Asus G73 on it's last leg with me....

I cant tell you how bad I wanted this laptop, I have owned it for about a year so far, I bought it on ebay for $850 or so... The thing was brand new.

Since day one this laptop has been problematic, but I would "put up" with it because she is beautiful, like a beautiful woman, it's high maintenance.

The list here is what started to happen to me from day one..

stuck pixels all over the screen, (I had the computer for 3 days before I had to RMA it, which was about 7 days turn around time), I then got to enjoy my new computer!

Then, after about a month, my trackpad starts to have a melt down, I then got a rolling ball mouse to cover that. So now I have to use my computer with a mouse, or it's useless.

Now after a few months, the computer decides when it wants to work, as some times it runs smooth like an i7 should, and sometimes everything just freezes up (not responding) is what I read on the open windows... it then take about a minute for it to "catch up" and start working again, and this will go on for some time....

I Have everyhting updates the vbios and such.. At this point I am buying a Mac, I will miss my super cool Asus, but windows 7 or asus or whatever just can't seem to get it right.... I have read through forum post, and can never seem to find the fix to this.. and I think it's crazy I HAVE to use a mouse, I was playing with a macbook pro and LOVED the trackpad...

Any input on fixing the asus would be great, I would re-install windows7 but they dont make it easy since I do not have nay of the DVDs to do so...

 

I believe that ASUS usually has a Partition reserved on the harddrive for reinstalling Windows 7 without the discs....That's what i did with mine..

All you would need is the serial code which should be on the bottom of your laptop. Assuming that it hasn't worn off.

As for the stuck pixels. Perhaps try to gently massage them out. Or find a dead pixel fixer and see if you have any luck.

I wouldn't be able to put up with dead pixels all over the screen lol

 

Sorry to hear about your experience. I've been loving my G73JH for over two months now with no problems.

 

Stuck pixels is obviously a hardware issue.

Applications "stopping responding" is generally driver or disk related. Generally when hard drives die (or shortly before) they start having issues reading data and you get similar issues. I'd possibly look into replacing the hard drive or at least run a chkdsk c: /r to make sure you don't have a lot of data corruption and bad sectors. If you do, get a new drive.

Also, it's not a bad idea to reformat and install a fresh, bloatware excluding, updated drivers/utility application copy of windows. Personally it's one of those skills I think everyone should have. Being able to reload your OS and getting things up and running perfectly and stable means that you can always rebuild if you need to or have something that's not running right.

At this point though, I'm leaning towards a dying/degraded hard drive causing most of your complaints.

 

No I think the HD is fine. The screen was changed out by asus so it looks nice. The last two things that are not working is the trackpad, and the freezing on and off.

 

The trackpad can be fixed two ways, using one of the DIY solutions provided on the forums or asking Asus to replace the TP assembly for that of the G73JW which has two dedicated buttons and a non buggy trackpad. For the freezing, it is definitely fixable on your end. There is indeed a recovery partition on your drive too and you should get rid of the pre-installed bloatware if you haven't done so already.

 

The g73 is note out of warranty. I can not find the recovery partition, its not where a usual partition would be found... There should be a little hard drive icon with a good 20gigs for the recovery... But I can't seem to find it... Let alone the driver disk..

 

Press F10 or F9 repeatedly to enter the recovery. I don't remember which one.

 

Our ubercool forumchick Chastity keeps all that's needed for our beloved G73 on a separate forum right here: G73/74/53 Series Driver and Application Reference
Just download the Windows 7 Premium CD there, and the driverCD if you don't have it.

Here's a handy install guide for the G73 if you would need one: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...lk-through-doing-clean-windows-7-install.html
It keeps the lame programs off your G73

 

I downloaded the NEW trackpad fix, and I think I ran it correctly, rebooted and nope, still quirky...

 

No1UP, AFA the trackpad, one thing that helped me was turning off a lot of the gestures that I never use such as all the multiFinger gestures\and under pointing - momentum and edge motion.

The Hard drive may simply need a firmwareware update to fix stuttering. Do you have the Seagate Momentus XT?

 

how do I find this out?? lol

 

Just go to your device manager (right click "my computer"-"properties"-"device manager") and under "drives" you'll see 2 model numbers.
Just google that name and it'll tell you if it's a momentus or not. This is the drive that came standard in my G73 (and probably in yours to): ST9500420AS Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive | Seagate
the model number is: ST9500420AS

 

The one proven fix for the touchpad is to remove the metallic film from the bottom of the touchpad. Remove the sticky tape and peel it off as it does nothing but cause static interference.

Everyone so far that done this has been met with a perfectly working touchpad including myself. A year of knightmares with it and so far 3 weeks of perfection, even with all the touchpad features working correctly. The metallic film is a waste of time it does nothing to how the touchpad works from what I have seen.

Mechanical hard drives are not good for punching kicking or headbutting during a bad gaming moment. SSD's are most certainly the way forward for angry gamers

 

Where'd you find this ? I'll open up mine soon, so I'd just do this as well while I'm on it. I just need to make sure I get the right part out

 

Stupid me I should have taken pictures of it when I disassembled at the weekend but it works I have had nothing but problem and was reading on a touchpad post the other day and Lion mentioned it and so went for it.

Underside of the top casing which has the speakers and ATK buttons on etc which you remove when the screen comes off there is a metallic film across the touchpad held down by three silver pieces of sticky tape, whip them off gently and peel off the film to reveal the touchpad base. Clean any glue residue and reassemble. You wont see any sticking or random zooming off from the touchpad requiring a restart like before. I can finally game in peace. The theory is that metallic film is causing static to build up and affecting the touchpad and I cannot tell you how good it is to have a fully working touchpad again.

 

Here ya go. Wont let me edit previous post for some reason. That crappy film is the whole problem. No other mod needed just latest drivers.

Hold down the white cable as you peel it off as it may be stuck to it but it will just peel away from it its useless.

 

Well, our new procedure is to remove the tape AND the silver protector, and the underside protector, and remove all the glue. Then replace the protectors and use non-conductive tape.

@no1up: did you ever RMA your unit for trackpad before? (not just the dead pixels) and if so, can I have your RMA #?

 

Chas, if I were to RMA in the Canadian Markham location, would they do what you mentioned above? Is this the standard procedure for touchpad related RMAs now?

 

No, it's not standard yet. We're working on a procedure, which still needs to get approved from Taiwan before it trickles down the chain.

 

No I RMA the screen, in that RMA I told them to check the track pad, they never did... I can send you the RMA number??

 

Chastity,
Question on that... I have removed the tape, and the silver foil, leaving a black plastic underside to the touchpad with an exposed metal area that looks to be some sort of sensor.

Are you saying that the procedure is actually to pull that black plastic piece that's glued to the inner shell under the touchpad off and clean all the glue off before re-gluing and replacing it? My touchpad is so much better than it was initially, but I still have it bug out when/after I'm typing and my palms rest on the edges, so I'm curious if that additional piece is removed.

That plastic piece under the touchpad is actually on there pretty good, so I guess I'm just trying to understand how much actually gets pulled off.

And to explain what I mean by "bug out", I basically mean it seems to get stuck where the pad still feels like it's being touched/held on the edge and I end up zooming windows instead of moving the pointer around.

 

Send me your serial number

yep, get down to the green breadboard and remove glue

 

Chastity,
Thanks so much. I'm going to probably give this a go shortly.

 

Strange I just removed the silver tape and cleaned the black underside and mine has been mint since didnt need to tear anything else off. Maybe I was just lucky

 

Yeah, mine's not bad 90% of the time, but when I type I tend to rest my palms on the edge of mine and it'll get stuck where if I tap the casing a bit things straighten out, but it'll still register where my palm was touching and I'll zoom the screen a bit before it comes back to normal.

Normal usage of the touchpad is perfect compared to how it used to be... Mine was REALLY bad.

Well, I just opened up the beast, and that plastic cover on the green circuit board came off pretty easily. I was afraid during the initial work I did and removal of that silver stuff that the black plastic was actually part of the touchpad. Well, it came off pretty easily and I'm hopeful it's resolved now.

So far so good. Hopefully things are 100% now, but I have high hopes

 

So you have to remove the silver static protector or whatever it is entirely and not the yellow tape alone? I don't use my touchpad at all now. The worst touchpad I've ever used. Period.

 

Yup the yellow tape does not solve the problem I was in the same boat thinking it was that and still having problems.

After removing the silver tape problem solved. :0)

 

And apparently the REAL fix is to go one step further than the foil and removing the plastic cover on the green circuitboard. I had a much improved touchpad after just removing the foil, but now it's PERFECT! I removed the plastic cover last night, and the issues I had previously with the touchpad bugging out after typing is now resolved.

I can say with confidence that my touchpad is 100% fixed now. The issue isn't the touchpad hardware, but all the crap ASUS decided to put on it to "protect/shield" it. Once all that stuff is removed, the touchpad works great.

 

Are the 3 pieces of tape that are visible the ones that cause the touchpad to work funny? I didn't have those three pieces. However, i had some yellow sticky tape below the silver static protector which i removed but my touchpad still does not work properly.

 

I literally pulled everything off of the underside of the touchpad until all that was left was an exposed green circuit board. I then cleaned that to get any sticky residue off, and closed everything back up.

On mine, after I removed the foil cover, there was a black bendable plastic cover on the circuit board. I had initially thought that black plastic was part of the touchpad, but Chastity indicated it wasn't. The black plastic piece is just glued/stuck to the circuit board under the touchpad, and I believe was a major part of why my touchpad was acting up.

As I said, I removed it yesterday evening, and everything is totally perfect now. Removing the foil helped, but I still had periods where the touchpad would bug out after typing due to that plastic cover, but I can't get it to reproduce the problems since I removed it.

 

Please please please do report back after a couple of days how your touchpad works after what you've done. I'd like to do the same but don't have the time at the moment cuz my exams are around the corner. My touchpad worked fine for a week after removing the yellow tape but started acting up slowly after that and has become it's old self now (read buggy touchpad).

 

Well, I'm about 16 hours post fix, and the touchpad has not acted up at all. I'm confident that this fix is permanent. Removing the foil made things considerably better, but I still had some issues when I'd be leaning on the palm rest when typing. I've not been able to re-create that issue though since pulling it apart.

My only issue is that every time I tear my system down, I end up overspraying cleaner on stuff and usually get some in the touchpad internals wet causing things to get unresponsive for a little while until everything dries out. Every time I take the system apart though, my G73 gets a heavy cleaning.

 

The process I follow here is to strip it down to the green breadboard, remove all traces of glue from green board, and the black and silver protectors, and then put them back and secure using the yellow tape they have here.

Well think of it, if the breadboard is coated in glue, and if it absorbs any moisture from the ambient environment (humidity), it should increase it's conductivity, and allow for a circuit with all the solder points. Ergo, crazy trackpad.

Now we just need to get this formalized as a procedure with the Repair Facilities.

 

chaz, you think you are able to help me? I did instruct the people about the trackpad, they did not fix anything...

Or maybe a video instructions on how fix it my self?

 

Where might I get this magical "Yellow" tape?

 

@Flyingfalcon. I had around 9 months of daily sticking, zooming and annoying problems from my touchpad without fail.

In that ^^ picture I removed the 3 pieces of sticky tape you can see, peeled off the silver film gently leaving the white cable where it was and underneith there was no glue or residue in my case the black touchpad underside was completely clean. I left it as it was with the white cable going across it that connects to the touchpad buttons, reassembled and turned everything on in Synaptics.

4 weeks tommorow 0 problems since. 100% perfecto mungo. I guess it might not work for everyone but after trying every possible fix this did for me.

 

Dallers,
Yeah, you cleared down to one step from the green circuitboard. That black plastic cover thingy under the ribbon cables had to go on mine. My touchpad acting up was a result of the edges of that thing not being completely flat against the edges of the circuit board. It's like the edges were coming up and away from the circuit board.

I've left mine completely exposed now, and it's running 100% better since doing that. I suppose there could be some danger having the underside of the touchpad circuitboard exposed, but I haven't seen any need to cover it up and as mentioned my previous annoyances are gone.

 

Is there any place I can go to watch a "how to" for fixing the trackpad.

 

I did mine so long ago I forgot how far I went. I'm pretty sure I just removed everything until I saw the green board. Then cleaned all the glue up on the board and everywhere else with some rubbing alcohol and it's been perfect for months. Oh and I did not put back any tape, just left it as is. Went from being the worst touchpad I've ever seen to one of the best. ^^

 

So you did not stick the silver static protector back?

 

Nope. Left it without it on and just made sure the white/blue ribbon was peeled gently away from it when pulling it off because that must not be damaged it connects to the touchpad buttons. What you see under the nasty looking crumpled silver film is a nice clean and tidy black underside of the touchpad. Or at least for me I did.

It appears others went past just the underside of the touchpad to a green board but I dunno about that I literally removed the film and reassembled thats it for me. Done.

 

Just wondering if the tape removal and glue cleaning has become a standard procedure yet?

Also, if so, any chance of a simple video or pictorial guide on it? Sounds like it's pretty much take everything apart, clean it all down, and put back with non conductive (I presume standard electrical) tape, but would be nice to have a decent guide to give people confidence to do it.

Would save ASUS some RMA's too!

 

I just bought two G74's for the wife and I and hers is having this jumpy trackpad issue. After researching it I'm betting this is the problem she's having.

I'd probably void my warranty opening the box, but would there be any way someone would know that I tried to do this repair myself? I've been looking for Asus authorized repair shops in the Sacramento, CA area, but there don't appear to be any.

I'd rather not send my wife's brand new laptop away for a couple weeks, but I don't want to risk my warranty either...