Asus G53SW woes

Ok, so about a week ago I ordered my Asus G53SW from newegg. And I had been relatively happy with it until the screen randomly started freezing.

There first 2-3 times it "froze" (I used quotes because everything was frozen apart from the cursor which odly still moved) I just rebooted the machine with the power button. But the third time, I looked on the web for information and a post about another problem gave me an idea and so I plugged in my tv as a secondary monitor with an hdmi cable and the screen came back to normal. Problem is, a few moments later everytime Id move the cursor it would freeze for a few seconds. So I decided to use the recovery partition (even though it's only been a few days) and now... well the keyboard backlighting isn't working.

Should I RMA the laptop?

 

Try reinstall the ATK driver

 

I just tried that, and it didn't work. Not only that after the computer rebooted (after the repair operation was done) it told me "You have to install the ATKDriver" and then "This program must be run on the Asus computer" and "Could not open ATKDriver in kernel driver mode". The middle one I found to be the most troubling.

EDIT:
I also tried completely uninstalling it and reinstalling it afterwards and it didn't help. What concerns me more than the keyboard issue though is the screen freezing one. I'd hate to have to RMA but then again I don't want to keep using a faulty laptop either.... /sigh

 

Should I rma?

 

I have this same issue! I have tried the drivers, and no dice. I get BSODs too. I would hate to RMA too, especially since I just started college. Are there any logs that we could post that could give some incite? If I leave the screen freeze long enough I get a BSOD.

 

Hah, I just froze -_-.

 

Ok it seems the default lighting level for the keyboard is 0 so toggling it off and on again had no effect, but after hitting Fn+F4 a few times it's now working.

Which now leaves the screen freezing & cursor weirdness issue.

 

The freezing is probably due to a memory issue or software (perhaps drivers).

When you get the BSOD can you copy down the error code and investigate it?

If you have access to another laptop hard drive you could install in the notebook and then re-install Windows from scratch. This shouldn't void the warranty. There are some guides in this forum for doing that.

If the newly installed windows doesn't freeze or have other issues then you know it was software on the original drive. Otherwise it would be time to re-install the original drive and RMA the notebook.

 

I agree with Memory or hard drive. Do as Dual Everything suggested and also i would suggest testing your memory. Get Memtest86 its a free download. You'll have to burn it as an ISO file then boot to it. I would suggest testing one DIMM at a time. Since you're in school and cant be without your computer you can at least isolate the bad stick and take it out so it doenst freeze up on you.

 

I think I may have solved my problem, but I am not sure. I found a copy of Driver Genius, and it turns out I needed 10 driver packages that encompass 19 drivers. The one driver package that had the most drivers in it was a chipset update, along with another chipset update(only one driver though). If you can find a copy of driver genius your self you might wanna see. I had updates for things I didn't know needed them.

I tried standby mode last night and I left the computer running(I fell asleep with it on) and no waking up to a BSOD. I am gonna test further today with hibernate when I close the laptop lid.

If I get another screen freeze I am gonna mem test the stock ram stick that is on the inside of the computer, I think that's the one with issues and I can just swap it for the other stock one I took out and see if that helps. If not I am gonna have to RMA the other ram I purchased if they give off errors in memtest.

EDIT: Spoke to soon, but I would like to note when I would get a BSOD I would investigate and one of them was related to the hard drive, I just remembered. How would I investigate that further?