A load of problems with an Asus G73JH-TZ08

Hello guys and first I want to thank you for your tremendous help in bringing my G73 at least partially in order. Some of the topics here, like this one, really helped me out a lot with my incredibly buggy Asus G73. On to said problems.

First of all, the right speaker doesn't work. When I test the sound system, sound for the right speaker comes instead from the subwoofer (!). Annoying, but not enough of a reason for me to RMA it and live without a computer for 2-3 weeks. However if there is a way to fix it, please let me know.

My bigger gripes however are the random reboots and blue screens I started getting after I updated the BIOS to 211 (VSOD issues) and the vBIOS to beta. This occurs absolutely randomly and since the last one the laptop needs FIVE MINUTES (!!) to boot and after it does it performs at times very sluggishly and, on top of that, refuses to open a partition of my hard disc. It's there, I can see it in My Computer, I just can't either right or left click on it or the laptop goes bananas. I can access the other two partitions, only this one is a no-no. I tried to reinstalling Windows, but it took the laptop literally 40 minutes (!!!?!) to get to the screen where you choose where to install Windows and after another 10 minutes of thinking informed me that there is a 0x80070057 error. Is there any way I can fix this? And wiping out the HDD is an absolute no, exactly the inaccessible partition contains files that are very important to me.

EDIT: Another problem I forgot - my video card works at 500/1000 mhz and I have no idea how to OC it. Should I update the vBIOS again and which version should I use?

 

First I would suggest trying to create an image of the 'bad' partition to an external hard drive or LARGE usb stick with windows backup or Free Backup Software: Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Edition - Overview.
My OS partition is 35 GIG and takes about 20 minutes to backup with paragon to a USB 2.0 hard drive.
Updating to 211 does not create or fix video issue that I am aware of.
I hope there are no spelling mistakes here that JamesD has to correct.
Tijo has provided a link for the VBIOS in this post http://forum.notebookreview.com/8216949-post66.html
Once the Vbios is updated the version (from hwinfo64) will be 012.020.000.032.038352

 

I will try backing it up that way, although at the moment I dont have an external HDD big enough for the job. And I still won't be able to access it. Then there is the bigger problem - the laptop needs 5 minutes to start! When I boot it in Safe Mode it gets stuck on classpnp.sys and stays there for several minutes, if that's of any help.

As for the BIOS - before I updated the BIOS and vBIOS the laptop would freeze when I press fn+Esc and it had that wonderful VSOD thing. But no Blue screens and no HDD problems.

 

Sorry If I misunderstood the initial post. Try boot with one stick of RAM removed (I assume you have 4 sticks). Then retry boot with a different one removed. This will at least rule out a ram issue.
There are some solutions posited here PC Hangs on Boot And on Safe mode at CLASSPNP.SYS, Setup-fix not work - Windows 7 Forums
I would start with the suggestion in post 2

BTW does your system have 2 physical hard drives?

 

According to the shop I bought it from the laptop was supposed to have 1 HDD and one slot free. I open it up to try doing this RAM trick nd guess what - turns out there are two. And what I thought was just a partition was actually another hard drive that seems to have failed. Which still sucks because I really have some important things on that HDD, but at least I know what's wrong with it. Thanks for the help and sorry to lose your time with such a trivial problem