G74S Num Lock issue with BIOS 203...

[xxbbcc]

Hi all,

We bought 10 of the G74S laptops at my company becasue we had previous good experience with Asus products. The laptop itself is fantastic: it's built well and it's powerful. It's lucky that we opened one box so far because a few minutes into using it it became apparent that the someone at Asus thought that a Calculator key is more needed on a gaming laptop than a stock Num Lock key.

Now, unfortunately, my company bought these machines not for gaming but for development work and Num Lock is an absolute must. What's worse, the laptop forces an external keybord's Num Lock to be on. Reading some forums we found an arcane workaround: pressing Num Lock on the external keyboard and the Up arrow key - this seems to work most of the time. This made our IT guys laugh in disbelief.

Now, we really like this laptop but have decided not to open the other 9 unless we get official confirmation within 7 calendar days from Asus that the next BIOS update will fix this problem and it'll be out soon. As far as I'm concerned, that Calculator key can be nuked and turned into Num Lock (what it should be). I find it unimaginable that any gamer would want to pull up Calculator during an intense firefight.

If we do not get confirmation and a reasonable timeframe, we'll return all laptops, even though we'd very much like to keep them.

Please let us know.

xxbbcc

[fostert]

Yeah @xxbbcc, 'tis a pain for sure: shortcut keycombos I use for some of my data processing and display programs require the numlock off. If you're using Linux like I am a strange thing happens: upon boot the numlock is actually off (even though the LED is on), and the numpad keys act like the usual insert, home, pgup, pgdown, etc. *until* I press the capslock key: then the numpad behaves with numbers (and the numlock LED light is still on). So the numlock *can* be turned on/off (i.e. its not hopeless...).

In Windows I am not as familiar, but I have read around here that people have used the program NumLocker, a tiny app that toggles the lock keys (num,scroll,caps) on/off, with success.

Everyone here has been waiting for a BIOS fix since I joined the forums in October last year, when ASUS released the 203 BIOS which forces the numlock state on all the time. AFAIK there has been no concrete chatter here about an upcoming release, and with the G75 nearing release ASUS may well have forgotten about the G74 now...

Perhaps a pm to @marshallr here could suggest someone up the ladder to contact?

[xxbbcc]

fostert wrote:
In Windows I am not as familiar, but I have read around here that people have used the program NumLocker, a tiny app that toggles the lock keys (num,scroll,caps) on/off, with success.

Thank you, I'll see if that utility works. I'll also consider writing to higher Asus management.

[xxbbcc]

I'm bumping this since this topic has a limited lifetime.

[xxbbcc]

I'm bumping this since this topic has a limited lifetime.

[57degrees]

I think that if ASUS was going to fix this problem, they would have done it months ago.

I have huge buyer's remorse due to this design defect. I'd return mine if I could.

[xxbbcc]

Thank you very much for the answers (and obviously being completely ignored by Asus staff). We have decided to ship all machines back - we have to pay a restocking fee on the one we opened but seeing the quality of support from Asus we decided to go with that. The other 9 machines were in boxes, hopefully no one will be fooled into buying them.

Moderators: feel free to delete/lock my account, I won't be back. Obviously my company will not buy Asus products in the future.

Best regards,
xxbbcc

[jvspek]

i'm have same issue. i just purchased this computer and i need to travel abroad so dont have much time. any work arounds?

[dstrakele]

See this post by @fostert for the current state of this issue and a possible workaround: http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?11473-G74S-Num-Lock-issue-with-BIOS-203...&p=81060&viewfull...