How to Fix Your GSOD Blues

alright im having problems making my usb bootable... i use the hp tool and click on create a dos and select the win98 folder and then i put the three extracted folders onto the flash drive and when i got to bios it doesnt give me a choice to select my flash drive but it lets me create a new boot option with the flash drive but after i boot that its just a black screen with a blinking underscore on it and i cant type or do anything. PLEASE HELP im not computer expert and it took me hours just to get to this point :/

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6696851-post643.html

I had the same problem. Worked absolutely golden using this method.

 

IT WORKED!!!
No GSOD!!
I love you for that post.
Do you know if anyones computers have had 'relapses'

 

Gary and Chastity -

I've been fortunate to not have experienced any GSODs since my G73JH purchase back in May 2010. I've been running on BIOS 206, stock vbios, and Catalyst 10.5 drivers for the past 4 months with ZERO problems ... not even an artifact or flicker during any of my lengthy gaming sessions. I honestly thought I had one of the very few good GPUs... That all changed today...

I experienced my 1st GSOD while playing Bad Company 2. I restarted and tried again ... even worse... I GSOD'ed instantly while trying to join a game. Single player campaign was the same thing. Initially I thought that perhaps the game files itself were corrupt or something, but that was not the case because I decided to run the Final Fantasy XIV benchmark next ... it ran 3/4 of the way through and then appeared the artifacts and flickering and then finally the GSOD. I then proceeded with the following thanks to the information provided on this forum:

Test 1
- flashed to bios 211 finally (was running 206 out-of-the-box since May 2010)
- stock vbios
- catalyst 10.5
Result = artifacts and flickering resulting in GSOD in FFXIV benchmark. GPU ran cooler under load thanks to the 211 bios, but alas still GSOD.

Test 2
- bios 211, Gary's vbios found on Pg.1 of this thread, catalyst 10.5
Result = no GSOD, artifacts, or flickering while running FFXIV benchmark or my collection of games.

Test 3
- bios 211, Gary's vbios, catalyst 10.8
Result = no GSOD, artifacts, or flickering while running FFXIV benchmark or my collection of games.

I've come to the conclusion that my GPU has finally deteriorated to the point of GSOD after 4 months of use, and I can't help but wonder if the recently released fixes by Asus are only a means of delaying the inevitable -- the eventual breakdown of the GPU just after the RMA period.

Initially I thought maybe it was the thermal compound wearing away, but my GPU temperatures reported by GPU-Z were not out of its usual range (I was still getting anywhere from 63 to mid 80s degrees F just like I was getting before). So for all the lucky ones that were boastful of their GSOD-free G73JHs, I believe it's only a matter of time ...

I appreciate the new bios releases, and the fact that my laptop is now running smoothly again, but I'm not holding my breath. Gary, I'm wondering if you could possibly disclose some of the details of what went into the new vbios that fixed everything for us? Basically I'd like some reassurance that it's not just a temporary fix. I'd like some input from Chastity and others as well if possible of similar experiences...etc.

If there was in fact an ATI bomb in my G73JH, I'd like to know if Asus actually defused it or if they've merely extended the timer with their new vbios.

Thanks guys... looking forward to your input.

 

That's an extremely scary thought there my friend. When you put it that way, this has the potential to turn out the same as the whole GeForce 8M series issue. Even more possible due to Asus using cheaper PCB and memory materials...

 

Hi Gary, when will the vibos fix be going up on the official Asus support page? Do you have sufficient confidence with the fix to do this soon?

 

I dont know what the cause is, but this 3rd replacement GPU ran fine for a while on the new vBios but now im getting more and more GSODs.
Ive put it up for sale on a local auction site now to see if i get any grabs.

 

Damn, not good. Question though, how long have you or anyone else for that matter, ran Furmark? I really do believe that using it too much may be toasting our cards way faster than normal. (I'd expect 2 years min out of these things not 2 months, etc.) It was known to fry the X2's VRM's so could it not do the same to our mobile chips? We don't even have temp sensors on the dang things to find out.

Id say either way. 1 More RMA for a new GPU, then stay away from Furmark. There are many other ways to stress the GPU without burning a hole in the VRM's.

 

man you seem to have the worst luck with this. My g73 was running terrible before this latest vbios, it was crashing 5 minutes into every game sometimes at the title screen with a gsod. Now it runs perfect.

Sorry about this, maybe there is just a bad batch in your locale?

 

They get them directly from the factory in Taiwan so i doubt i got 3 bad ones.
Furmark didnt damage the GPU. It never went above 93C (and some people are gaming with higher temperatures than that every day) and i didnt run it more than 5 hours alltogether on this one. There are sensors on the MemIO as well as DispIO so you can see how hot its getting. And it didnt last 2 months but 1 week on the new vBios which is just sad . I might be very unlucky, but im just not going to exchange them anymore. I called the service center again today and the manager again told me he can arrange for a new one but it still wont work as they did it for many other customers and it never helped and he cant arrange for a JW replacement unless Gary Key or someone high up authorises it...
My only choice is to try to sell it. Will see how that goes.

 

5 Hrs is easily enough to torch the VRM's. (Some X2's were burnt up with less than an hr of Furmarking) The MemIO and the DispIO are not the VRM temps. On the X2 when we pushed our cores to around 90C the VRM's were usually already above 110-120C+!

I don't know man. I can definitely feel your pain and want to have something that just works. Overall I still feel this is one of the better designed laptops but going through 3 RMA's would definitely make me feel a bit pissed/disappointed. See if you get any reasonable bites otherwise I hope Gary can do something for ya.

Also ASUS does not have a No Lemon warranty? If it fails 3 times for the same thing you might be able to talk them into a replacement. Guess it would fully depend on the tech you talk to outside of Gary.

 

Heya.

Why isent my usb drive available as boot option in bios?
I ran the HP program and selected the win98 drive to make the DOS boot drive, as fat 32.

Whats wrong? Im not used to stuff like this.

EDIT: My bad, its solved.

 

The problem about a full refund or a entire replacement notebook is that it only applies if i bought the laptop here as i found out today, but since i imported it from USA my reseller is responsible for that and i just cant see GenTech giving me a JW replacement...

 

Wouldn't hurt to ask. Maybe you could get a partial step up upgrade? A good business would work to help you through a difficult RMA situation. One that could care less (Since they already have you money), would just let you die lol. Sadly this would keep me from being a repeat customer or send friends to the company as a referral. I have 3 friends looking at this laptop as a future purchase and once I get my official NEW one, then I can make full judgment, maybe even refer the place I got it from.

 

Exactly. It worries me that's for sure.

HellCry's earlier post today regarding his 3rd GPU running fine for awhile on the new vbios and now GSOD'ing frequently on him ... now that's exactly what I'm talking about in my previous post.

I had a perfectly fine GPU out-of-the-box that ran solid for 4 months and only started to GSOD yesterday. Who knows how long this vbios will work for me. I cringe each time I load up a game now. I use to run this laptop with full confidence

 

Its stuff like this that did push me to get the 3rd year warranty.. I didn't Furmark my X2 to death but it as well as many others died around the 2 year mark from I would assume normal use. Perhaps these cards are not far off of the same fate. Neither ATI nor Nvidia would help you here. With so much power in such a small PCB, ya never really know. It's the curse of high end gaming hardware.

 

Im still waiting for a response from Gary and Gentech. Will inform you if i can get through with someone.

 

Did you try to re-flash back to the MSI vbios yet? If that still doesn't GSOD at all, it might be that this v93 vbios still is just some Asus tech's mediocre try to address the GSOD problem - tweaks here and there to make it somewhat less likely but no real firmware code fix like the MSI vbios inherently has.

I still haven't had a gsod with v93 vbios + 10.8 but haven't had time to game so much either. Noticed I've lost around 5% of general HD5870m perfomance though. Furmark and FF XIV bench have both been very stable for ~1 hour each when run a couple of times.

 

I dont even want to reflash to the MSI vBios anymore. Its not a solution since i need the HDMI... Im going to wait to see if Gary or Ken can do something for me...

 

I didn't mean it as a permanent solution. I just thought it might be useful to know whether it is possible to get your system to GSOD with that as well. I'm under the impression that no-one has yet managed to get a gsod with the MSI vbios...
I would be even more angry at Asus' efforts so far if MSI vbios would still work 100% without problems for your system

It would also tell us if it is your G73 hardware that is slowly failing or another support failure from Asus' part. And maybe that info would be useful to others who have started getting crashes with this v93 bios.

 

Ill try it for a day or two. Ill report back with the results.

 

k so i 'think' i fixed my gsod... my only test is the final fantasy xiv benchmark... before the fix it would gsod in a matter of seconds and now it runs the benchmark smoothly. my question is am i cured? i dont have any other games or anything to test with and im just waiting for ffxiv to come out and i hope that it wont freak out on me as soon as i pop xiv in.

 

I know some asusxpert users who are playing ffxiv beta and they have not problems or GSOD with new vBIOS

 

I'm playing FFXIV fine after updates. I have bios 211, the updated vBios from this thread, and on ATI 10.8 drivers. Have you tried the beta? It's open =)

 

No GSODs or stuttering on the MSI (3 hours SC2, 2 hours DDO)...

 

I am talking now with and user that have stuttering with msi vBIOS, It is impossible to be bored with a G73

 

Im talking with Ken now. Sure hope he will be able to get me a JW replacement. Ive really done everything i can with the JH...

 

Well.... I'm new here and I read maybe 20 or 25 pages.
A great is question ..... " As we have upgraded the ASUS official site. "
I'm with BIOS 2.11 and 10.08 CCC and I don't have GSODs.
I think it's just a matter of time before it arrives.

 

Good luck HellCry and i hope everything works out for you...

 

People... I'm new here. The vBios that Gary is providing us is not the official one by asus right? Any idea when the official vBios will be release? cheers !!!!

 

It is a video board RAM issue. There are a few GDDR5 RAM chip manufacturers that these machines use and some of them are problematic, apparently. At least on ATI cards anyway.

I've used about 5 G73JH notebooks and only one of them had the GSOD problem. And that one only had the problem if I used a video driver other than the one on ASUS's site. It was highly unstable with Cat 10.4 (this was back in April).

 

The problem was that Asus made a revision to the video card for lower temps (C1x series) that was not 100% with the existing vBIOS, and needed updated settings. The new vBIOS also works for the C0x cards.

 

Except that in this very thread there are still people having problems.

This issue also isn't limited to the G73. There are desktop cards (reaching back a couple of years now) with the same problem.

 

Yes, and 2 of those had their vBIOS updated by Asus, and they used the 1st revision of the beta, which is not GSOD-free. Upon update to the newer one, their issue was solved. One of the returned units also had a couple of root viruses, and that was causing some issues.

The only machine I know of that still GSOD's on the newest vBIOS is Hellcry's.

swaaye, you need to keep up

 

Not quite...

I've had one GSOD (in SC2 after 7 hours off and on gaming) since upgrading everything. At that point I still had the 705/1100 in startup. I took the system back down to stock 700/1000 and nothing so far (only played for 4 hours since the change). Temps are low 48c to 80c max.

This is only the 2nd GSOD ever on this machine so it is not common. The first was on bios 209 with 10.6 Cats and stock speeds. Bumping up to 705/1100 faxed that one and I did not have another one until this past Sunday.

When I have time to play a bit more I'll see if everything is fine now. If so, it would seem the new vbios is less tolerant of OCing than the stock vbios was.

Cheers,

 

I posted this some pages ago:

Can I consider this issue as GSOD??? So anyway, I'm happy with the result of the new vBIOS beta so far. Now I'm testing Burnout Paradise (1080p, 4x AA, Highest setting) and the game runs flawless.

My only concern it's my faulty touchpad

 

Gary (or anyone)... do you know if asus is planning on upload an official vbios? cheers !!!

 

That looks more like a driver crash, and restart. Not necessarily the hardware GSOD's we had.

 

That is still a topic of debate. I'm trying to get confirmation.

 

Thanks doctor for the accurate prognosis.

 

Yeah like Chasity said it's driver crashed, Gary already notify ATI about that.

GSOD will freeze your laptop.

 

Maybe a litle off topic but...
Techpowerup claims that my GPU core clock runs in 500 when i got SC2 on.
Aint it supposed to be 700?

 

Nekki you can go look into the event log to make sure if the driver crashed or not.

 

I just wanted to first say thank you to everyone here, you all have helped me understand it has not been just me!
Now as I bought mine for both gaming and a laptop to DJ with I fear I have been plauged by one like hellcry's! While I have been working with best buy, i now sit here for the 3rd time with out my laptop all due to the same issue.
They have tried repasting and replacing my GPU and still it does not take anytime at all for the computer to GSOD on me. Even flashing to the new bios gave me issues! Once I get this thing back for the 3rd time I can run some more tests and see if I can still get the laptop to crash, but what diag info would you like as to hopefully help aid in a fix to our issues with this laptop?

 

Do you have any video or flash (like youtube) open at the time too? If so the GPU is running at its UVD profile.
Just close it and it should be fine.

 

Ah your right. Had a few tabs with Youtube hidden in my Chrome and evidently that was enough. How come its downgrading itself just cause of that?

Im pretty much always playing with my browser in background so now i realise ive been playing with a downgraded GPU most of the time.

 

Its set to go to 500/1000 (UVD profile) when it detects a video open. I can change the clocks profiles in vBios if you want it to also clock to 700/1000 in UVD if you often forget tabs with videos open...
But the default clocks are:
Plugged In:
405/1000 2D (low load)
500/1000 UVD (videos)
700/1000 3D (high load)
On Battery:
300/1000 2D (low load)
500/1000 UVD (videos)
400/1000 3D (high load)

It seams they though 500/1000 is optimal for video playback (not too low to make playback stutter and no need to set it higher to increase temperatures), but members reported it can be set lower and i dont see a problem either with setting it higher. But its easyer if you could just remember to close all videos before gaming .

 

i also have the same problem. SC2 is starting to run a little bit jittery and all my settings still say Recommended: low -medium even though i far surpass the given stats

 

It shouldnt stutter at all... Im really wondering if the cards are detiriorating or if it takes some time for the faults in the beta vBios to show...

 

so u getting a JW hell cry?