My Asus u56e is randomly rebooting again. Any Ideas?

This seems to be a popular problem for Asus users. However, I have not found a definite cause or solution for the problem.

This machine is roughly four years of age now, and was recently given to me in October of 2014. I had cleared everything off it, performing a clean installation of windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit edition. A few days later I noticed that it had restarted. At first I didn't think anything of it. But a few hours later, It happened again. I took notice that there was no BSOD. It just did a hard reboot. As if it lost power... Skipping ahead, dealing with the issue for a few months Waiting for replies on a now closed MS thread, I update to windows 8.1 in January. All was well until February 9th. 2015, A bit less than 20 days after the update. Then one on the 20th. Another on the 17th, and THREE today. Latest one over an hour ago (7:29 PM EDT)...

The other two reboots were within half an hour of eachother!!!

Now, Because of the amount of reboots in a single day, I am noticing a slight pattern here. It is most likely to happen under these conditions.

1. The event has only happened while sitting idle OR Doing something minor such as typing or playing my virtual Keyboard.
2. Only while connected to a network using the built in Intel WLAN device (Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030). Ruled out due to the fact it has done this even with network device disabled/disconnected.
3. Only when the laptop is AWAKE.

I want to know the following

• Is there anything I can do for a four year old machine that is no longer covered by a warranty, For Free, or really cheap?

  Side note: I am genuinely worried about my hard disk being trashed by the constant rebooting that I may experience. I mean, it is one thing for a random reboot once and a while but TWO within FIVE MINUTES!? You guys can understand why that worries me right? My entire life is on this laptop. If it causes my files to become corrupt, it would be the end of RMSoftware Development as I know it... I need to start backing my stuff up even more so now...

Additional Information:

• No BSOD means I do not blue screen, thus there are no crash dumps or any error reports.

• As of 3/22/2015: I updated to BIOS Revision 213 via Asus Tech Support. This (Not supprisingly) Did not fix the issue.

• I Disabled UEFI Booting - No effect

• I Disabled Intel Anti-Theft (A feature I had no Idea existed on this). No effect.

• Disabled Asus FancyStart - No effect

• Uninstalling ATKPackage by ASUS - NO EFFECT.

• Uninstalling VMWare Workstation - NO EFFECT

• Updating Intel wireless drivers - Shockingly (genuine shock) NO EFFECT

• After a crash a few days ago, I removed the battery in frustration. Kept the laptop off for a while, put it all back, and let it run. No problems for now. Thank you @Sharain for that suggestion.

• Two days of stability now gone: I Was leaving my computer idle while using it as a wireless hotspot. while also connected to a WiFi network (Sharing a VPN connection with my phone) and it restarted. Which again brings me to the question: IS IT MY WIRELESS CARD? IS IT FAILING? (Mentioned above). No I am not always using the hotspot feature, however I am Always connected to some network when it does the shut down. I should note that Lately I notice that when I disconnect from a network, I have to disable and re-enable the card from device manager to get it to reconnect. is this related?

• two reboots within 5 minutes I was not connected to any network. I went ahead and disabled my wireless adapter following this event. Waiting for any changes...

• 12 hours nothing.... until now... So I have officially ruled out the wireless adapter. I had disabled it via device manager... shockingly (again legit shock....) it had NO EFFECT. IT IS AT THIS POINT, I AM OUT OF THINGS TO TRY. is this mobo related? Is there a free fix? Is there something I can do?

• I have been keeping it closed at night and have not had any issues for nearly a week. However I am noticing that my battery no longer warns me if it is low. The main issue now is the battery is a bit under 30 percent when my laptop shuts off. Is my motherboard not getting enough voltage?

Thanks again to everyone who is willing to assist in any way possible, and As always, I hope you enjoy reading my life story of a question.

Latest update: I notice this generally happens during cooler weather. and because I have seen several other users with similar problems (around the same time) and the fact that I have had only one or two crashes the past four months (when it was kind of cool outside). If you guys have any additional theories, feel free to enlighten me. Thank you all for the suggestions thus far.

Special notice: I will continue to update this question as needed, new information will be in bold type.

Difference between DDR3 SDRAM and DDR3 SODIMM for laptop

I have an ASUS A55VD-NS51 laptop with 6GB of RAM and I've been wanting to upgrade the memory for a while. I've finally decided to go through with it, but I am unsure as to whether to buy DDR3 SDRAM or DDR3 SODIMM for it. There is no indication of which kind of RAM it uses, and frankly, I'm not really sure if there is a difference or not, but I would love some insight!

UPDATE: Just ordered more RAM based on what you guys are telling me! Thanks!

How much RAM can I put in an ASUS Q550LF?

I'm thinking about upgrading my laptop's RAM and I've been wondering two things:

1. How many RAM slots does my laptop have? I've been looking online and I can't seem to find a clear answer.

2. How much ram can my computer actually run with? I know some MOBO's and OS versions are limited to a certain amount of RAM, and I don't want to buy more than my PC can handle.

I have an ASUS Q550LF with Ubuntu 14.04 (64 bit) installed.

Asus laptop beeps when I walk away

The sound is the same as the one you hear when you plug in and unplug a USB device. It beeps when I approach the laptop and leave it and also sometimes when I move in front of it. This is an ASUS, model G73JH.

Custom action on gestures in Asus zenbook

I have recently bought asus ux303ln and I would like to overwrite some touchpad gestures. Only way to boot up gestures is Asus Smart Gesture and there is no option to perform custom action (like key combination) on ex. 3 finger up. I have found some solutions for Synaptic and Elan drivers, but they aren't working (can't install). Please help.

How to remove access panel to access HDD and RAM?

I'm trying to install a SSD in my new ASUS U46E-BAL5 laptop [image below].

Problem I'm having is that I can't open the bottom side of the notebook to access the HDD. I've unscrewed every screw but the bottom panel where the HDD is located is too tight to remove.

I've checked the manual and there's no instruction on how to do this. I've also contacted ASUS technical support but they couldn't help me with this issue [just confirmed that one can access the HDD from the bottom and that I need to remove the panel in the picture below]. Finally, I've also done an extensive search in Google for my particular model but couldn't find any posting.

Does anybody have experience with this? It seems that I have to pry the panel open but I'm worried I will ruin the panel.

Is the reason for weak wireless signal on new laptop the wireless card itself or the antennas?

I just bought a new laptop ASUS N550JV. I wanted to test the wifi receivers of my two laptops (the old and the new), so I put them together and scanned for the neighboring wireless connections. My old laptop (Atheros AR5B93) has 10+ AP's on the list while the new laptop (Atheros AR9485WB-EG) has only 2, and the signals were substantially weaker. I gotta say any signal weaker than -75 dB won't show up on new laptop while I can list wireless connections with -90 dB on my older one.

This will cause problems in my college building, since with my old laptop I could often barely connect to the network. With the new laptop, I believe I most certainly will not be able to connect.

I first thought I would swap the wireless cards and fix this but then the root of the problem being the antennas made more sense. So, does this issue originate from the wireless network card itself or the antennas?

Edit

I want to present some screenshots: In the scenario, I have 10-15 meters and a wall between laptops and router. The red is my connection, blue and green are the common APs that the laptops can enlist, and yellows are the ones that only the old laptop can enlist.

Old Laptop

New Laptop

How can I turn off the LEDs on the front of my laptop(ASUS K501LX-NH52)?

Is there a way to turn off the lights on the front of my laptop? My laptop: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232753R. I am currently running a dual-boot of KDE Fedora and Windows 10.

If there is no way to turn it off in the BIOS can I can unplug the cord running to it? Here is a picture of it:

External hard drive suddenly not recognized on one computer, still works on another computer

I have an Asus G750JW running Windows 8.1. One of my external hard drives—a 4TB Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive (Model: SRD0SD0, PN: 1DXAD8-500, USB 3.0)—suddenly stopped working with it. It still works with my other computer (older MacBook Pro running both Mac OS X and Windows 7) and I can open the files and so on on that machine. I checked the drive on the MacBook with Windows 7 (Properties -> Tools -> Check for errors.) and it appears as healthy.

I found a very similar sounding problem discussed at Microsoft forums but—as far as I can see—there is no real solution offered.

The way it happened, I connected it, the computer opened the window with the disk contents then the window suddenly froze (saying “not responding”) then the message appeared:

The last USB device you connected has malfunctioned and cannot be recognized.

When I plug it in while having the device manager open, it momentarily appears under disk drives as Seagate Backup Plus; double click on it - properties window says “device working properly.” Then the file manager opens the window which appears empty, the blue wheel rotates for a few seconds, and then the drive disappears from the device manager, and the device status changes to

Currently, this hardware device is not connected to the computer. (Code 45) To fix this problem, reconnect this hardware device to the computer.

I have tried all 3 USB ports on the computer with the same result. My two other Seagate drives—an older USB 2.0 and a newer USB 3.0—both seem to work fine with this computer. Anything else I could try? I tried to Google, found all kinds of advice like reset the BIOS, but that seems a bit scary, I am not so confident about what that will do.

Would be grateful for any suggestions. The drive is not vitally important since most of the data on it is backed up somewhere else; still, to re-create another back up of nearly 2.5TB data with slower USB 2.0 MacBook seems like quite some pain.

Many 64-bit linux guests kernel panic on boot

--Updates posted - scroll down--

Problem:
ASUS R510D virtualization incompatibility.
Machine specifications support AMD-V.
System is stock:
- Windows 8 home upgraded to 8.1 home
- Quadcore 64-bit AMD A10-5750M APU
- Integrated dual AMD Radeon HD 8670M crossfire
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231521
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-A-Series-A10-5750M-Notebook-Processor.92882.0.html

Symptom:
"kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!" on boot

The stack trace appears to descend into functions attempting to identify the 64-bit CPU model. Stack trace shows last function call is "identify_cpu".

Attempted solutions:
I have tried every combination of virtualization and CPU settings in the VM settings. This includes:

• Options for "Version" when "Type" is set to "Linux" in the VM settings "General -> Basic" tab

  • Linux 2.2
  • Linux 2.4
  • Linux 2.6
  • Ubuntu
  • Oracle
  • Other Linux
    These options are each available in "32 bit" and "64 bit". When set to 32-bit and attempting to boot a 64-bit kernel, the kernel behaves as expected (ie error message about bitness).

• Chipset

  • PIIX3
  • ICH9

• Pointing device

  • PS/2 Mouse
  • USB Tablet

• I/O APIC enabled/disabled

• EFI enabled/disabled
• Processor count from 1 through 4
• PAE/NX enabled/disabled
• VT-x/AMD-V enabled/disabled
• 2D Video Acceleration enabled/disabled
• Audio enabled/disabled
• Network adapter enabled/disabled

• USB controller disabled / 1.0 / 2.0 / 3.0

• Each of the last two or three stable VirtualBox versions (as of the time of this writing) and the next beta (as of the time of this writing)

• The VirtualBox beta includes extra options for virtualization interface, such as "none", "legacy", "default", "minimal", etc. Combinations including each of these options were tried as well.

• Removing all possible peripherals. It's a laptop so there's not much to remove but I made sure there weren't any disks in the drives or USB devices attached.

Working:

• Bodhi Linux (variant of Mint) 64-bit VM
• All non-working distros mentioned above when run on Windows 7 on Intel Core2 Duo or Quadcore i7 laptop

Kernel Panics:

• Current 64-bit Minimal Linux Live ISO (which uses an up-to-date kernel as of February 2015) (http://minimal.linux-bg.org/)
• PCLinuxOS
• GoboLinux
• Slax
• and more

Additional Info:

The Minimal Linux Live ISO DID boot successfully at least once. I have no idea what I did that got it to boot or subsequently prevented it from booting. Update note: I'm starting to think I must have been mistaken.

The ASUS laptop does not have any virtualization settings available in the BIOS settings.

I have read forums that indicate that there is a problem with Realtek wireless drivers and that disabling the onboard wireless in host BIOS prevents the VM kernel panic, but this BIOS has no options for disabling internal wireless. I have not found any direct solutions but a high percentage of issues seem to involve ASUS boards from the last 5 years.

Todo:
- Include links to referenced posts containing relevant information
- Include VirtualBox logs and screenshot of kernel panic
- Test same distros on other virtualization clients (any suggestions?)
- Test same distros on Linux hosts (I'm pretty sure most of them work on Intel hardware)

See also post on VirtualBox forums

Updates:
I have attached the VirtualBox log and screenshots on my post on the VirtualBox forums. I have also found VMware Player does not have these problems. It's possible that there is still some problem with the same bug in VMware, but in VMware it doesn't stop the system from booting and running fine. I haven't gone over all of the system log and boot logging.

For now, I am content with using the noncommercial VMware in place of VirtualBox. I have been an advocate of VirtualBox but this is a clear difference in product. I may not be able to continue using VMware depending on my licensing needs, but I may not be able to continue using VirtualBox depending on my requirements. I am curious if the bug is in the kernel, VirtualBox, or something else. Perhaps QEMU or KVM would be viable.

So my actual question as stands is:
-Why didn't some 64-bit kernels work in VirtualBox on this machine?
-If it's a problem in VirtualBox, why did some distros work while others did not?
-What can be done to get the kernel to run in VirtualBox, or why can't it be done?
-Are there still related problems in VMware?

Below are results of running virtualization detection on my hardware:

AMD-V and Microsoft Hyper-V System Compatibility Utility:
(version 6.1.76 ?)
This system is compatible with Hyper-V.
This AMD64 system supports AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) with Rapid Virtualization Indexing.

Coreinfo v3.31

AMD A10-5750M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
AMD64 Family 21 Model 19 Stepping 1, AuthenticAMD
Microcode signature: 06001119
HYPERVISOR      -       Hypervisor is present
SVM             *       Supports AMD hardware-assisted virtualization
NP              *       Supports AMD nested page tables (SLAT)

Diagnose a Asus N550JV laptop that turns off during POST

On my Asus N550JV laptop, if I push the power button, it lights up for half a second then turns off. The green indicator light on the front lights up when AC is plugged in.

I tried unplugging, removing the battery and holding the power button for 30 seconds, but this made no difference.

What should I diagnose?

How can I reinstall Windows 7 on a laptop without the drivers CD?

I have lost my ASUS drivers CD that came with the laptop. I want to reinstall Windows, but I'm afraid that I'll need drivers to make the laptop fully functional. The trouble is, when I tried to find the appropriate drivers on the ASUS site, all I've found is a slur of bloatware, useless utilities and whatnot. They don't simply give a "drivers package" that I can install after installing Windows.

How can I find the appropriate drivers package for my ASUS laptop?

How to use the integrated GPU on the CPU for Nvidia Optimus even though there is no official Windows 10 support by Intel?

My Laptop has two GPUs, an on-board HD3000 and an NVIDIA card. On Windows 7 they behaved all right. On the desktop the on-board HD3000 was usually used, but as soon as I launched a game the NVIDIA card took up the job. I know this because there is a little LED which changes its color depending on the graphic card currently used.

Now after updating to Windows 10 the GPU switch is going crazy. Sometimes they are switched several times within a minute, but most often the NVIDIA card is used, even when I am just browsing plain websites (e.g. currently while writing this). When I have the plain desktop on the screen and do nothing, the HD3000 is used after some seconds, but as soon as I move the mouse it switches again. This gets really annoying when watching youtube videos or streams via chrome. There can be minutes when the HD3000 is used constantly. But every now and then (sometimes several times in a minute) it changes to the NVIDIA card and back again after some seconds. The video stops for a second when it switches to the HD3000. Sound remains consistent.

Summing up I didn't recognize any real and understandable pattern behind this. I would expect Windows 10 to start using the NVIDIA card when the HD3000 approaches its performance limits, but I would have guessed that moving the mouse should not require that much power, not even on Windows 10.

Is there any way to get it working as before on Windows 7? If not, can I somehow disable or forbid Windows 10 to use the NVIDIA card for desktop applications? What would you do?

Here some more information about my system:

• Laptop Asus N53SV-SX711V
• Windows 10 Pro x64, Version 1511 Build 10586.420
• CPU: Intel Core i5-2410M @ 2.30GHz, integrated GPU: HD 3000
• GPU: GeForce GT 540M, Driver 368.39
• RAM: 8GB

Edit

I found out here, that the HD3000 is officially not supported by Intel. But "not supported" obviously doesn't mean it cannot be used, since in fact it's used sometimes. Also I can open the Intel Control Panel and change settings (driver version 9.17.10.4229).

Still: What can I do/try? What would you do except disabling the HD3000 completely?

Why does my LED backlight laptop have a warning sticker about mercury?

I recently purchased an Asus UL30Vt-X1, which according to the specs has an LED backlight for the screen. It definitely appears to be an LED backlight, but the laptop still has a sticker that the lamp in the display contains mercury.

Why is this warning sticker there if it has an LED backlight?

Edit: The exact wording from the sticker:

The lamp in this display contains mercury. Recycle or dispose according to local, state and federal law.

Laptop waking up from sleep because of "power button"? (Windows 8.1)

My computer is brand new but has a serious problem - it wakes up from sleep mode on its own in the middle of the night, usually a couple hours after I put it into sleep mode. This problem is consistent and I have been sure that I really put it into sleep mode before putting it away. No peripherals are attached to the computer when this happens.

I have already checked for what is waking it up consistently in Event Viewer using the instructions here (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-prevent-your-pc-from-waking-up-in-sleep-mode-3433604/). It's not a program or device. It says it is the "power button"! From the event viewer log:

"The system has returned from a low power state.

Sleep Time: ‎2015‎-‎07‎-‎02T03:44:42.484673200Z Wake Time: ‎2015‎-‎07‎-‎02T06:44:45.019268100Z

Wake Source: Power Button"

powercfg -lastwake also gives the same "Power Button" as the culprit every time I run it after finding my computer running hot in its case after supposedly sleeping.

I checked the power management settings and all wake timers are disabled, and from the command line I checked and no devices are allowed to wake the computer up (used "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed" command) and no wake timers (used "powercfg -waketimers" command). I manually checked my wireless card too, it does not have wake privileges. Automatic maintenance also does not have the ability to wake up the computer (the box is not checked).

Windows Update also doesn't appear to be the culprit - it hasn't installed updates for over a week, and this problem has continued throughout. I tried disabling automatic updating just to see if that works.

The computer is closed and sitting on my desk. There is no way I am touching the power button in the middle of the night! This happens every night that I put the computer to sleep.

System specs: ASUS UX305FA (Core M 1.0Ghz, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD), brand new

Running Windows 8.1 and updating regularly

Installed programs: Microsoft Office 2013, Skype, Adobe Lightroom 3.0, Dropbox, SMPlayer, Firefox, Chrome, CutePDFWriter (the problem has been pretty consistent since I bought it so I really doubt its software).

Antivirus: Sophos

I've looked at every forum post I could find to no avail. I also contacted ASUS and they said this is not a common problem, and indeed I haven't read anything about it being common with this computer.

I'd really appreciate any help I can get!