ASUS G53SW problems :(

hi guys, i want your opinions.

I am having a startup issue that i suspect is hardware related...

When i start up, i get a completely black screen after the windows logo bit (where its loading the drivers). BUT this doesnt happen all the time, maybe like like 60% of the time. I have to manually power off, select start windows normally and it will boot up fine afterwards.

what do u guys think? I tinkered around with windows 7 services (using blackviper's "safe" services tweak) but same thing.

I may have to RMA this POS laptop, but i dont really want to because i dont have a spare and shipping this 8 pound brick is a pain. However, i live in markham and i heard there is a asus walk in repair centre near bloor/yonge?

I have upgraded the ram and hard drive to a ssd, do i need to take those out and put the old hdd back in when doing a repair?

thanks! Not really happy with this laptop... i brought it about a month ago and my 2 year old dell studio was much more stable. screen quality is pretty bad too lol

 

What do you mean by black screen? Is the screen on and blank or is it off?

Do you hear the normal Windows start-up noises?

Also, what is wrong with the screen? It should be 1080 and looks pretty great.. Though you may have a slightly different model than me.

Edit: As long as you see the windows logo, it should not be a hardware issue. This means that your OS is found, is being read, and the GPU and screen are all working correctly. It could be just taking a long time to boot into Windows. This can be caused by a slow hard drive (5400 rpm or less), a clutter of start-up programs, or from waking from sleep/hibernate/etc.

If sometimes you see and hear nothing when everything lights up, it could be a number of hardware issues.

 

1 - Run CHKDSK and delete all unnecessary files
2 - Run MSCONFIG and uncheck all unnecessary items in the "Start up" tab (if you're uncomfortable with either, contact me as I do in-home computer repairs, and I have the same laptop.)
3 - Uninstall old versions of JAVA (you only need JRE 7).
4 - if the above fails to fix anything, go to 80 Cochrane Ave at Hwy 7/Woodbine.

 

Did it have these issues with the original hard drive? Test it with that and see what happens.

Run Memtest on the memory, and what RAM did you upgrade to?

What SSD did you upgrade to and are you running the latest firmware?

I am seeing a lack of details in your post to help us help you.

Asus can diagnose your laptop, but don't be surprised if they blame the components you upgraded in your system.

In the meantime, tell us the whole story so we have a better idea of what is going on. Were these issues present with the factory stuff installed? Did this only start happening after the upgrades?

 

the screen is off. i never really noticed this before but after the windows logo your screen turns off for a brief second before turning back on to the log in screen / welcome screen. its getting stuck on the windows screen off. the power and other leds are still on tho.

screen is 1080p, but the colors are kinda white-washed. the blacks are kinda like light grey. i put in my agility 3 so hard drive is pretty fast, and yeah i disabled unnecessary start up programs. (besides those only start up after u get into windows, which doesnt apply to my case).

thanks for all the replies though, really appreciate it. I will run chkdsk and see the results.

 

I had a similiar problem when I upgraded my RAM and SSD. I upgraded my RAM to 16gb of Patriot DDR3 1333MHz 3 months ago and upgraded to a Kingston 128gb SSD a couple of weeks ago. During the SSD installation, something happened and a small piece of plastic got lose and scratched one of the pins on one of the RAM modules (I don't really even know how that was possible). The symptoms were the same as yours: it would work half the time and the other half I would either get stalled out boots or flat out BSODs.

I ended up taking the laptop apart, removing ALL of the RAM, and then incrementally adding the sticks back in and running memtest each time to figure out which was the culprit. After I removed the faulty stick, the system worked normally again.