Problems with 6024W after 10 months

Hi guys,

some of you may remember that I bought a 6024W in August 2007, with a 2 GHz T7300 processor and 2 GB of RAM. Well, that was now 10 months ago, so I thought I'd share the problems I've had.

In October 2007 my laptop developed a problem whereby the screen's backlight would flicker whenever the ethernet cable was disturbed. This problem gradually became more severe until the backlight ceased to work at all.
At this point I contacted Zepto to arrange a repair.

I sent my laptop to Zepto in November 2007, and got it back within a few weeks. They replaced the motherboard and the screen, and the same problem has never occurred since. There were a couple of new problems though.

The most significant problem is that I now cannot change the brightness of the screen's backlight - it is permanently stuck on high. The keyboard functions don't change the brighness, and neither does anything else I can find in the BIOS or Windows.

The second problem - which I do not necessarily attribute to Zepto - is that when my laptop came back from repair there was a 2 cm split in the silver plastic of the bottom right corner. This crack could well have occurred in transit to/from Zepto.

At the time I didn't contact Zepto about these problems. I use my laptop every day for University assignments, and after just getting it back from repair I really couldn't face not having it for several weeks again. So I decided I could live with these issues - at least until I had no work to do.

When I first purchased my laptop, I measured the battery capacity (in another thread) as 49216 mWh fully charged. Today I measured it as 41429 mWh fully charged - 84% of what it used to be. I generally run my laptop on its battery a few times a week, so is this a reasonable reduction in capacity?

With medium use, I now generally get 1.5 hours out of the battery, which seems very low. Though given that I cannot turn down the screen's brightness, that's not really surprising.

I've finished University for the summer now, so if possible I would like to get these problems at least looked at, if not resolved. I am still in my warranty, so in theory Zepto should be able to sort me out - but will it be a problem that I didn't contact them immediately after my laptop came back from repair?

Thanks for your help.
Dave

 

The battery time seems normal to me. My 6214W goes for about 1h 15m nowadays when surfing and I've had it for almost a year and a half. Since you can't turn down the brightness i'd say it's fully normal.

Batteries usually have 6 months warranty.

 

you have to remember to take out the battery when its fully charged, the battery doesnt like being over-charged continously (something Iv been bad on )

 

Ok, thanks. That reassures me about the battery.

 

Read about Laptop batteries here

Laptop batteries are made from Lithium Ion, so if you'd like to prolong the life of your battery, just follow the website's recommendations and information.

 

The batteries do lose capacity with time. My 6024W (July 07) is now showing 39334mWH capacity. However, it did not have the full capacity even when new.

The 1.5 hours on battery is the bigger concern. You should be able to get 2 to 2.5 hours. Having the backlight on full brightness is a contributory factor to the short battery life but not the whole cause. I've just looked and get about 17.5W power drain with full brightness (no wireless or Bluetooth) and just under 15W when on brightness level 3. 1.5 hours on battery corresponds to 25W power drain, which is far too high so you need to see where that power is going. Which HDD do you have? This thread should help you work out where the power is going.

John

 

The HDD I have is 160 GB 5400 RPM. The discharge rate of the battery with full brightness and no wireless / bluetooth is about 20W.

 

Thinking about it, my fan is on quite a lot under light use when I really wouldn't expect it to be. Maybe I need to check my BIOS.

 

There has been several fan fixes in the BIOS updates, so I think that's a good idea

 

Yeah, I did the latest BIOS today, and it appears to be somewhat better.

 

See if it also does anything for the power drain on battery (and can you now control the display brightness?).

John

 

With the latest BIOS the lowest drain I get (with no wireless etc) is 19W, slightly better. I still can't control the display brightness though.

 

Do the other Fn key shortcuts, such as the volume control, work?

I am getting 17 to 17.5W with the display on full brightness and the CPU ambling along at 600MHz 0.9V (and no wireless). What voltage is your CPU running on when under light load?

I suggest you go into the BIOS and start experimenting with the display properties. The graphics should be integrated, not external, and enable BIA. I can't spare the time at the moment to go into my BIOS and check the settings I am using.

John

 

Under light load (no wireless etc.) the lowest CPU I have is 798 MHz at 1.012 V.

The other Fn key shortcuts do work. In BIOS I have the following settings which would appear to be relevant to the display:

Intel

Intel IGD Control Sub-Menu

Default Primary Video Adapter: PEG

IGD - Device 2: Auto
IGD - Boot Type: CRT+LFP
IGD - S3 Popup: Disabled

IGD - LCD Control Sub-Menu

IGD - LCD Panel Type: 15: 1280x600 LVDS
IGD - Panel Scaling: Auto

GMCH BLC Control: GMBus
BIA Control: Disabled​

I have tried changing the setting for BIA Control, but that doesn't seem to have any effect.

 

Try changing the setting for the primary video. It seems to work with either but it should not be PEG. OK. BIA doesn't fix your brightness control but it might enable some features in the graphics driver.

The next thing to try is the Intel driver using (i) the driver on the Zepto ftp site and (ii) the latest Intel driver.

I am using the Intel driver from April (I see there is now a newer one) which includes two power management settings (see attached). I think I have BIA enabled in the BIOS.

John

 

Have done this now, also have enabed BIA. No change with respect to the brightness control. I've installed the latest drivers as you recommended, and have set the power management to 'Best'.

In theory, should there be a way of lowering the brightness of the screen in software without using the keyboard shourtcuts? Because if there is I can't find it anywhere.

 

I'm running out of suggestions. One thing I have noticed with my 6024W is that when I switch to battery the display partly dims and I cannot brighten it using Fn+F5 unless I first use Fn+F4 (which actually makes the display brighter but then I can step down through the various brightness levels and use Fn+F5 to go up again).

So this brightness control isn't quite right on my notebook, but for some reason unknown seems to be worse on yours. It has to be a BIOS matter yet I think we are now both running the same (...006).

Now, where are these Zepto support people? They've been keeping a very low profile during the past few weeks. Perhaps they will have other suggestions.

It looks like you will need to be thinking of sending your 6024W back to the hospital before the year is up.

John

PS: I get my 600MHz @ 0.9V using RMClock. Without it I would get the 800MHz.

 

Yeah I have BIOS 006 too. How feasible is it that it's a hardware problem in your opinion? By that I mean, what physically could stop it working, if anything?

 

It does look like hardware / BIOS. It might be interesting to boot with a Linux Live CD and see if the brightness control works. However, I don't have time at the moment to try that on my 6024W (I hibernate between sessions so I get straight back to my work in progress).

John

 

It just so happens that I have a xubuntu live CD. My brightness controls certainly don't work when running it, though I think by now that's not a huge surprise. Thanks for all your suggestions John. I was hoping this was something I could fix, but looks like I may have to contact support again. Such a pain.

 

I run Ubuntu 8.04 on my 6024W, and it reacts just like John said in post 17:

"One thing I have noticed with my 6024W is that when I switch to battery the display partly dims and I cannot brighten it using Fn+F5 unless I first use Fn+F4 (which actually makes the display brighter but then I can step down through the various brightness levels and use Fn+F5 to go up again)."

.. so that part seems to be a thing not connected to the operating system.

Best of luck!

Anders

 

I tried Ubuntu 8.04 on my 6024W last evening. The brightness controls work fine. In fact, they even work at the BIOS splash screen.

Are you sure that F4 and F5 work OK (without the Fn+)? If you can't think of an application which uses these keys then try Total Commander (which uses these Fn key shortcuts). If they don't work then it's a keyboard problem. If F4 and F5 work by themselves then it looks like the BIOS. Try (i) resetting it to the defaults and (ii) reinstalling the BIOS.

John

 

The F4 and F5 keys themselves work fine. Resetting the BIOS didn't help, so I reinstalled the latest BIOS. Still nothing, I'm afraid.

 

I am weighing up my options here. The only time screen brightness and battery life is really an issue for me is when I am in university and would prefer not to have to carry the AC adapter around as well as my laptop.

So I think I will contact Zepto to arrange for my screen to be fixed (as I am as good as convinced this is a hardware problem by now) and purchase a 12 cell battery too.

I am quite tempted to buy a netbook to carry round with me at university, to type notes and assignements on, but the boring $$$-concious side of my brain tells me it makes more sense just to get a high capacity battery!

 

I've identified a new problem with my 6024W: Most of the time if I restart the computer then the Broadcom gigabit ethernet adaptor isn't working. It comes up in Vista with a device error message suggesting that there were no spare resources. First time round I spent a long time disabling other devices and reinstalling the driver. It didn't fix the problem. I then tried XP and found that the network didn't work there either. Also Ubuntu. So it was clearly not a software problem.

Even resetting the BIOS has no effect. Finally, I shut the machine down and left it for a few minutes, then started it. The network adaptor was working again.

Today I needed to do a restart and hit exactly the same problem. So I shut down, counted to 10, then started and the problem had gone away.

So there appears to be an interesting bug, most likely BIOS related, that causes a problem for the gigabit ethernet adaptor when the computer is restarted. The problem appears to have only started since the motherboard got replaced. Normally I use hibernation between sessions and that works OK. Annoying

I'll have to see what Zepto support make of this.

John

 

Well just to add I randomly have my ethernet card to stop working, but mostly it helps to go to network center (vista) troupleshooth the connecton, and reset the adaptor

 

My ethernet adapter stops working sometimes as well. It hasn't happend while using it though, and only maybe once every 30th reboot, so it's not an issue for me. A simple reboot makes vista reinstall the drivers automatically.

 

My network adaptor problem is down closer to the hardware level since it can affect both Vista and XP. I was forced to reboot yesterday after a Windows update and, on that occasion, the network adaptor was still OK.

John