[SOLVED] Asus G51J BSoD thread - part 2

IF YOU HAVE A G51J, READ BELOW BEFORE POSTING

we have confirmed 207.T10 as a fix to the BSOD. 208 looks promising as well.

unofficial BIOS 207.T10: http://www.gentechpc.com/Asus/G60J207.zip (G51J and G60J only, thanks GenTech)
official BIOS 208: http://dlsvr04.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/G60JAS208.zip (G51J and G60J only).

/READ

THERE IS NO FIX YET FOR THE G51JX. NAG ASUS ABOUT IT AND HOPEFULLY IT WON'T TAKE 3 MONTHS.

for contributions, http://g51jbsod.wikia.com/wiki/ASUS_G51J-A1_0x124_BSOD

this thread is a continuation from http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=430541.

 

upgrading to xp lol, why don't you upgrade to win98

 

Thanks for doing the thread, right now I am a bit sick hehe. So I can't think or do much...

Let's hope we can find a solution to solve the BSOD.... Without having to return to Windows XP.

So far, I am with BIOS 205, new Nvidia drivers 195.62, new intel chipset drivers, new P4G and I still get BSOD in Borderlands. No other game to date has given me problems, including Left 4 Dead 2 that apparently is the cause of BSOD to several users.

 

driver support was cut out

here's what i suggest we start:
- the serial numbers (partial) from the bottom of the motherboard
- a running total of how many are affected

if anyone wants something added to the top, let me know either here or via PM. hopefully google will update to point to here instead of my old one.

edit1: i should also add that i've watched about 4 hours of cod4 (myself in my mp server) without bsod. this also goes with my unnaturally low temp card (600/1000/1500 only gets to 97c in furmark with all stock cooling. 3dmark has stuttering issues on sm2 tests, so the score stays around 10k. but 97c... ?!)

edit2: instead of bumping, added a "what we can be trying" category

 

Might I humbly suggest making a wiki for this somewhere like wikia.com. It would keep the thread clean for discussion and have the obvious benefit of crowdsourcing without requiring an editor to update every detail.

 

if anyone wants to do that, they are by all means welcome to copy what i wrote.

 

http://g51jbsod.wikia.com/wiki/ASUS_G51J-A1_0x124_BSOD

Please freely edit this article - that is the whole point. You do not need to register to edit the article.

Edit: OK it's populated with thalanix' post. Please feel free to do whatever you want to this article. I am not trying to maintain it. And yes, there is a typo in the name. I'm trying to get that resolved... Edit2: Typo fixed by wikia admin.

 

Best of luck folks. I think it was a good idea to consolidate the info you have and start fresh from there.

 

I brought a point leading to this speculation when PMing thalanix.

Can we perform tests regarding this? Like we can pin down that D3D 11 in Win7 is the major problem on this BSoD issue.

 

As I already said in the last thread.

Is there not a way to make Windows 7 ignore/fix this issue? Didn't someone post that Linux fixed it itself?

 

Sort of, it's the same deal basically with XP. It's a question of where that is happening -- whether it's at the BIOS level, in terms of the OS string reported, or the actual driver itself, and then which driver we're talking about, which could be anything from the chipset driver to the ACPI/ATK drivers, possibly but not probably the nvidia driver, or a part of the OS itself like the kernel. I'm no good with the windows kernel, and that is really making me sad because I can't pinpoint the issue. My speculation earlier was that it's a power management issue since w7 has new power management features, but it could be anything in between the OS and the hardware.

 

Just a few extra stuff to add to the first post:

running borderlands on win7 using winxp-sp3 compatibility mode did not fix bsod

personally running system restore to a day earlier fixed steam lockups though there may be a beter solution

there was a post about asus saying it was related to conflict with network card though this seems to have been swept under the rug

 

Additional "fix":

Disabling AA in games reduces frequency of BSOD

And it's worth mentioning that all the "fixes" listed are helpful and until the real fix is available they are here to help reduce BSOD/freeze number/day

I downgraded to XP (dual boot from second HDD), Windows 7 installed first.
It was more painful than I expected: nLite has problems of its own - I reverted to XP + SP2 + iaStor.sys drivers, XP+SP3 was no go for me (lsass.exe error), upgraded to SP3 later and now it works perfect...

Asus should publish drivers for XP on their support web site, XP is still the most popular OS.

 

+1 when possible. i'll update my post once or twice a day based on what we have in the article.

maybe it's just me, but this system seems a lot more sensitive to stripping stuff with nlite. nothing on a core install+drivers.

 

I can't run GTA4 from steam software, i can't get working steam - it doesn't connects to internet - i hate steam - so i cracked nicely GTA4 with Razor crack.

Is power4gear hybrid 1.1.22 the newest??
P4GHybrid now = Version V1.1.26 - in (support.asus.com/download/download.aspx)

I played GTA4 on saturday for 1 hour - without crash.
I will try some other day to play it for 3-4 hours.

I think that G51J does not overheat, because if i leave this laptop with loaded game for whole day - no crash. Even if i run FurMark for 9 hours- no crash.
Problem may be with 64 bit and/or DirectX 11.

 

yea, 1.1.26 is newest.
for the LAN driver, check post 8 in the old thread.

i suggest splitting the 'what we know' section to include an 'affected games' category.

 

I've been reading this post (the 140+ page) for the last couple days. Thought I'd chime in. I got my G51J early December. I've so far only had time to play one game, Fallout 3 and have had about 4 BSODs... but rarely do I play longer than 2 hours at a time. I didn't realize BSODs were an issue with this notebook at the time so unfortunately i didn't note the error codes and I just rebooted hoping it wouldn't happen again.

I haven't had a BSOD for a couple weeks now though but do not believe it to be related to something I've done.

Currently running BIOS 205, 195.62, R239, new P4G, and newest chipset from intel. By the way, the only reason I updated the BIOS and chipset were wrt to an unrelated issue when syncing my iPhone. I hadn't got the BSOD for a week or so prior to doing this and I still haven't gotten one for a little while.

Consequently, I don't know if this could be related, my hot key buttons constantly malfunction. I took me forever to install the ATK stuff in the right order to make them all work and now for some reason the Splendid hotkey doesn't want to work anymore... can't figure it out. Could shoddy engineering with respect to the hotkey architecture be causing the issues? Really the motherboard and frame are the only differences between this and other similar notebooks.

 

what would be really useful too is if the wiki could have a section added with links to every current download, e.g. bios, p4g, nvidia, intel, etc
edit: i added a section for links but not the links themselves since i'm not certain i'd find the best ones someone please update it

 

How is your DPC latency guys? I noticed that a very high DPC latency while playing games may lead to BSOD in Win7. In Vista only creates sound freezing/looping.

 

Hate to reference the old thread but this post seems important. Is the bsod for all games doing this same thing "'Kernel-Power" in event viewer or just borderlands?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5719638&postcount=1405

 

I've noticed the higher latency issue leading to BSOD's more as well. As long as I play on servers that are near me geographically, I haven't gotten any Bsod's while playing BF2, the only game that continually gave it to me. I haven't tested this out fully as I've only been playing on servers that have worked in the past, but I did notice that when it did BSOD my ping was absurdly high and I wasn't on geographically local servers.....

 

I will agree that trying to join a higher-latency multiplayer game on borderlands more often yields a sooner bsod. However, that doesn't really explain why it does it in singleplayer...

 

to the ATK problem: is that with the keyboard lights as well? (if it is, use the keyboard thread somewhere back)

to the driver links: i added them to the links category, as well as making 2 separate ones.

fixed some spelling as well in the main page

 

I have some updates on BSOD from Asus:

"As for the BSOD , headquarters has indicated
that the Call of duty modern warfare game will crash when using the
pirated version but with the retail version it works fine in single
player, however they have not tested multiplayer yet, which they will do
once we get a steam account for testing. "

I am not sure if that's true but that's what headquarters said.

 

thanks for the update.
asus makes me cry


wiki updates: changed the links cat to link to the links section (o dear...), as well as gathering a list of updated drivers. if anyone finds p4gh 1.1.26, add those in.

 

I must disagree - single player works just fine in pirated version, only multiplayer is affected. I played many hours of single player (I wass finishing this game on diffrent difficulty levels) and I had no single BSOD. In multiplayer it happened couple of times during 2 days of gaming.


Edit: I was talking about MW2, but I had the same situation with CoD: MW - no BSOD in single, many in multi.

 

All my Fn+keys work just fine. I'm talking about the three lighted hotkeys next to the power button.

Edit: I don't care if the splendid key works or not (the leftmost hotkey) in fact i wish laptop manufacturers would stop adding hotkeys all over the place. My point was maybe the BSODs are related to this somehow... just throwing it out there.

 

As I know so far, I've played COD4 MW single player in hardened mode without any problem and now play it again in veteran mode. Mine is a pirate version and I haven't had any Bsod yet. I can't test it in multi player due to bad connection speed.

 

Try retail version to see if it make any difference and I'll let them know.

 

I have the retail version and I've finished hardened and veteran modes with out a single issue. I played 6~7 hours left the machine on over night and continued next day no problems.

When I enter multiplayer I've stared to expect a BSOD after an hour.

 

Thanks, I'll let them know and as you can see on the email they send me they'll test multiplayer soon.

 

Intro: I have been reading the old thread and now this thread since day one and have contributed to the ASUS forums (not very productive). I got my G51j from newegg 2 days after the system was released and started noticing the very random BSODs in games like Borderlands and COD4 (all my games are legit). I've tried everything short of downgrading to XP or swapping out hardware.

Just a couple points for now...

One thing I've noticed is people tend to blame or look at the ASUS software as a possible cause of the BSODs; however, many people have done clean installs of Win7 without any ASUS software and still noticed the BSODs. So, I don't know how much different versions of the software will help, let alone having it installed or not. I believe this also goes for the Creative software (which IMHO is useless and can cause issues in other ways).

Also, in no forum have we ever got a clear indication of how many users have the BSOD problem and it never really helps when a person says "Well it works for me" and then runs off into the ethersphere. Although I'd like to say "a lot" of G51j's are affected, I just don't know. Maybe a permanent poll on the wiki could help (if able).

Anyway, I love having a wiki now and look forward to contributing on this forum.

 

I'm chiming in. It's best to also let us know if you have a hardware modified system.

I'm running the stock G51J-A1, purchased from BHphoto video on December 23rd, 2009. My laptop came with a Asus branded Razor Gaming mouse, and two Asus branded laptop backpacks, no copy of Batman Dark Asylum. It was loaded with the 204 bios from the factory.

After getting the computer, I deleted all partions, and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. I'm assuming that Windows installed some of the drivers, and I installed whatever other drivers were on the CD. At no point did I install the Creative Software. I installed an external wifi driver for my wifi adapter, and I have both the ethernet port and built in wifi disabled.

I have steam installed, newest client, with COD:WAW BSOD'ing. The BSODs used to come after 30+minutes of gameplay, but now they usually come much sooner. At the recommendation of the previous thread, installed the newest Power4Gear Hybrid. I also installed the newest Realtek Package 2.40. I installed two different drivers as well. 195.62 (latest stable) and 195.82 (latest Beta) but none solved the 124 BSOD. Whatever important Windows 7 updates were shown in Windows 7, I installed; the drivers through Windows 7 update too. I tried doing all sort of power settings, including the Windows 7 high performance option, the regular Power4gear high performance, and the turbo, and extreme turbo options.

The hotkeys near the power button don't seem to do anything, other than blink, when my finger is pressing them. The hotkeys on the keyboard work, so my light settings are controlled via keyboard shortcuts.

According to windows, I have Asus P4G Hybrid version1.1.26, Atheros Communications Inc. Ar81 family gigabit/fast ethernet driver 1.0.0.7, Asus Virtual Camera 1.0.17, ATK Generic Function Service 1.00.0008, ATK Hotkey 1.0.0050, Java 6 update 7 1.6.0.70, Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (8.0.56336,8.0.59193), Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64) 8.0.56336, Firefox 3.5.7, NB Probe, Nvidia Physx 9.09.0814, OpenAL (newest), Punkbuster Services (0.986), Realtek RTL8187 WLAN Driver (1.00.0000 my external wifi adapter), Widcomm Bluetooth software 6.2.0.9600.

Call of Duty World at war is at the newest version due to steam's auto updating function. My bios has been upgraded to 205. As of late, if my game slows down all of a sudden, I know a bsod is coming.

And a screenshot of my resources in action:

 

does it slow down to ~25% of normal performance?
that's what's happening on SM2 tests on 3dmark06. didn't have this on the old system, and there's no problem with the CPU or GPU clocks dipping (which is odd, as on the old one the stutters were caused by CPU dropping when GPU usage was too high).

after some time with asus, i got my g51j back with a replacement motherboard. but this doesn't seem to be the regular mobo...
- adjusting keyboard lights does not work via hardware, even on an original install
- nvidia settings do not apply _at all_ on xp and win7 even though i installed everything the same way
- the card i have runs as cool as my old one, but with a 20%+ overclock.
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q228/HoldFire/furmark_000001.jpg
http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q228/HoldFire/furmark_000002.jpg
there is also very little to no wattage noise.

the reference frame in CoD4 (broadcast overlooking parking lot) confirms, on the same settings it goes from 56 to 72fps. temps never go over 91c and the fan never spins up to max.


anyways, i know ryzeki tested with the 150w adapter so it most likely isn't at the power brick level, but what if it was the power distribution on the mainboard? the stuttering is most likely a drop in power, and it would explain why it happens before the BSoD.

 

My system is stock clocked, so however it comes, it is. As for the slowdown, I would say it stays at 25% performance for a split second, then goes normal, and then goes BSOD with a loud annoying noise while it begin to do a dump. And it used to do a hang after BSOD with the republic of gamers boot screen, but I'm pretty sure that the 205 Bios stopped that from happening anymore. The servers I join show up as 25-50 ping max, so when I join the game, it does a small lag when picking teams and weapons, then it goes in game. What I've noticed, is that if I wait, and don't sprint (shift button) in game, crouching and walking instead, the slowdown and bsod doesn't seem to happen, but I am a sprinter, not a camper so I eventually start sprinting. Higher populated places of battle seem to make it worse. I've tried playing with no Anti-Alliasing, but it didn't change a thing. My settings are as follows:

1920x1080, 2x AA, No shadows, Bullet simulation on, Dynamic Foilage on, ocean simulation on, Bilinear filtering, no syncing, no sli, extra textures on.

I don't know if we can exclude networking as the issue, since I am using an external wifi adapter, but the hardware wifi switch must be on, despite the WLAN and built in wifi being software disabled. Also, if I play with the hardware switch, I must use the keyboard shortcut FN + F2 as well to turn wifi on after I have switched it.

Do you get BSOD's now in these games?

 

8 hours or so of CoD4 since saturday. rest of the time was spent restoring ubuntu/win7/xp.

the higher i clock mine, the longer the 25% performance stays (in 3dmark), so my score is ~9800 every time. sm3 is up to 4700 or so, as it only happens in sm2. doesn't happen in games either (so far).

if the lag at the beginning is stuttering every few seconds and goes away after a minute or two, i (and groceries) have that as well. it is unique to this model as i didn't have this issue using the exact same binaries on the desktop.

the stuck at boot screen bug reminds me of when i was oc'ing my desktop 4890 and it would lock up+auto restart. p5q pro + e8400 (4.45GHz). don't recall it happening here (i've been using xp for most of the time).

 

Thalanix, you should post the serials on the replaced parts to the Wiki if you find it working without BSODs. I'd happily send mine back for an RMA if the new parts work.

 

don't know if this is related,but I took a look at sixdust task manager. his system under image name only uses 80k while mine uses 232k. why is sixdust using so little resources for his system?
FYI: never bsod before, which caused me to think his system should use more resources than 80k, like around 230k.
can anyone with bsod confirmed they use 80k or 230k under system?

 

my system falls right in the middle with 112. unlikely.

uploading the shots to the wiki atm.

 

but don't you use xp which has different architecture than window 7.

 

I just checked mine, its using 60k browsing the web and a few back ground programs up.



I haven't BSOD on any of the games I've played.

 

for now, windows7 until the first BSOD.

photos are up on article talk page.
i wouldn't call it working, the keyboard backlight hotkeys refuse to work, as well as forcing 3d settings via nvidia. probably related to the new mobo, as i didn't change anything with my systems.

edit: article talk page, not main. my mistake.

 

I've been following this thread for a week now trying out the various fixes I've seen mentioned without much avail. Hopefully my 2 cents will help others, smarter than me, fix this problem.

I'm running a stock G51j with the 204 BIOS, newest Nvidia beta drivers, the 2.40 realtek drivers and the intel drivers mentioned on the last several pages of the 140 page post.

The two games I've been playing a lot lately are Dragon Age and CoD 4.

I run dragon age at full HD (1920x1080) without any issues. Maybe 2 freezes in 2.75 runs through the whole game. It would not BSOD like others have mentioned it would just freeze.

However, in CoD 4, I get the BSOD in Multi-player only (124 error one). It used to be just when I host a game at full HD that it happened, but now if I'm running 1920x1080 with everything on except AA and shadows I still crash occasionally. Setting the resolution to 1280x720 has not resulted in a BSOD yet.

I love my asus book and I would love to see this problem resolved. Thanks to everyone who is working on it...I appreciate your time, effort, and diligence!!!

Grendelin

 

Some more news to report. Everquest2 testing complete. Found my previous solution to be working given user follows my instructions precisely, contact me directly for help. This particular notebook had no conflicts other then an outdated version of openal.

Currently testing dragon age on a users machine who was reporting bsod stop 124. Found that users machine was exibiting bsod rarely outside of games as well. this machine also was unable to complete a pass of 3dmark. upon a fresh load of windows and all base drivers 3dmark worked after openal install. So far definitely user error / soft conflict was present. i suspect more then one soft issue was affecting this user. I also suspect more then one soft issue affects many users which explains the wide array of issues. will have results for a few more games tweaked by me. More progress to come. I have had a few users here contact me. most are not good candidates for testing however a few turned out to be very good gineau pigs. I can feel it i am close! If you are experiencing bsod in mw2 and ARE using retail non pirated version please contact me directly

 

If you're talking about the NT Kernel & System like what is highlighted on his screenshot...mine is at 68 K right now. I just booted up about 15 minutes ago, and all I've done is start IE and browsing a few forums like this one. Stock windows 7 installation, only game even loaded on this laptop is WoW, and I've removed the majority of the ASUS software...just kept the stuff I needed like some of the ATK drivers, fastboot, winflash, P4G hybrid (stock one), and the AI Recovery Burner.

 

geared2play, can you turn on your msn sometime? I'm sure i'm not the only one who'd like to get in touch for testing/fixing, but you're ofline there, wven when showing as online here...

 

i have been online from 9 am eastern and just about to disconnect for a few hours while i go home and eat dinner. i am on from 10-7 eastern every day xept weekends even on weekends i am mobile for atleast better part of the day and can be reached via mobile messenger. if my status is off i am likely on unless its during sleep time

 

ah i guess i must have just missed you a few times then, ohwell getting late now so i guess i'll have to try again tomorrow

 

and after 10 hours of CoD (mp, crossfire), i got hit by a BSOD. not conclusive yet, i can't find the bugcheck message and there's a chance that it's due to the oc'ing. dropped to stock and playing on.

edit: unfortunately this is conclusive. hit by my good friend the 0x124 PCI-E stop twice, second time just now after only 5 minutes.
getting a bad board twice in a row is extremely unlikely, and this is on a stock asus install.
making the changes on the wiki...

 

great news! i have tested 2 games on 2 systems which prior to me had consistent bsod and now do not have any. i am looking for a 3rd game (cod mw2). once i get the 3rd game working i will have without a doubt absolved asus from responsibility here. everquest and dragons age are now off the list and have been ruled out from bsod caused by bad bios or whatever the haters here pointed fingers at. all the info and help are directly with me. contact me if you want to be my next gineau pig.