G73jh Windows 10 Freezing

I upgraded from Windows 8.1, where I was running catalyst 15.9 (I think) and after the upgrade to Win10 it seemed to have remained the same version. In any case, I didn't remove any driver. Later, after it was already running fine for some days, I upgraded to the latest beta Catalyst, which is also running great.

 

Just to let everyone know, in WINDOWS 10 there is a current incompatibility with the newer AMD drivers where if you shut down with fast startup enabled, when you power back on with an hdmi connected you will get a black screen with no cursor just after the loading sequence and before the welcome screen. In some cases you will see a cursor after a minute or so and windows should load normally, but in my case it essentially freezes. Solution is to either remove hdmi cable before powering, or disabling windows 10 fast startup option. Restart is unaffected. AMD knows this issue and is working to solve it, but from my view it is more of a Microsoft problem. My setup is a g73jh with 7970m so i'm not sure if 5870m is affected. This problem has been troubling me for months I believe from 15.7 catalyst and up. I'm on 15.10 beta now. At least I found the solution now

 

That might even be mentioned in the current catalyst release notes. I don't have that issue as I only connect the HDMI cable while the laptop is already running.

 

What i remember is mentioned in the release notes is basically only a one minute delay with the cursor coming up after and booting normally. Plus this is fixed by disabling ULPS. The hdmi case is different and i'm not sure if AMD knows it but it seems to be caused by the same thing as i remember seeing threads about ULPS over guru3d forums at the same time i started having the problem too. (15.7 or so)

edit: another weird thing it seems to be caused by windows 10 fast startup is that the bios keyboard presses seem to have no effect for some reason even before the bios can initiate the devices. I haven't tested with longer bios key press wait period times, but i have it set at 5 secs. This seems extremely weird to me as why it happens, but from the time i disabled fast startup i don't have this issue. I believe it has to do something the keyboard initialization routine as some times the asus g73jh bios used to "fail to initialize the keyboard" even though i believe is connected internally via ps/2 port :/ Still windows 10 was the worse windows upgrade experience for me so far, since i never used vista, 8, or 8.1. Only xp and win 7 (as upgrades).

 

I had installed a second hard drive in my G73jh to test windows 10 from windows 7 clean upgrade about 3 months and about a month ago decided to reformat back to windows 7 and do a clean upgrade to windows 10 pro. In both cases I have had pretty decent success. I had to reinstall it a few times when it was still in preview. but in all this I have seen the blue screens and freezes. I have not seen any blue screens or freezes in about a month after disabling LAN drivers and uninstalling of graphics drivers and allowing windows to install Microsoft Basic Display Adapter drivers. Then in device manager chose to update and pick a driver from a list and choose the AMD driver from that list to update too rather then let windows decide during an update. This method worked for me.

 

Windows 10 is started to freeze again, sigh, I've reset Windows 10 and I've disabled the LAN card, seems ok.. I'm starting to wonder if it's Steam that's causing it, when it tries to update I usually get frozen on..

 

I haven't had any issues with steam or any other game on windows 10. I play several heavy graphical games with high fps. have you tried what I suggested above with the graphics drivers? just an idea that helped me

 

btw if you use Speedfan it will also freeze the computer and blue screen. I have ran into this issue multiple times on windows 10 with speedfan. there is some sort of glitch that crashes the computer while running speedfan. also installing power4gear hybrid do a search for windows 10 and find an appropriate version. I had crash issues with out having it installed as well as having the one on the driver page for G73jh installed. you will need to find one that's compatible with windows 10 and it will work just perfect.

 

Yeah I might give it a crack but so far after disabling LAN seems to be good, if it starts again I'll try your graphics solution, grateful for all the help from everyone on here :-D

 

I can report the same - disabling the LAN adapter (Atheros AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet Controller) fixes the freeze at boot-up issue with Windows 10. I have kept my LAN adapter disabled and I've not had a lockup since. If you really need to use the LAN, the workaround is the disable LAN before shutdown/hibernate/restart, and re-enable the LAN only when you need it. Don't forget to disable it again or you'll freeze at your next boot. Interestingly, wireless works great all the time.

 

Seems like a driver issue with the specific lan chip in use which is why the wireless would be ok.

 

Just reporting in that I experienced the same - thanks for posting the solution! The odd thing is that I never disabled my NIC with the GA release of Win10. I had always presumed ATK was causing my hangs and the laptop has been very stable with just ATK excluded. After the 10586 update yesterday the hanging came back and that's when I disabled the NIC.

 

Just for kicks I did an automatic driver update on the AR8131 and it seemed to actually download an update. Unfortunately I didn't check the prior version number, but it appears to now be at 2.1.0.17 dated 2015-09-29. I've reboot 3 times in a row with the NIC enabled and haven't had any hangs.

 

After being rock solid for over a week, today I applied update KB3120677 and the hanging came right back. Have disabled the Ethernet device and it's fine again. Oh well.

 

A long time since I posted here, but could anyone give me some advice? My situation, similar to others on this thread is:
- I have a G73JW-3DE (essentially a G73JH, with a very slightly faster processor and a GTX460m instead of the AMD card)
- Upgraded to Windows 10 in mid-August (from the pre-installed Windows 7 that came with the laptop) and have regretted it almost immediately because.....
- It froze the first time I booted the machine post upgrade setting the tone, but did launch upon a hard reset and second attempt.
- Used it for months since and it would work fine for days at a time, sometimes weeks, but every now and again it would freeze upon launch, particularly when a Windows 10 update was installed. Sometimes it could take 3 - 4 attempts to get it to boot up.
- It came to a head last week. Worked fine earlier in the day, then later at night I switched it on and it froze on the login screen. Not a shock. Tried to reboot and it just would not launch again. Tried to start it up over 20 times and it failed every one. I lost everything on my C:/drive, but fortunately, important files and photographs etc were backed up. Still a real pain though.
- Downloaded the .iso and made a clean install of Windows 10 over the weekend, thinking maybe that would resolve the issues, but I still get intermittent freezes during start-up (I will say, I've never had a crash once it's booted and I'm logged it).

Came to this board for help/advice. Yesterday, I disabled my LAN from within Windows (not sure it that is sufficient, or if it must be disabled in the BIOS?) and it hasn't crashed today, but that's not confirmation of a fix. Even still, I'm now put off using W10 on this machine. It's a decent enough OS, but it just doesn't function well on this machine, and offers no tangble benefit to me over Windows 7. Wish I had never upgraded to be honest.

Anyway, I have never deleted the ASUS recovery partition on my drive, but pressing F9, it doesn't appear to work anymore? If it still possible to go back to Windows 7? Will my OEM WIndows 7 product key still work? I also made the recovery DVDs when I bought the machine, so would those work, and if so, how do I go about using them?

Apologies for the wall of text. Just thought I'd give you my experience and see if anyone can advise. Thanks in advance.

 

Yes the BIOS should allow an OEM 7 install to work.

I would boot off the first recovery disc you created.

 

Nevermind

 

wow im way tooo late and i'm sure this has been said before but, i've noticed a lot of UNSTABLE W10 upgrade but, I my self have NOT upgraded but, instead clean installed from the windows media creation tool created USB drive.

 

Either way you will want to take a backup image so you can try either way and revert if you need to.

 

Hi Blaydes99, wow dude, you are a true Wizard! Do you know how much web trawling I've done over the last fortnight looking for a solution to this enigma? Well truthfully, I never counted them but its been stacks and stacks and hours upon hours of my valuable time!. When I first upgraded my G73JH to Win 10, it worked just fine for a few weeks until suddenly, out of the blue (scuse the pun), the machine ran into a brick wall! That dreaded BSOD, MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION. I was getting so exasperated that I was seriously considering buying a new Laptop. I had almost given up when I thought to give it one more crack but this time specifying G73JH in my Google search and thats how I came about your post and vwala.... success.

Your solution is 100% spot on. I followed exactly what you recommended, to the T. As I had tried numerous other 'solutions', I'm sure you can understand my skepticism and cynical views, as to date, nothing had worked. I am truly grateful for your efforts in figuring this out. Why? well because you not only saved me from chronic misery and frustration, but my time, which is very valuable indeed.

I would be more than happy to make a donation to you via Paypal. If all the Asus G73JH owners out there (who have probably already succumbed to apathy), did a small donation of lets say $5 to $10, i'm sure it'll make up for some of your time. If the G73JH owners out there sent the LT in for repairs, I would not be surprised if they got a $100 bill. Once again... my overwhelming thanks and gratitude. Sleeze.

 

One little additional step to blaydes post, the G73jh also has an issue with the amd video card bios (vbios). You already had that under windows 7 if you ever upgraded the AMD drivers (not using the original ones). There is a vbios upgrade somehwere in this forum available to fix this. This is also shown with BSODs while just using the laptop with a somewhat recent driver (I think the 2014 versions started this, or was it already the 2013 version?...).

 

... So is it a foregone conclusion that G73JH is a lost cause for Windows10. I tried it when it first came out, experienced unrecoverable lockups, even upgraded the vbios as others suggest but it always ended up being unstable.
It's been about a year since... any news?

 

Did you disable the LAN port in BIOS?
It's rock stable since, running Windows 10 since day 1.

 

That wasn't something I tried at the time. Has it been resolved that the Ethernet driver is to blame? I've been over this twice and had to revert back to W7 each time.

 

Yeah, because the same issue is already under Windows 8 with this lan adapter.

 

Yeah i've been running it for a year, with the latest updates everything works mostly like 99% normally. Anniversary update fixed some stuff with usb devices as well. Is it worth it over win7? yes and no..as a gamer only dx12 and the interface..i don't use cortana and over win10 stuff..you need to customize some stuff to your liking

 

I don't have that kind of issues..But, after my comp went to service in Asus, and I got it back, freezing and buzzing started. They change fans and whole keyboard. And I got freezing picture and buzzing on sound but only for couple of second or even less.??

 

Quick question ..
What version of display driver you guys are using ?

 

The latest Legacy Version from AMD. Working fine and smooth in the few games I play.

 

It's been a few weeks now with Windows 10 on my G73JH. I can confirm that disabling the Ethernet adapter in the BIOS is the sure-fire way to allow success with Windows 10.

Thanks for the help!!!

 

Thank goodness I did a search as I was contemplating doing an upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 on mine. I did a big hardware upgrade not long ago on mine with 850 Pro SSD, new high capacity platter drive, swapped to 920XM and boosted the ram to the max 32gb. The only thing I didn't do afresh is Win 7 as I cloned the old drive to the 850 Pro. The bios on the HM55 chipset board was flashed with the latest bios ages ago but I didn't upgrade the vbios as it seems too much trouble with the steps involved.

I am getting random BSOD memory dump occasionally since the hardware upgrade (which is annoying and I put it down to issues with interaction between the ram/SSD/HD5870 and Win 7) but otherwise it stays on continuously with no issue. I thought perhaps it would show its true potential with all those hardware upgrades and resolve that annoying BSOD at the same time with a fresh upgrade to Win 10. After reading this thread (and a few other threads on the net) I don't think I want to take my chances with making it worst on Win 10!

The Atheros AR8131 issue is news to me. Do you think it might be the real cause for my random BSOD on Win 7 although the BSOD wasn't an issue before all those upgrade...so probably not? How are you guys connecting to the net if you disable it?

 

I'm using mine every day with Windows 10, without any issues. Only thing I needed to do, is to disable the LAN adapter in Bios. I did the vbios upgrade years ago and yes, this is a must for the newer (post 2013 I think) AMD GPU drivers.
I use WLAN for the net, but switched to a faster usb 802.11ac based adapter (I know, I don't get the full speed because the laptop only has USB2, but ~23 MB/s is still nice).
In your case with the BSOD on Win7, run a memtest86 on your machine, in most cases RAM is at fault for BSOD:
http://www.memtest86.com/
Oh and also important, my G73jh had some little bumpers left and right of the sata mount, this cased issues with my SSD and I had to remove the useless bumpers.