A must BIOS tweak - you'll love it

[Guest]

[fixup]

I must use hibernation instead of standby to save battery. The problem was: "OQO" show on the screen for quite a while whenever I turn my oqo 02 on. In the BIOS, I saw "StdLo, FastHi" for memory check and I changed it to "FastLo,FastHi". Now my oqo starts MUCH faster, hibernation is almost as quick as standby, love it. Together with my wireless tweak (see my related posts), now my oqo is as handy as I would like it to be.

You must try this, believe me. And you must use hibernation all the time if you don't want a empty battery when you need your oqo. You also need to disable standby to avoid your oqo waking up by itself during sleep.

[hxpii]

What is stdlo for and how does one get into bios? Thanks. 

[fixup]

Hit Fn+BKSP (= DEL) during boot to enter BIOS.

StdLo means "standard memory check for low memory area"; FastLo means "fast memory check for ...".

The initial IBM PC only had 640KB memory (low memory area). Later more memories were added - high memory area.

In the old days, DOS did not have good memory management. If a machine booted up with some bad memory, it may result into serious damage especially if the computer is controlling a big machine. And memory chips were not so reliable back then. So it made a good sense to do full memory test every time a PC is started.

Modern OS has very good memory management and memory chips are far more reliable than before. Therefore, full memory test (slow) is usually no longer necessary. However I must warn you though: due to the excessive heat, OQO's memory chips work in tough environment and are more possible to fail than normal. I saw many such memory failures in the first generation Libretto 50 (Toshiba's UMPC 10 years ago).

[Bungee]

fixup, thanks for sharing, it really seems to help although on a SSD device, coming out of a hibernation is already pretty fast. A really cool tip! 

[jamshah]

Yes it is much faster, thanks for the tip invaluable. Does it affect system stability. Well if you are using this tweak it must be safe! Right?

[fixup]

Glad you guys gave it a try and like it. There is no any stability concern here, nor any other downsides. This is what might happen: if your OQO's memory will become instable (e.g. due to excessive heat and dust), the BIOS might not be able to detect the problem with the fast scan method and Windows will then crash due to the memory failure.

If you'll encounter stability issues in the future, keep this in mind and set it back to full test mode to check your OQO's memory. Then you'll know if your oqo has a broken memory or not before you ask OQO for help.

[dergeograph]

Hi There,
I would like to know how long it takes to start from the hibernate mode in comparison to standby. I gave it a try: standby is about 7 seconds, hibernate about 15 seconds.
What are your experiences?

[fixup]

From press the power button to see the desktop:

Standby - 5 seconds
Hibernation - 12 seconds

I only have Firefox, NHC and XinMouse running. The firefox has 5 open tabs for gmail, rmilk, grandcentral, dictionary and XinNotes. I use hibernation exclusively and I use EVDO only (WiFi disabled) which is usually already reconnected once I see the desktop.

OQO 02, 1.2GHz, 512MB, XP Pro, CPU clock locked to 400MHz.

[hxpii]

Just curious fixup, in your sig it says OQO locked to 400MHz. Does that mean you are running your OQO at 400MHz all the time? Would that even be possible under Vista? Very interesting. 

[fixup]

Yes, by using NHC. If NHC runs on Vista, it should be able to do the same thing. I love 400MHz - my oqo runs cool, battery last longer and the fan is quiet. NHC can also spin down hard drive.

[oqo2ar]

From press the power button to see the desktop:

Standby - 5 seconds
Hibernation - 12 seconds

OQO 02, 1.2GHz, 512MB, XP Pro, CPU clock locked to 400MHz.

This must be an XP thing because my hibernate on VISTA takes at least twice that long to resume with the BIOS tweak.

[saniko]

Y'all, if fixup (I know you from head-fi!  go super macro!) is using a 1.2 ghz OQO 02, it only has 512mb of RAM.  Hibernate loads what's in the RAM on to the hard disk before shutting off.  It would figure that restarting from this would be much faster than the 1gb RAM OQO 02 models.

[stuartguthrie]

Thanks for the tip Fix-up.

Stu

[hxpii]

Y'all, if fixup (I know you from head-fi!  go super macro!) is using a 1.2 ghz OQO 02, it only has 512mb of RAM.  Hibernate loads what's in the RAM on to the hard disk before shutting off.  It would figure that restarting from this would be much faster than the 1gb RAM OQO 02 models.

Ahh that makes sense. 

[sandydlc]

Y'all, if fixup (I know you from head-fi!  go super macro!) is using a 1.2 ghz OQO 02, it only has 512mb of RAM.  Hibernate loads what's in the RAM on to the hard disk before shutting off.  It would figure that restarting from this would be much faster than the 1gb RAM OQO 02 models.

Ahh that makes sense. 

Which is a great reminder for those of us who don't have their OQO configuration listed in your signature line, to get those updated ASAP.  It makes so much more sense to those that read your postings to know whether you're working with the same OS, model, etc.

Sandy