? You need to keep the battery in the laptop to prevent reboots as it serves as a UPS-like protection. Like we said before you need to put the battery in, this has been fixed for many users.

 

So you're saying that Nox's power supply is not able to feed enough power for the machine?

Anyway I just tried this and at least based on 30 minutes lasting test this helped on the issue. I tried first without battery and machine rebooted in 5 minutes then I played 25 minutes with battery without any problems. Funny how they didn't even mention that in their support chat. However this is pretty stupid solution to keep the battery in all the time because it shortens it's life-cycle notably shorter but what can you do. At least this is better situation now if it prevents rebooting.

 

@nox_user. Modern batteries do not suffer any where near as much as older batteries with the battery discharge cycle problems. I have had my Znote 6324W for nearly 2 years and I can still get 2 hrs of battery life out of the thing. I do not remove the battery, nor do I regularly run it from batteries alone. I have noticed, however that Vista seems to suck the battery life more than any other OS. (I'm currently using Mint 7 and Windows 7 and have very good battery life)
The power supply for my machine has had to be replaced twice as both died. In both situations the power supplies (LiteOn 19V 4.74A versions) would not run the machine and charge the battery at the same time. They do get ridiculously hot, I think Zepto may have under spec'd the power supply (90W) as now that I am using a 120W LiteOn power supply I don't even get stuttering in games and the power supply stays much cooler.

 

I am currently using the latest mobile utilities currently on the zepto ftp site for my particular model. I am using vista x86, not the 64 bit version due to some incompatibility issues with certain software in the past.

I think i will try uninstalling the synaptics touchpad and the mobile utilities and try reinstalling both of them to see if that fixes my problem.

 

The issue is probably with the mobile utilities, because with just the touchpad driver installed I'm not able to turn the pad off.

The synaptics driver actually kept crashing on me and I'd lose the scrolling ability, so I just deinstalled the driver altogether and the pad still works fine.

 

Well, i uninstalled both the touchpad and mobile utilities and reinstalled both of them again and now everythings working fine.

 

I don't know if this is a side-effect of the BIOS upgrade, but I've started noticing a very strange slowdown while playing games.

It only happens once in the first 15 minutes of playing. At some point, the framerate slows down to a crawl, but whenever I hit ESC to bring up the menu the lag is gone - until I close the menu again. This could last for a few minutes, until the fan kicks in. You can literally see the framerate going up as the fan spins up. It spins full-force for a minute or so, and then the lag never returns. Could this be some sort of overheating issue?

 

Seems like the machine hits throttling limit and for some reason the fan wouldn't start at all early enough. I have encountered this very same problem, I was running stress test and the machine finally underclocked itself down to 400 mhz before the fan started working with full force for some time. However this doesn't happen often but for some reason it seems like the bios has sometimes problems reading the correct temperatures for the fan / starting the fan correctly... It's related to the new bios, this never happened with the old bios-versions which were louder.

 

Ive only gotten problems with this update. So if someone can help me out id like to know how to go back to the bios version before this one.

My problems.

1. The USB Power is constantly on so laptopcooler, external drives does not shut off when comp is turned off.

2. Rise in temperatures according to hwmonitor, dont know if this is "the " when it comes to measuring this but comparatively its worse now.

3. Fan rolls on for 3-4 minutes a go on medium to high speed, wich never happened earlier and is even more annoying then the bursts.

4. Without my NC-2000 the fan still does the bursting thing only on lower speeds.

5. Throttle effects and such happening when using firefox, msn and standard programs.

6. Comp. does not at all understand what i mean with 65 degrees at thermal trip points any more.

Conclusion: Personally this was a waste of a dvd-record.

Solution: Changing back to older BIOS. How do i do that?

Good job Zepto, if i hadnt made a payment plan on the computer it would have been long gone by now.



Edit: Cheers to everyone at this forum, i read alot here this was my first post, too bad it wasnt a more positive one....

 

Oh boy, my laptop's motherboard is being replaced right now, I hope I don't get the new BIOS with it (

 

Does anyone know how to revert the BIOS update?

 

b00red, just download the old BIOS and run that BIOS update That should do the trick.

 

Ok cheers, will do that. Although today the fan has been behaving completely normal, its beyond my understanding at this point...

 

I had the same problems with usb ports giving power when the laptop is not powered or in hibernation. In addition to that, there was a lot of distortion coming from the "audio out"-line when running on AC power.

But the fan was much more better than before the update. Previously i had to use a Zalman cooler and always use as much power saving options than possible to keep the fan from bursting. After the update, i didn't need the cooler anymore.

Too bad i had to send it in for the audio distortion and not getting audio from the HDMI connection.

 

When you write "had" does that mean you dont have that anymore? =)

Yeah i dont seem to be needing my brand new Zalman NC2000 cooler anymore either... bad timing but hardly zepto's err, im back 600 SEK though, about $100 converted i think.

Anyone up for grabs?

 

I still have it, it's just in the repair facility ATM. I'm hoping they'll fix those problems.

Also, forgot one more problem from my last post. The color was leaving from the palm area. So i'm guessing they'll have to change the whole shell and probably the motherboard too.

 

Im not so sure theyll change due to colorwear, that's ususally said to be wear and tear issues - for your sake i hope they do, would be awesome service. Depends on how long youve had the comp. for aswell i guess.

What was the reason for you sending the computer in in the first place? Not the USB power thing right?

 

They'd better change it, i've had it only for 7 months and there really wasn't much of the original white colour left. Why do you think Zepto changed the casing from matte to glossy in the first place? (in new ones)

My first reason was the distortion with the audio if AC was plugged. I couldn't watch the things i wanted with the laptop since i was afraid that the distortion could screw my receiver & speakers. The battery life just isn't enough with Mythos.

 

Ok, yeah would be cool if you got the glossy ones if so then, i have a nox (matte) and its not worn down as yet. Distortion problem is a new one hehe i wonder what error hasnt come up with the first shipments of the A15 series...

 

Hej b00red

Have you downgraded the bios to the 3532 version ? and did it go fine ?

I also have some problems with the update (4638).

Best Regards
Bjergfelt

 

Nope didnt downgrade, it seems to have sorted itself out a bit when i keep using my Zalman nc2000 and the fan is off most of the time. It still whimpers up and down some when i dont have the cooler underneath although better behaviour than it was before.

The mainproblem (if this is caused by BIOS) is the constant powerlet to the USBports... me and 1 more have had this happen so it being the ACadapters isnt impossible, but seems unlikely.

Hej på dig också förresten. =)

 

i have the same problems like b00red, but the problem with the fan is not sorted out on my NOX, its almoste there

 

lol this bios update has worked wonders for me and i dont even have a nox : D