G73 GSOD Fixes and Resources

See the original GSOD thread on sig below for history on the following installation procedures:

I've done a bunch of installs, reinstalls, fresh OS installs, etc and this is what I find works best. Links for software will be provided at the end of this posting.

For current OS install users and stock start here:

1) Do a full uninstall of whatever Power4Gear Hybrid you have. Reboot.
2) Do a full uninstall of your ATI drivers and utilities. (Run the ATI Installer, and do a Full Automatic uninstall)
3) Reboot, boot to Safe Mode (F8 at bootup) and run Driver Sweeper. Analyze and Clean for ATI Video Drivers. Now would also be a good time for a Registry Cleaner too.

Fresh OS installers can start here.

Optional step: Download and flash Ziddy's v3 vBIOS. I HIGHLY suggest doing so using ATIFLASH from a command line (DOS) off a bootable USB Flash drive under FAT32. Use "ATIFLASH -p 0 -f asusv3.rom" or edit the update.bat file with the matching commandline and run the bat file. If you get a warning about filesizes or anything, ABORT! or you'll brick the GPU. BTW, if you do this step, reboot to the USB again, and flash your BIOS to 209 while you're at it.

For more information on using ATIFLASH, go here.

Update from Asus: Apparently they found a bug in WinFlash 2.29 that is causing the keyboard lights failure. They recommend using the EZFlash utility in the BIOS, or using 2.30.1 or later. Here's a link to the latest on Asus' site, for those insistant on using WinFlash.

4) Install the Asus supplied Catalyst 10.1 Mobility package. (If you are wondering, I've had issues with CCC not starting from a straight up fresh 10.6 install, plus this package adds other support, like Avivo) You'll probably be asked to reboot. If not, reboot anyway.
5) Install latest Catalyst Mobility Driver and CCC package. (Currently 10.6) reboot.
6) Download and install Power4Gear Hybrid 1.1.37 and reboot.

Further thoughts:

Now, you should be stable at the stock speeds of 700/1000, but in the event you are not, you can use the AMD GPU Tool or if you updated to v3 vBIOS, CCC's Overdrive to overclock your GPU to gain some stability. (probably due to some powersaving option being disabled when overclocking) I suggest you first try 705/1100. For performance you can try 800/1100 (or 1200). One chap had further issues and needed to slightly underclock to 675/950. (I don't know why, but I think he had other issues and would need to RMA.) I would also suggest in monitoring your temps for awhile when OC'ing to make sure you don't overheat and/or cause further instability issues.

07/09: Wanted to add a piece about Power Saving Modes. If you have some stability issues, please try throwing the laptop into High Performance Mode while gaming. You can also try uninstalling P4GH completely, and use Windows Power Management, but you'll loose your Turbo Boost toggle button and ability to change on the fly.

Addendum: I am adding links for the HP USB Tool v2.18 and Win98 Boot files so that people can use this utility to make bootable USB Flash drives. The tool needs to be run with Admin Rights under Vista/Win 7.

1) Install the HP Tool, and extract the contents of win98boot.zip to a directory, like say "win98boot"

2) Run the app, and check on "Create a Bootable Startup Disk", and select the win98boot directory for the source of the DOS System Files.



3) Format as FAT32, or FAT if it's a small USB drive, hit Start. Done.

4) PROFIT!!!

Addendum Part Deux: Quite a few people coming onto this forum are getting refurbished G73's from CowBoom.com, and the units are being distributed with no discs and no recovery partition. (I can understand wiping the primary partitions, but it's just lazy to wipe the recovery partition too.)

So I am including links for the Asus Driver and Application Disc, and an iso of Windows 7 Installation CD that's version free. You can install any version of Win7, but you still need a valid key for that version. Just use the MS License key on the bottom of your unit, and you will need to use Phone Activation to activate Win7.

I also wanted to add that I am also a big supporter of keeping one's drivers and applications up to date and current, so I'm going to start creating a webpage to list current drivers for the G73's components, without having to navigate Asus' intellectually-challenged website support download pages. I was thinking why some people still have issues and I'm stable. Either there's an issue with the install methodology, or another component's install is aggravating it.

Addendum Part III : ATI Pulls A Miracle Zerg Rush!

The 10.7a Catalyst Package (Hotfix for SC2) from ATI is a sweet package. Apparently it's a beta, and Viscious mentioned that betas work great for his machine. Plus they have all the great addons all in one happy installer. So I went ahead and uninstalled the 10.7 WHQL, Driver Swept, and installed 10.7a. So far testing is very positive. I would suggest anyone with GSOD issues please try this installer. More info on my thoughts later in this thread. Direct download link available below.

Software Links:

Ziddy's v3 vBIOS
Stock Asus vBIOS (just in case)
Asus ATI 10.1 Mobility Catalyst
AMD GPU Tool for HD5870 (Just useful)
Power4Gear Hybrid 1.1.37
ATI Mobility 10.6 Catalyst Package (Driver and CCC)
ATIFLASH 3.79
DriverSweeper 2.1.0
HP USB Tool v2.18
Win98 Boot Files
Asus Driver and Application Disc
Windows 7 Universal Install Disc Part1
Windows 7 Universal Install Disc Part2
ATI Catalyst 10.7a Hotfix
AsusDVD 3 in 1(PowerDVD 9 Suite OEM)

 

Where'd ya download the Power4Gear software? Does it update itself?

 

It's a hardlink to Asus' server. No it won't self-update to newest. I'll have to maintain that, assuming Asus doesn't b0rk anything.

 

Ah, ok thanks!

 

yeah, sounds like i have done everything right. Still my temps go as high as 111C when playing GTA IV and GTA EFLC.

Im running out of ideas, specially because i used to play GTA EFLC a LOT (5 hour sessions) and i have no idea whats happening!

It all started before i changed to 10.6 and vBios3. Im not sure if it started with the 209 BIOS flash. Anyway my guess is that 209 runs better.

help with this one plz!

 

You could always try cleaning out the vents and reapplying some quality thermal paste...

 

Or an RMA if that is easier than all this work and headache...IMO that is....

 

What's a proper way to clean out the g73 vents?

 

Take it completely apart and spray the fans (while holding them down so they dont spin) and heatsink fins with some compressed air from a can. Thats the right way, but certainly not easy or pleasant...

 

I'd take a powerful vacuum cleaner and just suck the vents. Maybe spray some compressed air first to loosen then suck it out.

 

Do not use any vacuum cleaners or anything similar, since they can produce a static charge and fry your motherboard or other components!
Only compressed canned air/gas!

 

Ok there goes my vacume cleaner idea...

edit: i did a search for anti static vacuum cleaners, and they do exist. they just cost quite a bit to suck out air

 

Back on topic plz

 

Sounds like i'm going to do it. (The whole cleaning and thermal paste thing)
Do i get in trouble with RMA or warranty if i do it?
What about applying a thermal paste. Would i break my warranty if i do so?

 

Yes yes and yes. But only if they find out...

 

When I got home from work yesterday, I tried some of the steps outlined by Chas, and I think I'm stable. Here's what I did.

Completely uninstalled Power4Gear - k thx bye gone
Completely uninstalled my graphics adapter, so that windows left me with "standard vga adapter".
Removed Catalyst control centre and all ATI drivers. Rebooted.
Ran Driver Sweep. Removed all ATI items.

Downloaded catalyst control centre 10.6 and installed.
** I had a of a time with this. After installing it, windows still didn't detect my graphics card. Yep, application fully installed, but video card (Radeon) wouldn't show up in Device manager, just standard vga adapter still. I could right click my desktop, choose CCC from the menu, but then nothing would happen - wouldn't load, it was weird. I rebooted and tried again, and then this time after the install, the application prompted me to restart the computer. After this reboot, drivers were installed, card was showing up, driver version was current. (and yes I'm sure it's mobility series, radeon 5xxx). Weird, it took 2 tries but whatever.

So, P4GH gone, 10.6 installed.

Ran Furmark benchmark and it finished fine. No GSOD. Then I ran windows experience, and that finished fine. Weird that I get a 5.9 overall rating, when all my results average like 7 or better, but whatever.

So I fired up WoW for an hour, no problems, no GSOD, etc. Installed MW2 and played about 30 mins of that, also without problem.

I haven't stress tested, or done 3-4 hours of gaming, but so far so good.
I have my power profile set to the default windows one for Performance.
I have made no modifications to my GPU clock speed, but have conifrmed it's running at 700. The monitoring software still shows the GPU speed fluctuate under to duress, boosting at times into the 730's and 740, with blips reaching 780 while running WoW. It's weird cause I don't recall installing any sort of overclocking utility, but much as my i7 boosts under a load, it seems the GPU does on its own as well. No problems or anything, just something I noticed. If it starts being a problem, I'll try locking it at 705 as others suggested.

To be honest, I think P4GH was the problem this whole time. I'll have more time this weekend to stress test.

 

WME score of 5.9 is due to your platter-based HD. Completely normal.

What app are you using to monitor GPU speed? I've not seen my flex up unless I OC it manually.

 

What exactly is the benefit of power4gear...apart from the different modes.

Is it the program that stops the laptop from constantly recharging the battery when its plugged in? or is that something that windows etc does on its own?

 

Actually, I think some people should vacuum out their computers. The same people who "need" a $1500 gaming laptop for farmville. Also the same people who will stare at the forum, see a topic that says "Instructions to fix GSOD" and then make a new thread saying 'HOW I FIX GSOD?!"

 

HWinfo32 I the monitoring software I'm using.

 

Seeing how many revisions of P4GH have come out in such a short period of time, I would think so too. At least they keep updating.

 

Tried this. Same overheating issues.
Do you guys would recommend using something to blow into the air intakes? Like a hair blower thing or whatever? (Of course with cool air)
Also i read somewehere in the ASUS forums that a guy had the same issues. ASUS recommended him to try the ATI Catalyst 9.12 drivers, and provided the link. I Downloaded and tried installing (With the whole Uninstall-reboot-safeMode-DriveSweep-Install steps) but when it lists the components to be installed, the driver just wont show up. Tried installing anyway, and nothing happens.
Looked up for more sources: same results.
You guys have any spare 9.12 drivers around? And what about the issue with the installation? Any known reasons?

Though of trying with the 10.5. But since the stok drivers did not lower my temps anyway, i dont see the point of doing it.

 

I rep for you for this LOL.

 

I'm going to try this as soon as my G73 comes back, even though ASUS may have fixed my problem anyway. I think part of the problem is that when I originally did a clean install of Windows, I installed 10.5 Cats right off the bat. If that turns out to be the instigator of all my GSOD woes, then I'm going to be seriously sad that I RMAed for something that was my fault.

 

How u look at it, its still Asus fault not ours. Installing updated drivers shouldn't be our fault.

 

You might have nailed the problem down. I also uninstalled P4GH and then used windows to change to high performance and my WEI worked, i Have not furmarked yet to check for GSOD removal yet though. Funny thing is why does P4GH high performance fail compared to windows........

fuhrmark failed, get vertical stripes of death. Time to try overclock again and see how it goes.

 

First I would like to thank Chastity, for all the time you've put into helping find a fix for the problems with the G73 and for creating this resource thread.

Now I'd like to share my experience with this laptop. I originally bought it last week and proceeded to run some benchmarks and would get the GSOD on stock drivers, so I tried to update my drivers to 6.10 and of course was experiencing GSOD crashes still. I tried using ATI tools to overclock but even going to just 705/1100 would make me crash even more frequently... but then I tried underclocking (like you mentioned helped one other person) and of course... no more GSOD issues. I had also uninstalled p4g but that didn't help any.

Since I was still withing the return window I decided to get my laptop replaced today (not only was I not wanting to keep my GPU underclocked I also had the AUO screen).

First thing I did with my new G73 was run the Heaven benchmark, no GSOD after 20 minutes, so far so good. So I again proceeded to update my drivers and started to get the GSOD. I then tried overclocking to 705/1100 and have had no GSODs while benchmarking for 1 hour.

I'm going to keep testing while overclocked, and run some games tonight but it looks good so far! (By the way, I haven't uninstalled or touched P4G on my new G73, and am running with it in High Performance mode)

 

Yeah, the overclock fixed it for me, I'm still wondering why some people can run 10.6 without any overclock, still confused as hell.

 

The ATI works in mysterious ways. As I mentioned before, I think it has something to do with the power manager feeding voltage to the GPU/VRAM, or a symptom of some marginal GDDR5 RAM.

Damn, 4 vs 9 on the bad side.

 

Meh, one of those 9 was me with my previous G73, the score should really be 5 vs 9 since the overclocking fixed my replacement. Shame I can't vote twice

 

Well, it's good to know. You can always make a new account "vaantII"

 

Thanks for the info and guide. I finally went ahead and did everything to try and get 10.6 stable mainly cause of FFXIV. I tired various settings and overclocks, couldn't get a stable system, downclocked the Ram to 950mhz and seems to be pretty dang stable (not sure if its 100% stable, but haven't had the time to game on it more then an hour). So I am running 710/950 seems to run the best for me.

I find that running the Final Fantasy XIV benchmark is really handy in finding out if your system in stable and will GSOD, because if its not it will GSOD in seconds or later on in the run or even in the second.

Really sucks that we have to mess with this, I really hope ASUS will step up to the plate and release some 10.6 drivers of their own or if ATI will fix the GSOD problem on their end, as long as it fixed I will be happy. Can't really recommend this laptop to normal people cause little too much techy stuff for them to get a system to mainly run FFXIV.

 

Interesting tidbit: for you GSOD'ers, have you tried disabling all your gadgets, especially if they are monitoring?

 

THe gsod is a Vbios issue. I put the msi vbios on my g73 and no more problem.
We just have to wait for asus to put out the official one for full hdmi/vga etc support.

 

I ran tests in Furmark... 30 sec, 45 sec, and 60 sec twice...So far no GSOD. I will play Bad company 2 to double check.. How long does it take to detect? I have only experienced once after installing new drivers, and that is why I followed the steps. Any suggestions?

 

nvm found the link at bottom of your sig, thanks Chastity, btw there is a hot fix gsod for 10.1, shall i install that ?

 

Hi,

Just wanted to let you know: I was constantly experiencing the GSOD problem, then resetted the G73JH to factory condition and went through the steps instructed in the OP here. I didn't do the optional step (so I still have stock vBios).

Haven't had a single GSOD since, all the benchmark etc complete successfully and gaming is stable. Lets hope this situation lasts

I got the impression that the problem might actually just be an incompatibility between stock and new drivers and various versions of Power4Gear, just like suggested by some people here.

Regards, jaolhe

 

Thats good, yeah I have had no problems with stock drivers, I am thinking about doing a dual boot of Windows just to have those stock drivers installed when I am having a problem with a game with 10.6 and GSOD. I think its definitely a driver thing since ATI desktops cards used to have this problem and just need to wait on software from ATI or Asus so that we can be gaming with latest driver fixes such as FFXIV and BFBC2 fast load times.

 

Argh, I should have been silent Of course, just after telling here everything works fine, I do just one more run on Furmark and got a VSOD !!!

System restore time, back to stock again, argh

 

How do you set the system to stock factory settings? In terms of all the drivers etc.

 

Wait, when people said they returned to stock settings, what exactly did you do? Did you do a full system recovery, or just download and install the ati driver from the Asus website?

 

they probably did a full system recovery with the hidden partion(f9) or with the recovery discs to take the machine to factory settings....thats the easiest way than to manually try to remove drivers installed and other programmes installed...

 

If you are using 10.1 for stability, I wouldn't. The 10.1 release from Asus came out alot later and may already have the hotfix.

 

Did you try the OC option to get stability?

 

When I said restore to stock settings, I did uninstall 10.6, Driver Sweeper in safe mode, reboot, install 9.12 off disc or 10.1, reboot. I don't need to restore windows to gain stability back.

 

The 10.1 from the asus website works just fine... For me personally, if i didn't have BC2 installed, that would be the driver of my choice.

 

First post...been following the various threads on this topic for a while. Had my G73 for a little over a month now. Running 10.6 and BIOS 209.

Was getting the PSOD (at least I think it was the PSOD, whatever you all are calling the vertical lines) at seemingly random times. Would go days and days with no issues, then one day I'd get it 4 or 5 times in a row. Not always in the same game, but always while gaming, not just surfing. Again, wasn't happening all the time and on many days could play various games with no issues.

After reading through this thread, I decided to follow some of the steps to see if I could stop the "madness."

Well, first I updated my Power4Gear (was running.28, updated to the version Chastity referenced). That didn't help one bit.

Then, I just removed it entirely, and got a PSOD almost immediately after rebooting and starting up my games, but haven't since, and it has been over 2 days now.

With the way this problem has surfaced on my PC in the past, not ready to call this a success yet, but thought I'd just post my experiences.

If this doesn't resolve it, I guess I'll have to actually follow Chastity's directions...

 

I couldn't agree more. The MSI vBios gives total stability on my system no matter what I do. As soon as I go back to the stock Asus vBios, I start getting GSODs.

We need Asus or someone who is smart enough to take the MSI vBios and enable HDMI, then life would be perfect with this laptop!

 

Argh.....

Of course, right after posting this, and I mean like 5 minutes after, I get 2 consecutive PSOD's.......Very annoying. Should have kept my big mouth shut.

Guess I will now have to do more troubleshooting and following Chastity's instructions (except the vBIOS update, not comfortable flashing a user made mod for that)....

 

What are the dangers of useing the Ziddy's v3 vBIOS?

Also, i have had this laptop for litterely 22 hours. The GSOD appeared after about 10 hours. Should i contact the seller and tell them it was dead on arrive? or try an RMA (get my money back) and go buy another unit from somewhere else.... maybe a Clevo... or maybe the HP Envy series.

Any tips on what i should do?