Asus G73JH-TZ062V (G73JH-A2) HDD Bay issue

Heyas everybody,

I am happy owner of G73 for solid 7.5 months and I am starting to bunch-up several issues on my lappy.

1) Original stock Seagate drive doesnt work in Primary Bay. It just doesnt - it wont register in BIOS. However, it works just fine in Secondary Bay and I can get standard SMART data from it.. It also works just fine in other laptop and external enclosure

2) Screen flickers. Randomly, very rarely, screen does flicker in vertical, indicating either issue in GPU, cable or perhaps magnetization issue on the way from HDMI cable to external monitor (Cable is Belkin, Shielded and other cables around are shield too).

3) Last week, I have encountered a series of "deal-breaking" issues. The primary bay is now dieing all together - instead of the stock Seagate drive, I have put in Western Digital Scorpio Black 7200 rpm, 500GB drive. 3 times now, the system BSOD'd and the drive disappeared, had to be MANUALLY detected in BIOS and then placed in boot options. It works fine after this thou until BSOD happens again. The Original Seagate has been replaced in Primary bay by that WD 4 months ago just to get it chronological correct.

Temperature wise, the laptop is one of the rare pieces with running 78 celsia max on heavy load (BF 2 max-ed out, Supreme Commander 2 heavy, Adobe Photoshop HDR processing, WoW Ultra settings + HD movie on another screen).

Upgrade wise, using Stock Windows 7 64Bit Home Premium, bloatware removed mostly, Stock ATI drivers, Stock BIOS, Stock vBIOS.
No upgrades done on HW excluding the Hard Drive change + external monitor.
The Turbo mode is turned on, however, as mentioned before, temperature is stable and low.

HDD has been cloned for full backup so its ready to go if needed..

Possible Options:
Update BIOS
Update drivers (doubt that would fix anything thou..)
RMA (if not possible to repair, there are no more of these ATI-GPU laptops available in my country, only the Nvidia ones, so that would mean cash-on hand which I dont prefer)


I am open to any recommendations within limits. RMA process is quite easy in our country, we get free collection delivery plus quite large repair center in the country (Czech Republic) and my warranty is backed-up by the most reliable and solid IT shop in the country (ALZA), so if it comes down to this, I can live through but I would rather avoid this.

Also, there are about 2 other topics regarding similar issue ( ) but no solution posted.

 

Anyways, don't use TwinTurbo, it worsens the performance.

Now for your fixes.

1) What BIOS version are you on? If its below 209/211, I suggest updating to 213. You can check this with HWINFO32

2) You should update to v93 vBIOS found on Chastity's thread in the ROG forums (there's a link on her sig too), and install either ATI 11.2 modified mobility version drivers , or 11.4 RC2 mobility version to see if it helps with your external monitor flickering issue.

3) You should install the latest Intel Chipset Drivers with the -overall parameter and also install latest Intel Rapid Storage Drivers. These can be found in intel drivers pour chipsets (under chipset and matrix storage manager)

 

1) Yeah, BIOS update is on schedule for me. Will pop in 213 from ROG site and deploy via FAT 32 USB 4GB thumb drive via in-BIOS EasyFlash (or should I go via WinFlash?)

2) I've done BIOS update on Asus MB before, but never on GPU chipset. I will check Chastity's thread for info, thanks for heads up.

3) This is quite some news to me. Would have thought that HW like bay communication and data transition from SATA controller would be affected just by BIOS update. I guess I am ment to run these via batch command since you put -overall in there.

Thanks for the info, been a while I've been on these forums and evidently this laptop's issues have developed into new SW patches.

Cheers,
-Mel

 

Use ASUS Ezflash with a FAT/FAT32 Thumbdrive. Flashing in Windows in with WinFlash is doable, but not advised. If you do use WinFlash, make sure you're using the latest version, or you'll brick.

 

Had a similar issue with drive detection when trying to install my new SSD.

In the primary bay the SSD would not show up in bios or in windows when in AHCI mode.

It did however show up fine in IDE mode.

Did bios update and tried the restore to default trick (something you need to try if you did not already is reset bios to default and reboot) none of those worked.

However if I swapped the drives and put the SSD in the secondary slot and the HDD in the main slot it worked fine. So I just had to change the boot order in the bios and I was fine after that, just a strange behavior.

 

Will do the BIOS update with Easyflash then, Thanks Frosty! =)

@Vicious: It is indeed strange behaviour and even more so that it happens with the default Seagate drive provided with the G73! Thats like buying a car which doesnt work with its engine but you have to buy a new one, different brand :S

Will do those updates one by one and see the results. May take a week to notice the change (no BSOD, flickers) due to their frequency of occurance.

Again, thanks guys for help with troubleshooting!

-Mel

 

I am back with more news:

Nothing helped
BIOS/vBIOS updated, Intel drivers for HDD's updated, temps are very low and HD tune reports no issue with HDD, no virus with NOD32 and Microsoft security essentials..

I still keep getting BSOD's, once/twice a week.
The latest one (5 mins ago) was during:
1)installing Crysis 2
2) having Webex business conversation
3) browsing Google chrome (11 tabs open)
4) Skype

Thats all.. my work laptop can manage the same without any issue, let alone this "beast" of a laptop G73!

Any more suggestions please?
I guess its coming close to RMA

-Mel

 

http://pcaudio.ath.cx/stuff/infinst_auto.exe

Download and run it with default settings... should force update all Intel INF drivers.

 

Ok, just tried installing that and it caused a crash.

Also just tried installing Crysis 2 alone and it caused crash (from virtual disc).
So it seems the issue is Software after all

Gonna switch to safe mode and use the patch, hopefully that will cur it..
Thanks, Mel

 

This sounds like a hardware issue to me.
Get back to us and let us know if the drivers do anything.

 

I was about to write a post here about the results when I got BSOD..

Nothing was running, just this single window of Google Chrome.
As you can see, no BIOS, drivers and such updates helped.

Gonna make a copy of HDD again and pack it up. Its RMA time. *sigh*

I wanted the best laptop on market and care-free one to that. All the previous laptops I had to fix, tune and work around with myself.. I want my bloody laptop-vacation!

-Mel

 

What's your vbios version? Have you done a fresh install? Are you running trend antivirus, mcafee or norton?

ps. in your sig, it's an i7-720QM, not an i7q720m.

 

Right, I "solved" The problem - I moved the primary HDD to secondary bay and the unused original Seagate to the primary bay.

Result?
The BIOS is once again able to detect Seagate HDD and my primary OS disk works flawlessly, with all the issues removed.

IS THIS SOLUTION? No, the BIOS controller for primary bay is possibly damage or corrupt thus RMA is still the only option.

This is not software nor HDD related issue but rather motherboard. There is no physical damage to neither of the bays (no dents, scratches, cracks, plus it detects HDD's) but rather BIOS issue (got the latest stable v213 version now)..

I would like to thank Everybody who contributed to this thread and gave their brains out to help me through this issue, this forum is truly the top of its class when it comes to laptops =)

-Mel