G73JH-A1 Persistent Problems

OK – after months of exhaustive research and reading these posts for help on trying to resolve the issues with my G73JH-A1, I have decided to write about my problem to see if any of the people who frequent this forum can help me.

I have owned my laptop since approx April-May. Since day one I have had two main problems;
1. video-audio issues - particularly when playing games (Crysis, Crysis Warhead, WOW, Half Life 2, etc.). It doesn’t matter which game, they all suffer the same problem – video stall and audio stutter. Sometimes the video will freeze for a second or two while the audio continues to play and at other times the video will pause/hesitate while the audio sounds like it is stuttering – keep in mind that this is with game settings set as low as possible. Everytime I am experiencing this issue I notice that the light showing my hard drive activity is a solid blue (appearing like it is locked - not a flickering light such as when a read/write activity is happening
2. Lag time – for example, trying to move a window on my desktop (such as Excel or Word) when I drag and drop to a new location it may take an extra 1-3 seconds after I have removed my hand from the mouse (Logitech wireless MX Revolution) before the window will actually move

Originally I recognized these as problems but was aware of all of the other problems that the G73’s were experiencing and hoped that a resolution would be found on-line. Following is most/all of the steps I have taken to try and resolve my issues;
• Multiple (at least 6-7) fresh Windows 7 Pro installs following “Complete Walk-through for Doing a Clean Windows 7 Install” as posted on this site
• Bios upgrade/downgrade/upgrade again to 211 (started with 206, went to 209, back to 206 <lost keyboard lights>, then up to 211)
• vBios upgrade as recommended on site (Chastity’s OD version)
• ATI video card driver upgrade to version 10.10 now – changed this each time a new version came out – none gave me the results that I have been looking for
• Audio driver updates frequently – currently on Realtek 2.54 (version 6.0.1.6235)
• Chipset driver updates (currently on version 9.6.5.1001)
• I have not reinstalled the Creative software thinking that it may have been responsible for some of my issues

I have also done a couple of hardware upgrades which included an Intel 6300 wireless card and replaced my hard drives with two Momentus XT SSD Hybrid 500GB drives.

Everytime I updated a driver I would follow recommended advice of removal (remove driver, reboot into safe mode and used jv16 Powertools 2010 to insure that everything was completely gone in both registry and hard drives, reboot into Windows 7 and install fresh drivers).

A couple of additional comments regarding my laptops performance issues – I recall during one of my Windows 7 re-installs that I purposely did not install the audio drivers to see how my gaming performance would be. The games appeared to play without video stutter. Even on-line video clips seem to have a habit of stuttering through first time and playing flawlessly second time (i.e. on “Panasonic.ca” site there is a short vid clip that comes up right away on main page showing a snow boarder that has terrible ‘stutter’ first time viewing, but smooth second time around). I understand issues related to internet “lag” depending on your connection speed – but with my connection speeds I don’t believe that I should be having issues here. Also, I thought I would try out the BD player, so using WINDVD by ASUS, I played a blu-ray disk last night and it played perfectly – no stutter or stalling with video or sound - this makes me think nothing is wrong with my video card or sound drivers, and it may be my configurations.

I haven’t even talked about the keyboard lag issues (disabled my touchpad in bios) as I know that Gary is working on this at ASUS. I am totally perplexed as to my problems but feel I had better get a solution soon before my warrantee period expires. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated – otherwise this might have to get RMA’d (which I really do not want to do).

 

Best of Luck Chili. I had the same issues and sent my in to RMA it. I wasn't sure what it was and tried all the ideas that I had seen on this site.

 

Thanks for that cuban. What is the process for RMA'ing? Do you need to phone it in or email or ?

 

For RMA:

http://support.asus.com/service/service.aspx?no=407&SLanguage=en-us

or in Canada:

+1-888-678-3688

or live chat:

ASUS Service (North America)

 

Thanks ALLur ...based on number of replies to this post I am assuming that no one has an answer to my problems so looks like I will be contacting ASUS for RMA.

 

OK, since I started this thread I thought I had better post this reply to let anyone who is interested, or who is experiencing the same problem, that I have resolved my audio stuttering/video pausing issues.

I thought that I was going to have to RMA this unit and have ASUS look at it to insure that there was no hardware issues. When I called ASUS to get an RMA number one of the first questions I was asked was whether I had updated my video drivers, and from which site - ATI or ASUS support site. Once I had indicated they were upgraded from ATI, I was given the impression that before they could help me over the phone or via RMA I should correct them with the ASUS video drivers. Having not only upgraded a few of my hardware drivers, but also upgrading some of the hardware (harddrives and wireless card), I felt that if I had to send it in I had better return the laptop to stock condition first. So, I replaced the harddrives with the originals (had to tear apart my home server to do this ... GRRRRR) and replaced the wireless card. I then had to do a fresh Windows 7 install. At this point I decided that if it was going to be returned I was going to install every last program that came with it from the disc supplied. This is something that I had not been doing since upgrading to Win 7 Pro. I typically followed the guidelines for a fresh install that I found on this site (not saying there is anything wrong with them) - but as this laptop may have been going back to ASUS for service I thought it best that they see the problems with all of their software (read bloatware) on it.

Well, low-and-behold, if it didn't perform like it was supposed to after everything was installed. No video stall or audio stutter, and the true test for this was Crysis Warhead - I could never get this machine to play that game properly - now it plays smooth as butter (at high settings).

I really don't know what fixed the problem, as I have done numerous "fresh" installs an tried various drivers (video and otherwise) but it just would not perform as it was supposed to. I still plan on doing more testing. Tomorrow I will be replacing the hard drives with my Momentus XT's (again) and doing a similar install of ASUS drivers to see if it still performs correctly.

Anyway, thatnks for all help and support provided and hopefully my experiences can be of some help to someone else.

 

I have had this happen -

"hard drive activity is a solid blue (appearing like it is locked - not a flickering light such as when a read/write activity is happening"

like 3 times over the past few months with the old vbios and new drivers. Always happened while playing SC2 but I am now running new vbios and 10.10 and have not had it happen again.

 

Solid hard drive light ....... exactly what mine was doing everytime it started to act up. Too many frustrating months of trying to get it to function properly. I really don't know why it is working now Vs. previous installs - I know what I am doing when it comes to installing software (and hardware). Oh well, just glad it is fixed. Now to try and duplicate my luck with the Momentus XT's.

Oh ..... and I should have mentioned ... since this latest "correct" install I do NOT have lgs with my keyboard. Whenever I used to type sometimes the screen had to "catch up" to my keystrokes. Not any more ..... it did until I disabled the touchpad with the FN-F9 key ...... which, by the way, would not work prior to this install. Strange stuff ......

 

A Toshiba I bought about 3 years ago used to get completely stuck in read/write cycles on the HDD. This was incredibly annoying at night because I'd leave it on. I couldn't ever figure out what was wrong with it, but after the HDD died and I got it replaced, it stopped doing it.

If you swapped your drives back to the originals, it might be a good idea to consider the replacement drives as the problem.

 

Well, after installing the the Momentus XT drives and following the exact same installation procedure as I did for the original drives I am back to encountering video stall and audio stutter. Seems the hybrid drives were contributing to the problem.