Help! I bricked my G73 with vBIOS

Cool! What did they fix?

 

Which repair center did you send it to CA or IN? Are you saying they received it on the 8th? Good luck.

Good news! +1 to MarkS, what did they do? Replace VGA, reflash? Enjoy. I bet yours went to CA.

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Mine has been "in repair" status since the 6th and I just checked a few minutes ago after reading those 2 posts.

I at least believe by now it is being repaired under warranty which was an unknown in the beginning, but questions remain. I hope they are able to reflash, I'd hate to be thrown back into the 5870m bin hit or miss scenerio or otherwise have them take it apart.

Q

 

Yea, they replaced the Video Card. I'm not sure how they fixed the keyboard lights because the repair slip I got back with the laptop just showed the video card as being replaced.

 

hmm, interesting. so there is a way to fix the kb lights without a mobo replacement

@lathoris: do you have an email for this tech? If so, ASK HIM NOW!!!

 

They probably won't reflash, but just replace the GPU outright. The good news is, they seem to have Furmark testing as part of their "Final Testing" step, so when it comes back you probably won't suffer any GSOD issues. Good Luck.

 

The problem now is, my G73 is lost in the Asus RMA Abyss that is the IN repair center. A youtube friend of mine has had his PSOD sitting "in repair" for over two weeks now (a problem well known and easily fixed) and he keeps getting shined on about someone calling him.

I can just see it sitting on a shelf or something while they mark it "in repair". IN stories have been absolutely pathetic since they opened, they need a rehaul of techs and management there imo.
CA on the other hand has been really on top of the service.

My G73 doesn't have the HDDs included, I can just see in another week, I get a call saying they can't fix it due to that. 2+ business weeks of "in repair" to realize that, i.e. sitting on a shelf.


EDIT: Thanks gstboy

Q

 

If you got it from Gentech maybe Ken might be able to help you out. Last time mine was sitting in RMA limbo for a couple weeks with the psod, I got nothing when i called asus about it, so I emailed ken, he had someone calling me about the status later that day, the next day they had it shipping back out my way.

 

I bricked my g73 whilst attempting to flash the vbios, gutted to be honest, but at least they'll swap out the GPU for a fresh one.

Have tried a blindflash with no joy. Ah well...lesson learnt i suppose...back on the xbox i go...

RMA form completed, courier en route.

 

Hope you insisted that it's sent to the Fremont, CA repair center. It will definitely be a GPU replacement.

And likely your repair center won't have the part and have to order it from CA. So might as well send your unit to CA.

Don't send it to a local service center.

 

I'm in England, so it will go to Scotland for repair work. I have made it extremely clear that I know its a GPU issue; as I have a load of stuff on my HDD that I don't want them erasing thinking a format is needed.

Thanks for tip though fella, appreciated. Luckily I am in Brisbane for 4 weeks soon so I won't miss it too much.

 

I tried that and they said no. I'll give IN the benefit of the doubt (maybe they've improved since opening) as my machine may come back just fine, if not, I have a game plan to make sure I get a CA RMA if I ever need to send it in again.

As you suggested in a PM to me, 5870m supply is tight. My youtube bud got word for his PSOD + crash issues has been waiting on a vga card since 7/12. No doubt that is why my RMA is taking so long, they just aren't properly updating the status report.

Hopefully they get supplied soon and IN sends mine back in one piece.

How have you been ziddy?

Good luck rich10 and thanks gstboy.

Q

 

Was Ken able to help you out with getting more info from ASUS? I guess if there's a shortage of vid cards atm then nothing you can do but wait. Hopefully the new cards will be better than the ones you had before.

 

I didn't buy it from Ken and I don't want to trouble him with something out of his control. While I'm not getting the words from Asus, I have enough info from several places that I'm waiting on a vga.

The really sad part is I had a good vga and now I'm back in the mix to possibly get a problematic one. Hopefully they have a HDD with an OS that they can throw in there and thoroughly test it before sending back.

I think I've accepted the facts and now settling in for the long haul; my long shifts at work just feel a lot longer without my G73.

Q

 

I thought you bought yours from Gentech my bad, but good luck man.

From my few times dealing with RMA I've come to learn that the status update page is a complete joke, the only time they update it is when they ship your unit back to you, then it goes to 100% with a tracking number. They might as well get rid of it and just send an email to you when they receive the unit and when they ship it back, that's basically the same thing.

 

Fine. I got my temperatures for MemIO lowered by redoing the thermal paste.

Also my Cinebench I ran is 24.37.

Here are my new temps while gaming.

 

PPL, I am dying here, this thing has been "in repair" since July 6th and after a circle jerk with "waiting on a chip or something" to "with technician" last Friday, I am back to "in repair".

After 20 minutes of digging by the phone tech, I am now being told they are replacing the mobo AND still waiting on parts, but can't tell me what parts.

They never received a reply from supposedly sending IN repair center an email and nobody can find any evidence it was ever sent. I asked to speak to a supervisor and of course "they are currently busy with another customer and will call you back within 48 hours". An absolute BS putoff as I've heard it before and nobody ever receives a call back.

Since the failed vBIOS flash not only gave me a simple white popup that said "FAIL", but also froze the lappy to where all I could do was hold the power button down for a few seconds (upon reboot, we know the story), maybe it did do some damage to the mobo and that's why I remained polite even though I was clearly expressing my frustration. However, now I have to wonder if they are even going after the right problem that I couldn't have been more clear about.

Oh the agony, at home I'm fine due to the desktop, but work is sooooooooo dragging without my G73.

After buying my G73 on Feb 12th, I am now back to more time without it, than with it.

Q

 

Sorry to hear that Quagmire! Hope you will recieve your laptop soon and will do some more awesome video for us on it!

 

Well Quagmire my G73 is also in the shop when I attempted to update with the latest MSI vBios. But I just got off the phone with a rep who said they were waiting for parts on the 19th and resumed repairs on the 20th, so he assumes they received parts.

I hope you got yours back by now? After this I'm done. I'm just going to leave it at Bios 211 and my modified vBios and nothing more unless Asus releases an official vBios.

I received my ICD7 and thermal pads though to redo the thermals. Since it's been in repair, I'll do CPU also since they already destroyed the stickers

For me I wasn't much gaming anyhow, so Killing Floor and Alien Swarm and L4D2 is doing fine on this old computer. But agreed it's work that is dragging. The larger screen makes work so much better and the computers at work are horrific.

 

yah, your bios is great. I haven't had a single gsod since I installed it last week and I have been gaming quite a bit. I was wreckless when I did it though and used winflash, just because I had a screw it attitude, if this doesn't work I will return it to Best Buy. But since then I will use atiflash if asus releases a vbios update.

 

Sorry to hear ziddy I hope and it sounds like they're taking care of yours much quicker than mine. It's all about the parts.
What were your symptoms after the crash? Winflash?

Good news is I believe they have a fresh batch of 5870m's and your date stamp update is right imo because guess who finally got a tracking number

Estimated arrival 8/26 after some 46 days "in repair". I am expecting a new mobo and VGA, so I'll let out what the latest BIOS versions that each come with. Hopefully she comes back with all her fingers and toes

Q

 

Naw, I tried to force flash it in Dos. Won't be trying any new vBios unless Asus releases a proper one.

Asus repair has gone significant changes since my fiasco with Nvidia 8xxx series. Used to be 4-5 business day turn around with overnight shipping.

Now it's typical 10-14 days rep told me. I guess that is still slightly better than HP/Toshiba and Dell. But maybe I'll look into MSI and if Clevo ever decides portability in a laptop matters, go with them.

 

Man, these flashes are Russian Roulette no matter how the procedure. Then if it does fail, you have another round of Roulette with VGA supply.

I was real close to buying a Sager from Ken and selling the G73 whenever it arrived. Now I'll just see if I can get back to my happy normal first.

Q

 

Yeah the quiet fans and battery life are worth it IMO. If you can get it running to your satisfaction keep it.

Upgradeability IMO is a moot point. For Intel, the Sandy Bridge won't fit the G73's current socket.

And IMO when ATi HD6xxx or whenever we need to upgrade, it will be a new MXM slot anyhow. So overall, upgradability is a not an issue IMO, a new notebook is the answer in 2-3 years.

And I don't think games will be a problem until 360 or PS3 successor released and that won't be for another 3-5 years.

 

ROFLMAO. Got off the phone to see if they shipped. Man they replacing everything.

They replaced the motherboard, the GPU, the screen and keyboard. And now they are waiting for parts for the top chasis. Sounds to me when they removed the top chasis the ribbon to the trackpad and lights got ripped.

So I have to wait few more days for parts. I hope they replaced my screen with the right one. I don't get why they did, there was nothing wrong with the screen, keyboard or top chasis.

I don't get why they don't just send me a replacement at this point...

 

Umm, why the hell don't they just send you a brand new factory sealed machine? That sounds like the labor and parts exceed the value of the laptop.

 

Granted it took 2 rma's to fix my machine, they:

1. Replaced LCD.
2. Replaced GPU.
3. Replaced CPU.
4. Replaced keyboard.
5. Replaced GPU.
6. Replaced Motherboard.

Very efficient aren't they?

 

for my broken lcd cable they also replaced my lcd as well. Maybe the techs get paid by the part so they replace whatever they can get away with.

 

Yeah, you'd have to figure they caused some damage taking it apart.

You called it earlier in this thread Xeven, they'll just randomly swap parts until it lights up
One of my updates said they replaced the mobo. I've read a couple comments in the past about how the vBIOS is intertwined with the main BIOS. I don't know in what way, but if fubar'ing the vBIOS can hit the main, maybe the mobo replacement isn't completely crazy .

Q

 

I'm pretty similar to Xeven.

Replace Mobo
Replace GPU
Replace LCD
Replace Keyboard
Replace top chasis

Anyways, your G73 should be arriving end of this week right?

 

That's tomorrow! I hope you'll finally get it back and working

 

This is the first time I have come to this thread, I have only read the initial post of the OP with all the updates and then all the posts in this last page. I am only here to do some research before buying myself a G73jh-TZ155V.

I neither care about over volting, nor do I know how to. I just want to run it stock without all the flashing of Vbios (which I dont understand anyway).

My question is, should I buy a G73jh or wait for G73jw. I am only in USA for another 10 days. I will be running everything at stock speeds. Will I have problems of GSOD and VBIOS errors others have mentioned, if I only use stock Asus GPU drivers without over volting or changing to 3rd party drivers?

I also donot care about any features at all on the G73JW. I just care about stability.

 

I've said this many times.

If you really want to know the answer to that question, get advised by a professional and long reseller of Asus. These resellers have been in the business with Asus for as long as Asus has been making notebooks. These resellers have excellent ratings for customer service and have excellent reputation here at NotebookReview and other notebook forums.

Ask any of them and I'm very confident they can assure of the G73s quality and the actual number of issues is about 1%, not the ridiculous hysteria we see on this forum.

XoticPC, GentechPC, BTOTech, PowerNotebooks, PC Canada, NCIX, ExcaliberPC and probably a few other resellers I don't know about.

All the reseller answer promptly by email and phone and all again have well established reputation among notebook gamers.

 

All is NOT Well!

Everything looked fine until I opened up the temps on the GPU. In an 80F room, I opened up with 55C DispIO, 79C MemIO and 74C Shader, this is bad from my experience with my 3 other Asus 5870m's. Sure enough just sitting here in idle, they rose and leveled off at 65C DispIO, 9Fn5C MemIO and 87C Shader, In Idle! The fan works, but doesn't blow as hard as I remember and it still has BIOS 209.

As one would expect, it shutdown within 20 seconds of running L4D and now has a serious Windows error that will keep BSODing during driver loading. At this point, I'm going to try to restore windows and then make the decision of returning it or looking into the likely crap paste and pad job the VGA has.

This is completely frustrating and unacceptable. The repair invoice even has the balls to state "Replaced MB and VGA PASSED ALL TEST". What a crock, what were "ALL TEST" to include, turn it on, then off.

This result is simple unacceptable and I am way pissed

Q

 

Personally I plan on redoing the thermals anyways.

Before returning it, I would do just that, plus that way you'll get the best thermal performance anyhow. There must be a computer store that has OCZ Extreme Freeze or ICD 7 around you.

But I suspect their VGA test is does it turn on, do all the colors look fine and a simple 3D test to make sure Direct 3D works.

Well, you have a right to be angry, but it's a great excuse to redo your thermals!

 

Thanks zid, windows couldn't fix the error so I'm restoring to a past image. It's rebooting now. Odd during the restore, the VGA started blowing as hard as I remember. Mybe there's an adjustment it had to make, idk. Going through the check disc now and we'll see.
I build desktops, so I have some OCZ and I have no problem redoing the paste, I'm just going to be even more upset if I break something trying to fix something that shouldn't of been.

Well, nevermind, restored image and it still BSODs on driver load, so it's the machine and not the OS.

Q

 

Well I hope that a redo of thermals will fix your heat problem.

But the BSOD? That's odd because that would be unrelated to your G73 unless some hardware is broken. And if that's the case, a huge let down.

 

Whatever temp it got to during 20 seconds of L4D may have damaged something I guess. I have put the original C drive in now and doing a F9 restore so I can completely take my OS and ATi drivers out of the equation. If it still BSODs during driver load, then there wouldn't be much of a reason to redo thermals imo.

In which case I am going to raise holy hell with Asus and demand when this one gets back, they immediately send me a new one. I am not going to wait 7 weeks again only to come back screwed up again.

 

Good luck with this. Instead of raising holy hell, let me know here also and we can both ask Gary to look at your situation and have them expedite a replacement rather than a repair. Gary seems to be well aware of Asus repair image among us G73 owners now.
- Actually if you have issues with your notebook 3 times in 3 months, Asus is supposed to send you a replacement I believe. Either way, I hope Gary may be sympathetic to your situation as he is well aware of the G73 GPU issues.

Almost all of us have experienced extended wait period for parts and for some parts not working on arrival.

 

It BSODs right where you would move from the windows splash screen to the desktop loading on the original Asus OS.

Who is Gary?

Actually now the windows repair doesn't show an OS since I couldn't finish the process. It's an obvious hardware issue to me.

 

What about BIOS settings? Did you set them to all defaults? I know that such simple thing as switching SATA mode to Compatible/Performance/IDE can cause a headache. If you haven't done this yet, go to the BIOS and reset everything to defaults and then maybe again do the full system reinstall and see if it BSODs again.

 

Gary Key is a new Technical Customer Manager (or something like that) and has been spearheading addressing issues with their products. You can PM him here, since he seems to be on daily.

A tech is also supposed to be assigned to this forum. May as well just hire me since I seem to be filling that role.

 

I know why you are getting such sucky temps.

I recently got my unit back from RMA. I had damaged my lcd cable while repasting the cpu/gpu and had to send it back. I didn't get charged for the repair or parts although I had to pay for shipping to them.

I get it back and my temps while not as bad as yours were much higher than I remembered from my pasting job. I thought maybe I didn't do such a good job so I reopened it to do it again.

And looky what we have here. The work order paper I got back with the laptop only said they replaced the LCD screen and cable, apparently they did more than that. I initially thought it was a nice gesture that they replaced my warranty void sticker on the cpu with a brand new one but I guess they decided to do a little repasting as well. In fact they repasted right over my MX3 paste without even bothering to clean it off first. I say you need to do a repaste. for mine it was a gelantinous mass right on both the cpu and gpu mixed in with my other paste to make one big old mess under there. I had a hard time even taking the heatsink off because it was almost glued on there with so much paste.

 

Ok, guys, Quagmire contacted Gary and Gary replied very quickly. Quagmire has emailed Gary his information and they have been working to solve this issue.

This was done a while ago now.

I would like to add, Quagmire does build his own desktop and knows his way around computers. When Quagmire has said he has attempted to resolve the issue, I believe him, now it's up to Gary to help solve this.

 

Actually the GPU die itself looks like it was making pretty decent contact. But mixing two compounds like that isn't smart, and yeah what a mess.

 

Hey premudriy, how have you been? Thank you, but yeah, I didn't mention I reset the BIOS, pinhole reset several times and even did a riverdance just in case from the start.

I've tried 2 backup images, a F9 and a DVD attempt. Every BSOD is right after the windows logo splash goes out and before the welcome screen comes on, any reboot.
Says fatal error and dumps.

After doing something else while thinking about it, it dawned on me it runs in bios, dos and low res (all be it the gpu fan is kicking hard and hot), so I figure it might go into safe mode and it got past the logo and started to complete the OS installation, but of course, one can't finish in safe mode. Never the less, it got over the hump, so I'm reloading an image to the SSD and will poke around in safe mode. I bet the temps are up there.

Thanks Chastity, I'm sorry, I should have mentioned to the thread or removed that question as ziddy and I went to PM He has been contacted and replied quickly, I am waiting to see it go into action.

If it takes a vote for your employment, count me in

Wow, what a mess, all good now? At this point, I would love the opportunity to do a repaste, but after the 20 seconds of L4D menus, I am now plagued with a BSOD issue that may very well be hardware related. Believe me, if I can get it to boot, I will attempt a repaste. As long as there's this other problem, so far it just seems to be going back.

Thanks for updating the board, I've been, let's say, distracted

Q

 

Unreal, what a binary block this is. Even though I have a fully functional reimaged OS installed, it's still wanting to finish the OS fresh install from a different physical drive, after I load safe mode drivers.

I'm going to take another break before trying to look up why this is. Pinhole reset doesn't affect it.

The first attempt loading safe mode drivers after the SSD image, it froze and started to artifact. I have the bottom panel open and the VGA heatsink is wicked hot. I had to use my cooler for another attempt and previously said was the result.

I am just beside myself that the tech could have passed this on any test other than turning it on and off without looking at VGA temps.

 

I'm sure they have techs that do their job well, but equally positive that they have a lot that just show up for the paycheck and have no idea what they are doing. You might have gotten one of the latter that worked on yours.

Hopefully you get your laptop up and running without having to rma it again. I kind of wish they had just sent me the part so that I could do it myself because I could have done a better job. the paste job was just one part of it, I found other things that made me think the tech never worked on a g73 before or didn't care.

all is good with mine now though, it's running as it should.

 

I came back from flying my electric kite and remembered I did a F9 on the SSD before switching to the original drive. That's why it was still going through setup.

Good news is, and I don't know why, I booted skipping safe mode attempts and after the drivers, the setup continuation screen displayed it's higher res. It got over the hump without the BSOD and continued to do the install

In the time it took to finish the installation and install AMD GPU Clock Tool, this first sample starts off on battery power with cooler (300 clock), after 80 seconds, I plug in, go to 700 core and turn cooler off.

View attachment 54974

This next pic gets started after stopping the previous since the high readings were messed up. After this sampling, I turned the cooler back on as the temps were leveling off. Currently at 967 seconds with 61/90/76C respectively.

View attachment 54975

This is just idle, running the tool.

I guess the Shader before the BSOD problems was 82C and not 87. So now I'm at least back where I was this morning.

Gary has responed to a second message saying I will be contacted soon, so now I have a decision, I can wait and see what an expedited service entails or crack it open and make use of some OCZ freeze.

I believe I read people were using the 1mm pads for the replacement? I'll look it up.

Thanks gstboy, glad yours came out well. I'm leaning towards using some elbow grease here and pasting up. I am 99.999% sure I am going to have some interesting "repasted my VGA" thread pics.

Q

 

Looking good Hope it works out.

 

Wow, glad you got over the BSOD. So it would seem whoever put your heatsink on your GPU did a terrible job. On one screenshot it says Maximum 500...

Do the OCZ Freeze, even if you RMA, there is no way after they have taken it apart they can prove that you took it apart.

And like I said before, IMO if you want the best thermals, you should just do it yourself anyways.

If the temps and proper application and sitting of the heatsink reduces the temps to what you believe to be acceptable/good, then seems you will avoid an RMA!