G73JW shuts down - as if I pulled the plug

After around 30min-1hr of gaming (especially Black Ops), it just shuts down. No error messages, freezing, BSOD, GSOD. Just shuts down like I pulled the plug. I monitor CPU and GPU temps, it rarely goes above 75 for GPU and 65 for CPU. No overclocking.

So I have to manually turn it back on, where it goes through the 'not shut down properly' startup screen then boots to windows like nothing happened. No error report so I have no idea what it could be.

Some games this never happens, some games its almost guaranteed. I have an ultra-stock G73JW-A1 with absolutely no upgrades. It happened when I was rolling 260.63 so I upgraded to 260.99 and the problem is still there.

I've already reinstalled windows along with all the programs and drivers. It's starting to really annoy me. Anyone else have this issue?

 

update bios...tell me about ur ram how much?how many slots?what are the frequencies

 

it happens to me only when I overclock.
I have yet to find out why. It only happens to some games too, especially starcraft 2

 

first of all check ur temps..

 

There has been issues with the G73JW locking up randomly:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...um/536734-weird-problems-asus-g73jw-a1-8.html

for me not during gaming but during non-intensive use or when certain prefs seemingly go into sleep mode.

In my case, my system log point to the BIOS sending a bad ACPI call to the hard drive causing system instability, then a crash like someone pulled the plug / reboot.

The same sequence of events happened twice on my system (but my system has locked up many times more). So it's either a faulty BIOS setting or since this is not happening to everyone on a massive global scale, perhaps a faulty hard drive or HD controller in some systems.

The problem seems to be growing so perhaps an non-compatible driver update from windows update that was rolled in that the G73 does not like.

My specifics are documented in the thread linked above.

edit: and yes extremely annoying and useless computer of not fixed.

Check your system logs:
Right click your computer icon.. select manage / event viewer / windows logs / system

You will see the critical kernel error from when windows crashed, check the log entries before that for any ACPI class errors or other errors if you have any.

 

mine does the random shutdown but only 4 times so far, my machine is 3 months old. It only happens during unstable OC rates, and i'm currently using 265.99 which is great so far.

 

This is overheating. 2 options to fix it. You need to follow the BTOtech guide and repaste your gpu. Only attempt if you know what you are doing. Or RMA it.

 

I'm having a similar issue with my JH-A2. Using gary's original beta bios, everything updated per his thread. Absolutely no OCing. Worked fine for about 2 weeks, and shut down one evening sitting idle on the desk. Has been fine for a few more weeks, and suddenly while playing tonight, computer clicked off like it lost all power. Battery charge light wasn't even on. Had to click the reset button. Got it powered up, and immediately reflashed to the new beta bios from christmas. Went back to playing and around 30 mins later shut off again, clicked reset button and got it back on.

Reflashed to 211 stock bios, stayed on a while longer, died, reset, stayed on a few mins, then clicked off, but lights stayed on. Wouldn't respond to Ctrl-Alt-Del, holding power button, or anything except reset. Powered back up and locked up before windows booted up. Ima let it sit for the night and see what happens tomorrow.

I've had this thing sit on my desk hooked to my monitor and running warcraft for hours last weekend, never got too hot in HWinfo, never had a hiccup. If its overheating i'm not seeing it.

 

It's not overheating, he already stated his temps and they are more than fine. The OP may have a faulty power supply or his motherboard is defective. Either way, Asus will need to service your laptop.

 

Before sending it in, open the bottom panel and make sure your WiFi cables aren't getting snagged by the reset button, and it's marginally getting pressed.

 

Just, happened to me... 30 mins after i read this

seem the cause was, i went from very high (100% cpu/gpu) to idle usage...
could this really be a cause.

I turned off 2 mins after i went to idle!!

 

I did say it was a stock G73JW-A1, I don't know about slots but its 8gb 1333 RAM

Thanks for the advice but did you read my post at all? I said GPU never goes above 75C, CPU 65C (using CPUID HWMonitor). Also the laptop in your video link is a G73JH.

Yes thats what I suspect but I really hope its an easily fixable problem with software. The thing is some games are fine such as Metro 2033 which has never displayed that problem, even though I overclock to 830 core as it absolutely flogs my system.

Ok I did what you said and it does have this Disk error before my most recent shutdown:

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2.

There are a bunch of these with the same description but the event happened 5hrs before the shutdown (although the laptop was on for the whole duration). In fact, it does not seem related to the shutdowns at all as sometimes there is no Disk error before shutdowns, sometimes there are 2 or more Disk errors in a row. None of them happen in the minutes before the shutdown, usually a few hours before.

Do these shutdowns happen with 265.99? I might give it a go but I'm very happy with 260.99 performance.

What were you doing at the time when usage was very high?

 

@GlennOC -
I dont have any ACPI class error logs anywhere in the ~1 hour before the power off....

@adelleda
I was running the F@H CPU and GPU Clent.
Then I started Warcraft, and decided to turn off the F@H clients, i didnt even go back to warcraft (it was running in background), i was checking my browser (chrome), and suddenly poof, it goes off completely. First time it has happened.

PS - I was had the freezing/Hanging problem before, but after the Driver update/ms hotfix, and removing all sleep/suspend setting from the power manager, it hasnt happened since.

 

I know what you say your temps are. However, if windows does not freeze, no BSOD or GSOD and it shuts off, it is because the bios is shutting the pc down. 99% of the time this is a temperature problem. It could also be a bad connection of some sorts that actually cuts the power or some weird issue with the mobo. Regardless, if you aren't sure RMA it.

It is for the G73JW also, as it states in its title.

 

No one else has this problem??

BTW, i am not able to reproduce it, could it be a one off incident?

 

Argetlam your problem sounds different to mine, I wouldn't worry about it.

Today I tried Mirror's Edge and 15min into the tutorial mission the laptop shut down. Turned the power back on, got into it again and around the same time without fail, it shut down. Event logs don't say anything I have no idea.

In regards to heat, I very much doubt it. Mirror's Edge and Black Ops run flawlessly max settings at 60fps without any overclocking (675mhz stock core), and these are the problem games. Dirt 2 struggles to get 40fps and I overclock it to 800mhz core. Zero problems, play for 2 hours and all is fine. Same with Metro 2033, absolutely flogs my system at 30fps with core cranked up to 815mhz. 2 or 3 hours and nothing is wrong. I could probably marathon the whole 10hour campaign without any shutdown.

It looks very game specific to me, maybe part of the drivers utilised by these games are triggering something? What does Mirror's Edge and Black Ops have in common, that Dirt 2 and Metro2033 don't? I have no idea but I don't want to RMA it yet as it doesn't seem to be a hardware fault..

 

Same trouble with Dawn of War II. I don't believe it was heat, I will attempt to monitor.

 

I have had the exact same problem when I had my G73JW-3DE overclocked to more than 700 MHz GPU core. The system would run some games without incident, and with others, especially WOW, it would shut down after some time, from minutes to hours, without any error or even any log entry into the event viewer, just as if power was cut.

Temperatures were in the range of 80-83 deg when OCed to 820 MHz and only slightly above 70 deg when clocked at 760 MHz under full stress. All the while, the system remained stable while running Furmark.

I've done some extensive testing with 3DMark 2006 looping demo runs and found out that it must be a GPU core issue. I can oc the memory to at least 1450 MHz without any shutdown. When the core is clocked at or above 730 MHz, sooner or later, it will shutdown. At 800+ MHz, this will occur within mere minutes, while at 740 MHz, it may run for hours (had it running 4+ hours several times, every time hoping it would be stable now...)

Once clocked at around 720 MHz, the system would not shut down anymore, but at some time, 3DMark would stop with an error message that sounded something like if the GPU was lost or reset.

Now, I have it "oced" to 700 MHz core/1450 MHz mem all the time, and have not experienced the problem for several days (and several nights running 3DMark loops .

To me, it seems the GPU is the issue here. While several users have reported extremely high stable OCs and temperature is obviously not the issue, perhaps some of the GTX460m chips have bad signal stability when OCed or - as seems to be your case - even at stock clocks. I am not sure whether a slight increase in core voltage would increase stability or if doing that is even possible with a mobile GPU (MSI afterburner does not offer this option).

At least, it seems to be problem that is not limited to only one of us. I would have sent my notebook the RMA already if I lived in the US, but being from Austria, Europe, I would have to send it to the nearest service center in Germany, which would probably mean waiting for a few weeks before I get it back. Also, I'm afraid that the notebook would pass whichever tests they would run and might get it returned as error free. As long as it is stable the way it is, I can live with the issue, and I guess limited OC headroom cannot be counted as a product error.

If one of you decides to take this issue to ASUS, please post the outcome!

 

I've seen the blue screen of death twice when simply booting up from stand by mode - not even mentioning other problems. What a POS these things are.

Bye, bye Asus. Never again.

(Please excuse the irrelevant post - I'm just disappointed in Asus, right now.)

 

Is there a GPU and/or CPU temp monitoring program that will save temp data on the fly so it can be checked after a crash? All I have found are real time monitoring such as HWMonitor. I check these occasionally and the temps are less than 100C for GPU and less than 80C for CPU, so I do not believe these crashes are temp related. But if I had a record, I would know for sure.

 

AMD GPU Tool will log, as will GPU-Z and HWINFO32

I would look more at the OS than the hardware with issues like that. You are welcome to try Win 7 SP1 RC while you wait for MS to pull their updates out.

 

Thanks for the tip. Looking at the GPU-Z log the GPU temp rises to 110.5C then the hard shutdown occurs. Is 110C a reasonable shutdown temperature? Fan speed is 100%. My vents are clean. Why would this suddenly become an issue?

Is repasting the GPU the best alternative? Has anyone solved this issue with a repaste?

 

See my repaste thread below in my sig link for more info There's more info as well in the sticky for this forum.

 

Alright, I've been having a similar problem so figured I'd post in here. How, exactly, do I recover the "GPU-Z" log? I've been able to track temperature with the AMD GPU clock tool, but can't find any logs. Want to be able to find them because I've been having the overheating shutdown issues too.

I also want to ask here what's the best way to take apart the laptop to clean out the vents? I blew some compressed air in from the outside, as well as popping off the removable panel on the back and spraying down those parts too. However, I want to make sure I clean them out as much as possible; it's been six moths since I got the laptop and this is the first time I've had this problem, so I'm hoping it's simply because of dust on the fans/vents. What do I need to do to clean them out most effectively with the air?

Would pulling off the whole case be necessary? I'm not really hardware-savvy enough to do it myself, but if it's simple enough I have some pretty computer-savvy friends that could help me out with it most likely.

 

Getting at the vents proper would involve a full disassembly of the unit, as outlined in the BTOTech Disassembly Guide for G73JH. (Same for JW)

 

Okay the mirror's edge shutdowns must have been a fluke because I've played through 5 hrs of the campaign problem-free. Looks like the only game screwing up is Black Ops =/.

Thats definately a heat related shutdown, 110C is too hot. If you know how to repaste, I would open it up to see if its a paste issue first, otherwise RMA.

There is a tickbox for log to file under the same tab as the one that shows GPU temp. When you tick it, explorer will open up and ask you where to save the log.

 

This issue is happening to me as well.

I bought my G73-JW at the end of October.
Some basic info:
12GB Ram DDR3 1333MHz
GTX 460m 1.5Gb Drivers 260.99
i7-740QM
2x 500Gb 7200RPM Hard Drives

The issue started occurring about 2 weeks after I got it. It initially started when I was playing Starcraft 2, but also occurred when I was playing TF2. Both were on normal settings when the issue occurred. So I called up ASUS and they immediately gave me an RMA and off it went around the beginning of December.

Basically after a lot of back and forth between myself and ASUS they finally replaced the fans due to some sort of glitch. Well I just got it back today, and jump in to play some TF2, seems to be going fine, so I figure that they fixed whatever the issue was.

Well I was just playing Black Ops and the shutdown happened again. So I got GPU-Z to keep track of temps, and went in again to see what the temps were. Shutdown happened again, the temp never got above 65C in either the GPU or CPU.

I am tired of dealing with ASUS in this matter so I was hoping to get some help here. Any help would be much appreciated. If you need anymore information just let me know.

 

Obviously there is something about your configuration it doesn't like. I personally would do a fresh OS install, and then make sure everything is setup with latest drivers. You could try using 265.66 Asus drivers before doing that. I've read enough feedback about 260.99 to know to get off those.

 

Same with me, temperature is not an issue when the shutdown occurs. I am, however, stable at 700Mhz core. any higher oc, and it will either hang (below 740 Mhz) or shutdown after a while. How soon the shutdown occurs IS however related to the core frequency. My personal guess is that it is a signal stability issue with some of the gtx460 chips. Note that the driver upgrade changed nothing for me. I haven't tried a complete reinstall yet but I doubt it would fix the issue.

 

I'm having the shutdown problem also. It happens only while playing Starcraft 2 which is usually around 68 C. Not hot at all. It happens at random and while the GPU is over clocked or not. I've been searching for a fix for this for the past couple weeks. I did a full system restore and updated the drivers. I'm using 266.35 now. Should I send it in for RMA? It would suck not to have this beast for over a month...

 

I wouldn't RMA it as it could be the game, the drivers, or some other annoyance. For the time being, try updating your DirectX, and also Win 7 SP1 RTM just leaked today.

 

I'm getting a G73JW random shut down too at times, and not just during gaming. It's running at stock clocks and temps are fine. For a while I was getting the entire system to freeze so out of paranoia I re-loaded the OS cleanly.

I'm very PC competent and all my drivers are fine, my bios was updated before I re-did the OS, and for the most part it runs perfect. Hasn't freezed in weeks and that might be related to properly installing the chipset (the vanilla installer doesn't work unless you put a switch in) but now I'm getting this shutdown. Actually, it will either shutdown (like I pulled the battery out) or it will shutdown and reboot. Windows will ask if I want to start normally or in safe mode. It does not say anything about recovering from an error.

I've also had this happen when putting in an SD card, it immediately shut down. I don't know if this is related, but occasionally my mouse won't work and then the synaptics icon said that I plugged in my mouse when I never touched it and the connection is fine. This has happened in every USB port. Anyways, I got a BSOD the other day that was USB-related and the mouse is my only USB device.

I reinstalled all USB and related drivers along with the card reader. Since then I had it annoyingly do the shut down thing again yesterday while I was writing a PHP project that unfortunately did not auto save.

I think the freezing and shut down are related and the strange thing is this did not begin to happen until three months after buying the computer.

I'm pretty frustrated considering how much I spent on it. Kinda want it to be perfect. Never had these kinds of problems with my other laptops. I guess I could RMA it but I'll need a replacement PC for the time being considering this is my desktop. I'm not sure what they can do to fix it either if others have the same issue.

 

It breaks my heart when I read about situations like arrrdawg's. After 10 days or so, I RMA'ed that ASUS and bought a Toshiba Qosmio.

I have never regretted my decision since.

Later, an IT guru at my client's office told me that ASUS is know for being cheap in quality; he said I was nuts for paying $1,500 for an ASUS. I couldn't agree more. Never again...sorry.

 

Yeah, I only wish I could return it at this point. I know ASUS has a poor reputation with PCs, but I figured they use the same components as everybody else (and in a lot of cases, they make those components too like mobos for Intel and Macbooks for Apple). Since I take excellent care of it and run it every single day, it seems quite strange that all of a sudden it would be exhibiting problems even after a fresh OS install. That points to something on the hardware level that probably is failing unfortunately

 

I had another complete shut down today(no BSOD). so today i ended up doing a fresh install of windows and successfully updated to bios 203. after that i ran memtest86 that passed, furmark, 3d mark vantage, prime 95 can all run for hours with no problems. my temps are perfectly fine at 38gpu/45 cpu idle. no higher than 65 in game. everything is stock no overclocks. this is so intermittently random. i guess i can live with 1 shutdown every 60 hours of game play.

 

I just bought a G73JW-XN1 myself and I am having the same problem, I have had the laptop a little over a month. I have tried several different versions of the video driver to no sucess. I have never had it shutdown in 2d mode but then again im always in WoW.

Below is my GPU-Z log file nothing is overclocked all factory on the factory install of 7 home pro.

Date , GPU Core Clock [MHz] , GPU Memory Clock [MHz] , GPU Shader Clock [MHz] , GPU Temperature [°C] , Memory Used [MB] , GPU Load [%] , Memory Controller Load [%] , Video Engine Load [%] , VDDC [V] ,

2011-01-28 06:15:21 , 675.0 , 625.0 , 1350.0 , 60.0 , 77 , 1 , 3 , 0 , 0.9120 ,

2011-01-28 06:15:21 , 675.0 , 625.0 , 1350.0 , 61.0 , 78 , 3 , 1 , 0 , 0.9120 ,

2011-01-28 06:15:22 , 675.0 , 625.0 , 1350.0 , 61.0 , 78 , 1 , 1 , 0 , 0.9120 ,

2011-01-28 06:16:44 , 50.6 , 67.5 , 101.0 , 52.0 , 82 , 2 , 7 , 0 , 0.8120 ,

2011-01-28 06:16:45 , 50.6 , 67.5 , 101.0 , 52.0 , 82 , 1 , 7 , 0 , 0.8120 ,

2011-01-28 06:16:46 , 50.6 , 67.5 , 101.0 , 52.0 , 82 , 2 , 8 , 0 , 0.8120 ,

2011-01-28 06:16:47 , 50.6 , 67.5 , 101.0 , 52.0 , 82 , 4 , 8 , 0 , 0.8120 ,

2011-01-28 06:16:48 , 50.6 , 67.5 , 101.0 , 52.0 , 82 , 4 , 8 , 0 , 0.8120 ,

2011-01-28 06:16:49 , 50.6 , 67.5 , 101.0 , 52.0 , 82 , 4 , 8 , 0 , 0.8120 ,

You can see where it went from 3d to 2d none of the temps look out of norm to me. As much as I hate to whine my last laptop was a g72 from Bestbuy and I loved it. I am getting shutdowns at least once to two times a day. Should I send this to Asus to get it fixed? I am past the 35 day RMA to newegg window.

Also updated the bios to 203 as well when I started having these problems. No luck there either. I also must say the back of the computer feels warm but not overly hot when it shuts down.

I installed a CPU tempature app today as well called CoreTemp64 and will soon be logging my cpu tempatures while playing.

 

Whenever you flash a BIOS, it's always a good idea to reset it's settings to defaults to clear the CMOS and insure you have no corrupted info. Try resetting the BIOS.

 

i had this problem with my G73 (after i sent it in to best buy to fix the touchpad, which they didnt fix) and i updated the BIOS to version 211 and it stopped happening. think its been about two months since it happened last. also, the new BIOS dropped my GPU temp about 10 degrees C when playing games. another thing you might wanna try is NOT using the turbo button, keep it off. i noticed when i used it while playing games it would freeze more often than when i kept the turbo off.

 

I am not sure if I was using the turbo button or not. Oh well its turned off now, lets see what happens. Also where did you get bios version 211? I am only showing version 203 on Asus website.

 

he has the G73 JH

 

posting to report this happens in DeadSpace 2 as well, it's either a lockup (random, might be related to USB) or sudden shutdown (only happens when I OC)

no problems with my other games.

 

Well I made sure the turbo button was of, and I have been monitoring the CPU temps for the last 2 days. I did get one shutdown eairly yesterday morning. The highest any of the core temps got was 64 degrees not anywhere NEAR thermal shutdown, so that means that something else has got to be causing these shutdowns. I did add a second harddrive to this computer and all I can figure is maybe its some kind of electrial short. I will pull the harddrive tonight and see if I get any shutdowns in the next few days. It's possible the short is in the connect to the harddrive not to the drive itself.

 

Hey All,

So my G73JW just "messed up" 3 times in about 20min. All three times i was playing Dead Space 2. The first was were it just powered off, as if I had just held down the power button. The next was a hard lock during the game. The third was a power off again. Both of these issues have happened to me while paying Neverwinter Nights 2 as well. I do not have P4G installed. I have my power settings set so that if the laptop is plugged in, it does not sleep or do anything unless i tell it to. It stays on and active while th lid is closed. It is not uncommon for me to leave the laptop closed, and then come back to it being on but the screen does not turn back on and the only thing i can do is hard shut down.

I have had my FSB OCed to 152 and my GPU OCed to 800/1500, and neither gets to high temps during extended gaming. I have also tried with no OC of CPU and GPU, and problems persist.

Sometimes when I start my computer I get a "win boot manager failed to start" error message and the system wont boot. If i just restart a few times, it boots right up. This is off an SSD that I installed into the 2nd SATA slot.

There is a macbook sharing the wireless at my house, so I tried turning off my WLAN device, and it still shut down.

Anyone else having the win boot error, and/or have an SSD in the 2nd slot? Obv. people are having the power off issue I'm having. Ugh

 

Gee, I hope you haven't stressed your hardware in any way, and overclocking without monitoring your temps...

 

WHy would you overclock the memory so high on the GPU? It isn't bandwidth starved so it is a waste. The temps can stay reasonable on the memory side but can have serious problems.

Are you still having problems shutting off even on stock clocks?

 

heres a video of the shut down. happens at the same spot everytime so i believe it is game related and not hardware failure. i would send this back to newegg/asus but have a feeling nothing would get done or can be done besides a whole new replacement.

YouTube - G73JW Shutting down

 

Mine shuts down when playing OCed, mainly on Starcraft II, and then after that happens, i have constant freezes, but if im not OC, nothing happens.

 

Yup Staples8 thates Exactly what mine does but it doesn't seem to be in the same spot everytime.

I took the spare harddrive out of my machine to see if that was the issue but that wasn't it either.

 

Maybe the Power supply isn't good enough to handle the overclocked GTX 460M in G73JW? Mine shuts down big time at GPU core clock 755MHz and also 800MHz while playing Dead Space 2, temperature before it shuts down was 64 on 755 and 68 on 800... But Dead space 2 doesn't really get that much out of GTX 460M tho... It's just weird

 

Just ordered a Targus APA05US Home Office 180W Universal AC DC Adapter
today, going to see if the extra 30W can fix this OC sudden shutdown problem. The power supply came with Asus G73JW has 150W (19.5V * 7.7A) and this one has 180W (19V * 9.5A). Will let you guys know if it's because of power shortage when I receive this power brick.