ASUS G73sw near death...please help

Hi, I have an ASUS G73sw with an i7 processor, 8 GB of ram, nVidia geForce 460M, and 1TB hard drive space (it's the Best Buy version). It is approximately 6 months old. About a week ago, I was playing a video game on it, when the screen started flickering on and off, and I would catch brief glimpses of my desktop between flickers. Then the screen went black, but the power lights and fans and all that stuff were still on, but the computer was totally unresponsive. Everything would turn off with a brief press of the power button instead of having to hold it down also. Then when attempting to power it back up, lights/fan come on, but Windows won't load.

I was able to band-aid this problem by trial and error; in other words, for some reason it would work when I allowed the battery to die completely, removed the battery and AC adapter, and hold down the power button for about 60 seconds. Then I reinstalled the battery and adapter, and Windows would load. BUT...if I played any games (and sometimes just watching a video file) the problem would happen again, and I would have to repeat the whole band-aid process.

More recently, the band-aid trick doesn't work anymore. Nothing I do will get Windows to load. I have tried using only battery power, using only AC power with the battery removed, I restored BIOS to original settings during one of the times when it actually loaded, swapped the RAM cards' slots, and swapped my HDD from one slot to the other. No change. I also tried some of the tips and tricks on this forum for what to do when laptop won't POST, but nothing has worked so far. I have put in an RMA request with ASUS, but I am on military deployment and I'm not a big fan of shipping my computer off not knowing when I will get it back (the mail system is terrible). So...if you know what is causing this issue, or better yet, a way to fix it without RMA'ing it, I would be much appreciative! Sorry for long post, thanks!

 

When you are restarting the machine are you getting to the "starting windows" prompt and it hangs there, or do you get nothing on your screen at all? With the flickering, I suspected a GPU issue, which would need an RMA. Based on your band - aid fix, however, it might be something completely different. Either way, you will likely have to send the unit in for an RMA based on what I see here.

 

Thanks for the responses, ASUS got back to me with some generic troubleshooting procedures which, unfortunately, didn't help. I will follow up and attempt to get them to authorize an RMA. in answer to your question, Brett, no there is nothing on the screen at all. I am assuming that the laptop won't even POST because it is entirely unresponsive, except on the rare occasion that caps lock/num lock will respond, still with a black screen. I also tried hooking up a separate monitor via HDMI and VGA but neither worked. Oh well, sometimes you get a lemon, I guess. This is my 2nd 'lemon' G73sw though (the first had a column of dead pixels on purchase)

 

Bring it in to BestBuy. Don't they have GeekSquad or whatever?

 

I'm not sure but it might be CPU problem such as overheating.

 

put duct tape on it...

 

Take it to Geek Squad and have them service it under warranty, since it's under 1 yr. Do you have any extended coverage?