Couple problems with G7, am I the only one?

So, I like my G7, but, I've had a lot of problems.

First, I've gone through like 3 or 4 AC/DC adapters. They keep breaking. And I've only had it since like November.

The little pluggy in part keeps breaking, by getting bent, and right now it's so bent out of place that it took me 20 minutes of trying to push it back into place just to get my laptop to turn on.

I haven't dropped my laptop or anything, I mean I have in the past, but it was so damaged that they had to replace my laptop with a new one because I had the best buy warranty. And I haven't dropped this one since I got it.

The weird thing is, the reason I think that he adapter keeps breaking, is because it gets so overheated, it like... melts. It was literally so hot that when I touched it my skin blistered. The pluggy in part I mean. And the base part of it is always REALLY hot too. Sometimes it gets to the point where it will burn my skin (not to the point of blistering like the pluggy in part did) but I can't move it or touch it because of how hot it gets. I try to put a fan on it, and sometimes that works, but it seems like that's very primitive and shouldn't be required just to make the thing not overheat horribly.

Which leads me to my second problem, not only does the adapter overheat, but the entire computer overheats too. When I played FFXI (a non graphic intensive game) it didn't really overheat, but since I started playing Rift, and I put graphics on Ultra, the computer has been too hot to touch on the bottom. And that's with the cooling pad. Turning the graphics onto Low helped with the overheating problem somewhat, but I didn't spend all this money on this laptop to play games on low graphics.

Thirdly, my USB ports seem to break whatever I plug into it. For instance, my trackball mouse. Maybe it's just a crappy mouse, because I've actually had this problem with my other laptop (Though it was also an ASUS,) but I don't ever unplug my mouse from this laptop, and yesterday it just randomly stopped working sporadicly. If I wiggle the cord, it will eventually start to work again, or if I move it to another port, sometimes that will fix it, but it's very annoying.

But the weird thing is, if I buy a new mouse, and plug it into the same port, it will work fine. But the same thing will happen about 3 months later. And it happens to every USB thing I keep plugged in for an extended time, like all of my cooling pads, I have to get a new one every couple of months, (I'm including my last ASUS in this) and it's extremely annoying.

Finally, some keys on the keyboard have become extremely hard to get to work. Like, I have to hit the / key at the very bottom in order to get it to work, and there are a few other keys that are like that. I've bought the spray stuff to clean out my keyboard, but it didn't help at all.

And the entire keyboard has just become very unresponsive in general, I have to practically smash all they keys, especially the spacebar, and it's been like this since like three weeks after I got it.

But in all the reviews I've read of this computer, I've never seen anyone complain about most of these problems, so I have to wonder, am I the only one experiencing them?

 

I assume you mean G73? Although I dont know which model I would assume JH.

Are you running the latest BIOS? VBIOS? and ATI Drivers? These fix a lot of the problems that you are mentioning with overheating and the mis key strokes issues with the keyboard.

The AC adaptor overheating is separate. They do get quite hot mind but I have never heard of getting through 3 or 4 are you getting official ones?

 

JH yeah,

Um, I'm computer illiterate. How do I know if I have the latest BIOS etc?

And I've always gotten them through best buy, so unless they're getting them through a third party, it should be official.

And what about the USB ports?

I think on my last ASUS I had to replace the USB ports three times in a year and a half because they kept breaking.

Okay, my BIOS version is 7-27-2010, which I imagine is pretty old.

How do I update it?

 

Well there have been several issues listed with the G73JH mostly issues with the keyboard (key strokes) Mouse (iratic) Sound (crashing the laptop) (Graphics Card overheating and Screens of Death)

These have been fixed by flashing the BIOS and the VBIOS. This is something you should take care when doing though as a bad flash can result in well a laptop that is only usable as a paperweight. But there is only a very small chance of this. You can also update these through windows using the Asus Live update facility which is what I do and I have never had a problem. However YOU FLASH AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I believe you have BIOS 209 or 211 someone will surely correct me if im wrong and that should be ok as im using 211 and it runs fine, the major one was the VBIOS update that corrected the overheating problems along with screens of death but you may not have suffered from that its just recommended. Very high temps from the GPU are common though due to poor pasting on the GPU when Asus made the JH and sometimes it requires a repaste.

For the VBIOS see Chastity's post: HERE

You can also use HWINFO32 which will give you total readings of your laptops Temps fans and general information (Great Tool) HERE

Regarding the USB I recommend thinking about uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers for them if you are having a lot of problems it might be a good idea to backup and do a factory reset I regularly do this to keep my system running smooth and have all my programs saved on a separate partition the only other thing I can think of that its a hardware issue causing it but im not experienced enough to comment on USB im afraid.

I have never had a charger or a USB port break on me It may just be your laptop but maybe keep the cable steady and dont move it so much when plugged in. I have a laptop cooler and I wire clip my wires together so they are solid with minimal movement. Its a bit like headphones eventually the wire stretches.

Lastly and most importantly - If its within warranty think about an RMA and send it to Asus to fix all your issues.

 

Okay that thing you told me to download is saying I have 10/30/09 Bios.

But the ASUS Live update isn't offering any BIOS updates.

Is there anyway to force it to give me an update? I really don't want to do that flash update thing. Sounds like I would just break my computer.

And on that thing you told me to download, which thing tells me my computers temperature? I can't figure it out, I'm an idiot.

I see something about Thermal Design Power, and it says 45W, is that it?

Oh and if by screens of death you are referring to the blue screens of death?

I get those fairly frequently.

Sorry for all these edits, but my CPU temp is 49-57 on my 4 cores. Is that normal/low/high?

I'm just browsing the web atm though. Not playing any games.

 

Ok you do have the old BIOS but doing it in Windows is no different in regards to the risks than doing it the hard way, even so it is a very minute chance of it going wrong but it might be an idea if you know someone techy to do it for you should fix your keyboard issues.

You need to select Sensors in HWINFO32 you can either select it once the program has loaded up at the top of the screen or you can tick the box when its loading to just run the sensors only.

You need to look at the bottom of the sensors list for the GPU temps you should see DISP - MEM - SHADER - GPU. The Idle may be quite low so you need to test this while gaming for 5 mins and then check them then.

CPU will normally be between 50-75/80 for an I7 with ASUS thermal paste.

Good idea to take a look at the Windows Gadgets if you have a JH you have plenty of free RAM get some monitoring gadgets so you know how things are running.