G73 freezin

Need some help my G73 keeps freezing, right after login to user it freezes. What going on?


Ok ive system restored now to earlier today, everythings back up, I think ive linked it to the power saving options on the laptop, everytime I change them to save more battery they my comp freezes. Anyone have a similar issue

 

Which power setting(s) are you changing?

You didn't happen to install Steam and have Steam set to automatically log in when the user logs in did you?

 

Funny thing, I do have steam installed and to do just that........ And I was changing the battery saving settings to save more battery ......

 

Launching steam, Dragon Age, or other various things with Creative Drivers installed causes the system to hard freeze. Uninstall that and you will be fine(and theres like two or three things of creative sound drivers to uninstall).

 

OK , so when you say uninstall it, are you talking about steam itself, or the creative drivers for steam ?

 

Actually, updating your Realtek drivers to lastest will fix that freeze-up. The stock drivers have a conflict with Steam and Creative.

Xellos: You should have known better!

 

I was talking about Creative. (but try Chastity's method)

Oh I am going to try that haven't check that thread in awhile sorrys

 

Can you link the new drivers, as well will this fix the optical audio problem Im having with steam??? Steam turns my 5.1 into 2 channel for some reason.

 

ftp://WebUser:[email protected]/pc/audio/Vista_Win7_R250_x64.exe

 

since we are on the subject of creative and freezing, did creative ever make any updates? I've used the latest realtek drivers and its working pretty well. While I'm watching a video, it freezes either every once in a blue moon or like twice or 3 times a day. I had a time when it froze like 3 times in an hour.

Of course, I know disabling bass boost will fix it but I don't wanna.

edit - haven't read the creative debugging thread in a while. any updates I should know about from like a month ago?

edit - still using the sound blaster audigy hd which came with it. I am noticing my cmss 3d bar disappeared but I can still enable it ....

 

Per MarkS
Next was to try Steam. With Bass Boost Enabled, the Steam client does not even launch before the computer freezes, required holding of power button down to turn off.

With Bass Boost disabled (in creative audio center), Steam client launches normally.
I have Steam disabled from auto starting and am using all stock drivers, no freeze here.
There is no need to remove any programs!

 

I think Chastity found that if you have speakers set NOT as full range in windows audio control center, then you can have bass boost enabled in Creative; also enable CMSS-3D and the Graphical EQ, and steam doesn't crash. (just from memory, so I could be wrong.)

 

Actually updates do exist, it's just that Asus hasn't bothered to supply them to us. Creative won't supply them directly, it's up to the OEM to.

 

I didnt try optical audio last night, but hopefully that update you linked me fixes the compatability with steam. My issue is that Half Life takes the optical audio and keeps it 2 channel, while blu ray movies in powerdvd9 plays with proper "real" 5.1 surround sound via Optical Audio. Also when I go into windows control panel for sound devices, it gave me a second Computer speak listing, I had to reconfigure one so that audi was balanced between the 2 and the other only plays out one speeker and the sub woofer, what gives?

 

Interesting.....Its strange... I checked to see if full range was off and it was indeed off (I remember doing so). But once I went back to the creative audio center, the bar was back all of a sudden.....

Wait what? There are driver updates or a complete software update? And since creative isn't supplying them to asus, does this mean we have to buy it ourselves? I don't even see it on creatives site.

 

Actually, that's normal. Optical out is S/PDIF, which only allows for Stereo PCM (your games) or Dolby Digital/DTS 5.1 (your movies) If you want 5.1 in your games, you would either need Dolby Digital Live / DTS Live to generate the 5.1 encoding on-the-fly, or use HDMI for the audio out, since it can support up to 8 channels LPCM.

 

Ok so im assuming the ps3 has that then because games on ps3 does 5.1, so is there a driver or a piece of software that can help do this for me?

 

Bump an answer would be cool, if you can get DDLIVE or DTSLIVE on the laptop through optical audio

 

I don't see Dolby Digital/DTS Live enabled in the Realtek drivers. I don't remember if Asus licensed that feature.

 

While I was using the HDMI drivers from Realtek, I remember seeing DD and DTS.

Have you tried the Realtek drivers?

 

Of course I have, silly. I was referring DD Live and such. If you have that option, can you post a pic?

 

Hey guys. I've been having these same issues. I bought the G73JH a couple weeks ago (in a rush to get a new laptop after my work laptop died) and since have been having LOTS of freezing. The most annoying is this user login freeze.

When the computer gets past the Win 7 "Welcome" screen, it sits and does nothing. Mouse moves, but that's it. The hard drive light does a little trickle blinking, but in the end no matter how long I let it sit I still have to hold the power button to shut down and restart.

I too had Steam starting when I started up my laptop, but I just disabled it from starting and we'll see what happens. I do not have the Creative software installed. That was the first thing I tried when I started researching this issue. My computer only sees the stereo speakers now (which is fine since I usually just use headphones for everything).

All my drivers are up-to-date as far as I know. Windows 7 has all the updates installed too (including the optional performance fixes and directx fixes).

Occasionally I get a freeze where the entire system locks up (mouse and all) and again I have to do a hard restart. I'm watching the GPU temps and they're never going above 63*C at idle and never above 80*C while playing games. I've never had a freeze during a game, but mostly when the computer's hardly at work at all.

I've also disable the USB power saving, and now I've disable the monitor from turning off as I've seen that almost every time it does, the system locks up.

My video bios version is 012.017.000.004 which I believe is the latest...

The only thing I haven't tried (and really don't want to) is a fresh format and start from scratch. It took 3 days to get this laptop up to snuff with all my work software and files so I could work. I really don't want to do that again. LOL

Anyone having the same issues?

 

The latest Vbios is 012.020.000.032 however its not required unless you get the GSOD to be honest people say the older bios works ok but you could still face these issues later on. Dont flash unless you need to its risky.

I too only just got my Asus G73JH and I have had a load of problems with it, firstly I had the sound driver issues and it took me an age to get the bloody thing working. Then I had the sticky mouse issue and that was bloody annoying too and now I have had the exact same issues as you it just froze if I left it for 5 mins solid freeze and only a manual restart would fix it.

I have managed to fix all of them so far so I will say what I have done but my main advice to you is you need to give this laptop some time and some effort to get it working right but once you do you will enjoy it more than any other its a great system just needs TLC.

I recommend you do a full factory recovery if you haven't bought it from new, only that if someone had it previously you dont know what changes they made and you want it running how you like it. I did when I got mine.

To fix my problems I did this with some good help from the above Chastity. She has a post somewhere I couldn't find it im sure she will be happy to post it for you that gives excellent advice on the sound driver issue and this has caused many issues with the JH.

Audio drivers: I downloaded realtek 2.54 and ran the setup twice once to uninstall and once to reinstall. I then installed the creative drivers from the factory setup disc 1.0 which got the subwoofer working, 2.54 stop the freezes from happening every 5 minutes for me so far.

Sticky mouse: I installed the latest version 15 synaptics and the latest ATK driver along with my BIOS 211 it has stopped this from happening although it appears to be affected by the heat of my GPU but its useable. Disabling pinch zoom and tweaking the sentivity in synaptics helped too.

Graphics Driver. It may have also been my drivers causing the freeze as it started after trying the 11.4 preview drivers but I think it was the audio drivers however I switched back to 11.2 as this is the most stable for me. Also I dont know if this was causing the freeze but it seemed to when happen my screen dimmed which makes me think it could have been 11.4 so I turned this off in Power4gear just in case as I dont need it.

Its been 24 hours and the above fixed all my issues and im happy for the time being im gonna leave it on overnight downloading so fingers crossed it stays this way. To be honest every system is different what worked for me may not work for you, a factory reset should fix the issues but could bring along new ones but at least you will know what drivers you have installed and can roll them back.

P.s its a really good idea to have a second HDD the 7200 500GB that comes with it I picked up from Ebay for £40 even cheaper in dollars im sure and you can then partition it for all your games/software and just have the windows partition separate this saves a lot of time should you need to reformat I actually like to reinstall the OS every couple of months to clean it up.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't had a GSOD yet, but I've been waiting for it. LOL If I do, I'll either RMA the laptop so the liability is on ASUS or I'll flash it myself and cross my fingers. I used to be an IT and Network Engineer, so none of this is new to me. But the freezing with no evidence why is annoying to say the least. Even the event log has no idea what's going on. Although I hear people using Linux aren't having the freeze up issues.

I bought the laptop new. I didn't know this when I bought it, but the Geek Squad over at Best Buy had already opened it up, installed Kaspersky (which I use anyway) and setup the laptop. I may decide to do a factory reset, but it appears the only thing they did differently from what I would have done is install their stupid Best Buy app market, which I promptly uninstalled.

Believe me, I love this laptop. But these small issues are a serious issue for me since I don't just game, but I use the laptop for work. The first time the total system lock up happened, I hadn't saved a lot of my work (about 2.5 hours worth of work). I lost all that work. It's my fault for not saving, but I stupidly ignored the fact that it's possible even a new ultra laptop like this could screw up. But after that, I found I was still losing time to all these freezes. I'm going to keep at it and try to figure out why it's doing this.

I definitely do not like the pinch to zoom, and I'll update the touchpad drivers. I use a USB mouse for virtually everything and have the touchpad disabled when the mouse is plugged in. My left palm rests on the touchpad while I'm typing so that's a no-go design. I'm not sure why they designed it like that. But as long as I can disable it, it's good to go. The pinch to zoom seems to happen all the time when I DO use the touchpad and my left hand is still ready to type. Really annoying.

I saw a forum post in the searches with a big list of fixes for this laptop. I bookmarked it:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...492354-all-g73jh-problems-solutions-here.html

Is this the post you were looking for?

Also, I plan to remove these hard drives and install SSD drives. I may use a single SSD for my OS/apps and use the stock 320GB drive for everything else. Then I'd have an extra 320GB drive just sitting around.

 

Im pretty sure its your audio drivers causing the freezing the stock ones are terrible and they crash all the time especially the original creative drivers so its best to upgrade to the latest realtek 2.54 and if you can live without the subwoofer and creative hd sound stick with that, I personally wanted the creative drivers so nicked them off the driver disc but this also comes with its own problem every now and then there is awful crackling sound for about 10 seconds if you for instance run a program that uses the creative driver. I would rather have the sub working though as the bass is much better.

The post I was looking for was this one http://www.asusrog.com/forums/showthread.php?1150-G73-Series-Driver-and-Application-Reference check this out re the problems you are facing with audio drivers, it contains links to the latest updates and a ton of others that fixes the usual problems. Recommend you check your BIOS also 209 fixed most of the issues but 211 and 213 are the best ones that address a couple of other things such as fan speeds and mouse problems. You might be ok with the Vbios but as your a tech im sure you would be fine flashing it.

 

I'm on BIOS 213. It was on 209 when I got the laptop. I didn't notice any difference between the BIOS versions, but I only had the thing running for about a day before I flashed.

I thought I'd used the 2.54 realteck drivers when I removed everything, but it appears that Win7 didn't let me use them and installed their own drivers. I'll force the driver use this time. I'm downloading the 2.58 drivers from that page you linked. I'm also downloading some of the stuff I don't already have. I tried burning a recover DVD with the ASUS Recovery AI, but it always fails to write no matter what type of DVD I put in, so I'm downloading the Win7 ISO and the ASUS Recovery CD which neither seemed to be in the box with the laptop.

 

Nope. Not sure where you got that idea, there are tonnes of threads explaining that a) it's not the latest, and b) a vbios update is even less risky than a regular bios update.

 

Well, I think I've narrowed down the problem to the sound drivers.

Last night through this afternoon I've had one serious headache with the freezing. NON-stop freezing. It's the first time it's done it this much. I've tried so many different audio drivers and nothing seems to fix the issue.

However, I've disabled the audio drivers all-together in the device manager and I've turned off the windows audio service. Guess what... The damn thing is running strong for the past 4 hours with no freezing. I couldn't even check my email without it freezing before.

This is ridiculous. We really need a permanent fix for this ASAP. I'm running without sound right now, but at least I can work.

 

You're welcome to drop in the IRC channel listed below to get some realtime support on this. I think you need a couple of updates, and I'd like to see what you have running now. Forum posts are too slow

 

I'm also having terrible trouble with random system freezes. I'd be very interested to hear if you solve this problem. Asus agreed to replace my laptop, but I'm stuck with it for another month while I'm overseas. In the meantime I'd like to at least try to get it stable so I can do some legitimate work on it.

My laptop has been RMAed twice to ASUS and once to Best Buy. Both times it went to ASUS they said they replaced the motherboard, video card, keyboard and track pad. When I got the system back it froze on me in under 10 minutes of use. While I’m overseas I’ve been trying to get it stable and this is where I’m currently at:

• BIOS: G73Jh.213
• vBIOS: 012.020.000.032.038352
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 with SP1
• ATI v 11.2
• Realtek v 2.58
• HDMI v 2.55 (currently disabled to see if that is causing the freezing which it isn’t)
• Atheros AR9285 WiFi v 9.2.0.113 (removed the card for a week to see if that helps – nope)
• Atheros AR8131 LAN v 1.0.0.36
• Creative uninstalled
• ASUS bloatware uninstalled
• Etc.

I’ve updated everything else to Chastity’s driver and application reference page (P4G, Splendid, Keyboard fix package, etc. – you know, the utilities sorta worth keeping).

And the freezing persists! Maddening! (To be read with Morrigan in mind)

Here is the interesting part; there is no rhyme or reason to the freezing. It can happen within 5 minutes of me logging in and sitting idle at the desktop. Or I could be running AutoCAD for hours and then it will freeze. Or reading e-mail in Outlook. Very frustrating considering that I’m using this for work as well. However, I can play Dragon Age Origins for hours without ever having an issue full screen (other than the occasional CtD due to using Holy Smite, but that is another story).

Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

 

1) Have you tried updating the firmware on your HDDs? If you have ST9500420AS drives, I posted a firmware pack for it. It definitely makes the drives a bit more responsive and better throughput.

2) You can try to isolate the components with DPC Latency Tool and see who is the culprit.

3) Reinstall Windows, turn off Win Update. Run SP1 installer via redist version. Then reboot and turn on Win Update, and update the rest of the INFs and drivers accordingly. Using this method has so far given me 100% stutter-free systems, and I format quite a few laptops.

 

What IRC server and channel? I haven't used IRC in a while. I'll download mIRC in a few.

 

In Chastity's sig, underneath the TeamROG image, "irc.freenode.net IRC port 6667 #asus-rog"

 

You're right... I didn't see that. THanks.

 

1. Yep. HDD firmware is 0005SDM1.

2. Downloaded DPC Latency Checker 1.3 and noticed the occasional spike. Unplugged my Logitech Performance Mouse MX w/ unified receiver and the spikes disappeared (latest SetPoint drivers). However, I still experience freezing whether the mouse is plugged in or not.

3. Wish I could reinstall. Unfortunately, I don't have the discs for the OS and my applications with me.

 

btw, what model do you have?

 

It is the G73JH-RCNX09 (Best Buy... Canadian version I guess *shrug*).

Further update:

The spikes while using DPC LC didn't fully disappear when I unplugged my mouse. They fully disappeared after I disabled the WiFi as well.

I'm beginning to think it is the USB. Every mouse I've plugged into this thing has been wireless: Logitech Perfomance Mouse MX, Microsoft Wireless 8000 and an older wireless Logitech mouse (can't remember the model for the life of me) and the system constantly froze. Mouse unresponsive, keyboard dead, USB ports unresponsive. Only thing to do was press on old faithful (the power button) and wait. Today, I borrowed an old decrepit USB mouse (you know the type... red tracking laser, gunk on the missing pads, etc.) and it has be running all day at work without a problem. It even went to sleep and came back up like a normal computer!!!! This of course is with the wireless disabled.

I'm too scared to plug in my iPod to see what happens. I can't remember when I was actually able to transfer music to and from this machine without it dying.

 

1) have you updated your vBIOS?

2) you can also try updating your Intel INF and SATA drivers using the installers on my Driver page.