Asus G73JH - Hardware Unknown Error.. Quite exotic!

Heyas, I have never encountered this before (got only faulty shocked RAM, damaged HDD from fall, burned out GPU which was fixed by baking, faulty screen cables, stuck-up fans, corrupted ToC .. but nothing like this!) so here is the deal:

Device:
Asus G73JH
Intel i7 720QM
3x2 GB DDR3
ATI HD 5870
1x Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200 RPM HDD

Incident:
Got back from work - Press power button - only BLUE lights turn on, DVD drive check, fan check, no screen, no keyboard light, freeze

Troubleshooting:
Opened up
- Pulled all RAM - Result - Same as above Incident
- Put back 1 RAM - Result - Same
- Pulled out ALL RAM and HDD - Got keyboard lights, Blue lights, Boot BIOS screen
- Put back all RAM - Result - As above - BIOS boots all good

So I thought.. HDD is a goner.. after a month of use .. put in Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM 250GB same type, result: Got keyboard lights, Blue lights, boot BIOS, HDD works fine.

Ok so definitely broken drive.. took it out of the bracket, placed in external enclosure and plugged to my ROCK machine via USB - Result - drive detects fine, Read/Write speeds all good, no corrupted data or TOC, no virus.

At this moment.. I go into What-The-Frappucino mode. So I put back the origina hard drive, but into Slot 2.. OS boots up fine, all good. What-The-Frappucino on Power of 2 mode engaged.

Another testing of putting original drive into original socket (bay 1) results in no lights, no boot.

Another test of WD Scorpio blue 160 GB 7200 RPM into original socket (bay 1) results in all Good, boots up fine.

So.. tell me.. What the Frappucino is wrong?

The bay 1 is obviously fine since it reads ALL HDD's and boots them, excluding the original Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200 RPM.
The bay 2 is fine as well, since it boots even the Original HDD
The original HDD is fine since it boots from bay 2 just fine and is readable on other laptops just fine too..

A little help here, please?

-Mel

 

i think it might be a motherboard issue or a drive issue.. if i were u , i'd RMA the drive and get a new one.

 

Yes, I do plan to RMA the drive eventually =)

Update 1:
Quite few people actually have this problem, even with the new A3 model - however they insta-RMA it instead of digging into a problem.. I think I will give the info I got and give local ASUS tech centre a call.

Update 2:
Yesterday, I bought Western Digital Black Scorpio 500gb 7200rpm drive to fit in primary (1) bay and performed disk cloning. Set it as a boot and all works fine..

Hypothesis:
Is it possible that BIOS blocks certain componentID (eg. this particular seagate drive) after it has rendered it dangerous to its operation on one bay? Is there even such sophisticated safe-fail in place?
The Drive is all good and dandy in bay (2) and talks with BIOS like a granny during afternoon tea. Sooo strange..

-Mel

 

Only time might tell this for sure, but what if the voltage is off just enough on bay one that your Seagate doesn't like it, but the other drives aren't as picky? If so, you might fry another drive. Food for thought.

 

The drive in question which "fails to load" in bay (1) is just fine. I am using it in bay (2) and it runs the whole system, games, everything, is healthy (speed fan deep SMART analysis.. not sure how reliable it is..) and no corrupted sectors.

The replacement which was tested was Seagate Momentus, Identical drive, same series, just 250 GB instead of 500 GB, with 0% problems.

I am safe from any loss of data for now, as I have cloned the drive and all is good plus if one of them goes dead, both have extensive warranties and its not really that expensive when one has a proper job

However, Power problem could be the cause.. got 7-port Trust USB hub self powered via AC adap. but all this is plugged into quality APC surgearrest protector..

Damn you, electricity!

-Mel

 

What does your error log report?

 

No error log is generated and neither are any beeps to identify the HW nature of the problem.

The system simply stays frozen, with no boot logo, sound, just Blue light (bottom screen) and blue icons (left top) and power/battery LED's are capable of showing. The keyboard light and screen/External screen are pitch black.

There aint anything to work with on diagnose basis :S

Can only hope somebody will come around with similar problem to uncover a little bit more about this. Or some expert about BIOS/SATA buses as to if it can, for any reason, block out on certain event on certain bus the HDD in question.

Really need to get around to call the tech support.. but they got crap work hours - 9.00 - 17.00 Mon-Fri .. I am at work from 8.00 to 17-19.00 >.>

-Mel

 

Assuming I've read your post correctly, your problem lies with the harddrive correct? If your harddrive is plugged in, no screen at all, no POST, nothing. If you pull your harddrive out, it POSTs fine, you can get into BIOS, etc.

If so, I've had the exact same problem as you. Unfortunately I know nothing of a fix besides putting a new harddrive in. I've tried connecting it to an external monitor and nothing. I just sent it to the service center and they put a new harddrive in and it works fine.

What's weirder for me is that this happens everytime I use the recovery partition to recover my Windows installation.

 

Is the hdd that won't work this: ST9500420ASG (Momentus 7200.4)? I had this exact model. Seatools will report no errors and everything looks fine with it. But I had lots of issues with it. I found out there is a problem with this drive's power management which can and will cause freezes just like the one you are describing. Check it out here.

This can explain why it runs fine when you plug it in another system. If the Asus is somehow triggering the freezing behavior because of a power issue, that's why it would freeze on startup. It also explains why the same model but smaller capacity hard drive works fine. The only way you can really know if it's a combination of the Asus and that particular hard drive would be to test the exact model number in your G73.

So, in the interest of diagnosing, I'll test my "faulty" Momentus if it is the same as yours. Let me know what model you have.

 

Micman, thanks for the link, that explains a lot!

However, my drive is ST9500420AS - lacking the G-sensor for the fall detection. But if this 500GB series in general is power-buggy, that could be it.

Weird is, this hard drive Works just fine and boots the system in Bay 2.. so the culprint could be that both bay 1 is having power issues and that the hard drive is just too oversensitive.

I will let this problem develop itself as I have all backed up and using WD Scorpio so if the system/drive eventually fails, will do RMA.

Cheers for all the info, help and suggestions, its good to have a knowledge base for such rare topic for such common laptop!


-Mel

 

I'm a tad curious if anything new has happened Mel. I love a technical challenge like the one you have, but more so when I can solve it. If you want a head scratcher, you should check out the problem I listed over on tom's hardware. Interestingly, I never fully got an answer to my original question. I know it's not related to yours, but if you enjoy unsolved pc mysteries, you might like this thread. Sorry if I'm hijacking an old thread.

 

Heyas!

Thanks for your interest in this and its ok to revive old thread! Old knowledge is still good knowledge especially relating to such "new" product =)

Current situation:
Primary bay: WD Scorpio Black 7200 RPM 500GB, running OS and Data partition, since the last post all fine and good!
Secondary bay: Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM 500GB (The HDD in question), currently hosting out-dated clone of the system.

So far no problem have been experienced with either hard drive. Sadly, I do not have the 2nd bay mount so HDD is there without any secure. To fix that, I created a 2x2 inch pad made of several layers of Heat-resistant duck tape and affixed it under the Hard drive. Also, between the hard drive, I have sticked 2 heat resistant tapes from cannibalized DDR3 Heatsink so its proper stuff designed for these temperatures. (Xilence heat-sink, its massive, got a copper tube around it which leads to a smaller top head heat-sink and plenty of heat-dissipation tape inside the clamps.. the thing was so cheap that did not feel much pity by cannibalizing it )


Currently, the main problem remains unsolved. And there is still no solution mentioned anywhere. As mentioned above / previously, this has happened many times with Asus G73JH's on BestBuy and people just returned them without investigating.. but cant blame em since this laptop is not exactly a bottle of ice tea.



About the issue you linked. I would definitely give my money on power damage to memory controller as I had couple of RAM based issues on old ACER/Asus laptop. Laptops would either stay black or just boot up and crash and the fault was in short-circuited RAM module. The RAM controller module took damage as well and kept reporting that I had 4096 MB RAM in old DDR 1 laptop which could support only up to 2048. It was reporting that value even with one 512 MB module in. However, that laptop still works today, but with just one RAM module in and have to skip the fact that its showing wrong values..

-Mel

 

Thanks Mel, thats the best theory I've heard yet for sure, and it falls in line with the power supply failure. Before I replaced the power supply the bad one could have damaged anything. I'm glad I got it out when I did, who knows what else it would have electrified.

Sounds like you've created a less than elegant, but very effective way not to buy the extra Asus hard drive bay caddy. I really can't believe they would short us on such an inexpensive part. The things they did to make this laptop more affordable...

If I ever come across a solution I'll be sure to drop it in here. I hope your WD lives a long life!

 

The price for the Caddy is bonkers.. Or at least the postage is.. I wanted to get one however not paying 20-25 EUR/US for a piece of weirdly shaped aluminium.. nope.

I was thinking about simply mounting a piece of that DDR 3 RAM heat-sink under the HDD but I am not sure about the conductivity (electrical) of that material and the Hard Drive so to stay on the safe side, just used the heat-sink tape for now. It does good enough job for a little money!

The joys of DIY IT ..

Its been some time I baked a graphics card.. sigh..

-Mel