I just burnt out my Asus g73 TRYING to fix my track pad

Well,I dont know what to say... I'm almost in tears.. I dug in to my laptop trying to fix the track pad that should never have been the way it was, after I sent it in for an RMA for the screen, and I left a note for the tech, along with $5.00 bucks for lunch... did me no good..

Any way, I put everything back, and turned it on... went all the way to windows, and then shut off, but not before a nice burning smell drifted across my nose..

I guess I'll sell it for parts, as I dont think asus will fix this... heck, this should have not been an issue in the first.. Anyway.. some thoughts on this, besides the fact that Im a moron...

 

How far did you take it apart, and what cables did you disconnect?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...475907-asus-g73-series-disassembly-guide.html

Were the fans spinning?

 

all the way, took the silver thing off the mouse, reconnected everything, put it all back together, turned it on, and it booted to the window. Then shut off, and smell... I took it all part again, and there is a burnt ribbon and this little plastic box on the left hand side of the mouse pad (if your looking down at your laptop) .

I'm so pissed, I would have never have had to go diggin in the stupid thing if asus would have fixed the darn thing... I'll miss my baby I was so exited that I decided to keep it!

I'm gonna see how much they will charge to fix it, but I think this will have to be sold for parts.

 

Can you point out which cable is roasted in the disasembly guide pics, just copy and paste the URL in to a reply?

 

bottom blue ribbon.


You guys have any idea how much Asus will charge for this? I'm guessing $300 or so... I the the ribbon is fried and the little box to the left of the track pad assuming your looking strait at your notebook

 

Sorry I still don't know which ribbon you're talking about, if there was a pic of it it would be easier to tell you how much damage there is.

I'm guessing that the ribbon connects to the touchpad assembly, but if it's fried, the motherboard could have problems too now.

 

Yes the ribbon to the touch pad.. i took everything apart, the motherboard seems to be ok, no black marks or burns.. and the smell was consistent with minor burning.. the ribbon is burnt up a little and the little black box off to the left.

any one know the number to ASUS repair?

 

Make a following.
remove the flat cable that was damaged, and turn on your G73.
if he calls usually after you have removed the ribbon cable burned, stay calm. your problem is just the flat cable that was damaged.

If this was the case, may have occurred for you called the inverted flat cable, or it was incorrectly fitted causing shorted to ground (GND)

only the flat cable was damaged, you can easily find another to replace.

 

I'm calm, on my new macbook pro lol

I was going to sell he MBP and keep my asus...

It really does look like the ribbon, and around the HD caddys, some burn marks. I dont know what that little box if for, off to the left... I'll take it apart again, and take, pics. Will it boot if the ribbon it disconnected?

I dont understand this line??

 

He's saying if it boots without the cable plugged in you may not have fried part of the motherboard.

 

Yeah, hopefully your issue is just that the ribbon cable shorted out... Those black connectors for the ribbon cables took me my first disassembly to figure out... Now that I know that they just flip up and down to unlock/lock it's made it much easier for me. The first time was a struggle though because I did not know how to open them up.

If it's just the ribbon cable that shorted, it's actually pretty likely that the motherboard isn't damaged. Otherwise, well, I'm not sure what the boards are going for, but even if you had to have the board and touchpad replaced, I can't imagine the total cost to be that terribly bad.

That being said, I'm very sorry you ran into trouble... I've literally had my case open so many times and have messed with my damn touchpad so much that opening up the beast has become second nature to me. This is a good warning for those that don't have much experience of what CAN happen.

Hopefully it's not too serious

 

Thanks for the clarification.

I use Google translator to communicate here, and sometimes the translator speaks alone with other words hahahaha

 

it boots!! I need to go back in and an make sure everything is on correctly (when it fried I rushed back in, and when I saw it was burnt, just kind of threw it all back together) so then absolutely no mouse huh?! lol WAY better than I expected..

so I just put the battery in and pressed go and she started up.

 

Assuming you didn't toast the circuit you may be OK with a new touchpad assembly. Or even the cable if you're really lucky. But I am not sure where you'd find the ribbon cable alone.

 

I have been fine with no mouse pad, I'll live, I'll take any little victory! lol Again though, I should have never of had to dig in there to fix the mouse pad in the first place! Asus really messed up here... I will think long and hard about my next Asus perches for sure! I do love my G73 though, weve been through a lot together!

I seen some melting plastic, but the smell wasn't so bad as to think the whole thing was burning! it really did just look like the ribbon! Maybe Asus can fix this... I'll try and get chastity on this, as I feel maybe Asus can really make up for this buy meeting me half way at the least!

Thank you sir, I appreciate every ones help. If I can not fix my g73, I will miss this forum you guys are great.

 

Sounds like this is the perfect opportunity to find a two button track pad and see if it works. Then report back

 

Oy Vey.

I'm so glad your rushed in when I was trying to get you a RMA for it. Now I get to have it come in and have to charge you for the TP repair. Ugh.

 

wow chastity, I had no idea lol.. wish I knew

any idea how much? I might just sell it for parts if it's to much.. Im still so angry at the fact that ANYONE has to dig in there and fix this issue.... but that's another story.


it really does seem like the ribbon.. as everything seems to work fine.

 

Dont make such rash decisions on such a small problem I see this a lot on the forum you will not get anything for parts just because of a broken touchpad which costs hardly anything to fix or replace and does not prevent the laptop working.

Wait for chastity to post about repairing it before doing anything else as it may be a simple fix, use an external mouse in the meantime.

 

Will do!

I have been using a mouse, so thats not gonna kill me.. I have a MBP to hold me over, but I would like to fix my G73 and proceed with the selling of the macbook... I miss my beast! lol

 

See your PM. If you want to continue and have it fixed, then I can see what I can do. But if you are just going to sell it, I will be very bummed.

 

You disassembled your laptop, voiding your warranty, then messed something up, and it's Asus's fault?

 

eyy.. it´s on all forums.. "get the silver stuff out of your laptop".. i wouldent do it thoe.. but i don't blame those who does.. my laptop is leaving to RMA anyday for the second time.. but this time the touchpad will be cleaned and not only some drivers installed..

 

He'll say "It shouldn't have been messed up in the first place." But all silliness aside, I'll try get him fixed up.

 

There is another side to this:

1. Asus is selling laptops with known hardware issues

2. People who are willing to go through the RMA process are too often disappointed with getting the laptop back with the same issues. Sometimes more than once.

 

you, my dear are an angle, and were a definite reassurance all would be well.. Because of you, and only you... I will continue to buy Asus products and refer them to friends and family. I thank you so much for your help, and your over all "being there" for me. . .

I sold my Asus g73 and have fallen in love with a smaller, bit older macbook pro.. but when I need a windows PC, I will be looking at an Asus G74, again, only because of you.. I told all my school mates about you, and they were all blown away... That is after they stopped making fun of me for almost blowing up my laptop! lol

but in the end, YES, I do feel like I should not have had to go in there in the first place, or the tech guy should have fixed it in the first RMA.

 

You'll be happy to know that the info about the root cause and procedure to fix it is getting around, and Asus is being proactive about this. So I should expect to see a lot less of this going forward, and I'm doing my part to help those who have an erratic setup.

 

On Asus part, the fixed my screen with a turn around time of about a week, or so... that's not bad at all, and when the laptop was running great, NOTHING could slow it down, that's with Adobe suit, Zbrush, 3D studio mac, web browser with 6 tabs, word, and webroot spy sweeper running! lol that's nuts!

 

6 web browser tabs? I have like 25 open without a hiccup.

In all seriousness though, I'd probably buy one of these laptops even without the graphics muscle. I use mine more for professional work than for gaming, and it's a rock that doesn't make me ever wish I had a desktop instead. That's with a G73JH that's over a year old.

I'm now considering grabbing a G74 for my wife who won't make use of much of the power of the system at all, with the expectation that I can use it as a NAS and secondary gaming rig.

I've been totally satisfied with what I got when I got my G73, and I haven't regretted my purchase even when I had my locking up issues. Even having to disassemble the device multiple times to work on/fix my touchpad has not made me regret the money paid for this thing.

I think I'd reasonably compare it to buying an expensive car:
When you buy a Ferrari, you buy it for the performance and the joy it gives when it's running at its best. In the end though, it's still a car and will still break down or have its issues.

 

there is a fix for the touchpad now?

 

Hey Chastity,

I created an account on asusrog.com and saw your post here,

So what is the root cause and what do they think is the fix, at this moment?

Has it got to do with pressure, static charge or something else?

 

I, too, would like to see a detailed explanation of the cause of this problem. While there are anecdotal reports that removing tape and adhesive helped or resolved it in some cases, that result hasn't been universal. RMAing it to have Asus do the repair/clean-up has also not been widely effective.

So that may be one measure that at least alleviates the problem in some cases, but it doesn't really explain the problem. It seems to me that only a full understanding of the root cause will yield a real fix. And if Asus is still retuning RMA'd computers with unsuccessful touchpad repairs (not to mention still selling new G73s and G74s with this defect), I have to think that they must not have that understanding yet.

 

What is this defect you're all talking about, anyway? My touchpad works perfectly.

 

erratic cursor movement by, in my opinion, static charge, pressure or temperature. With the first being the most likely one.

What touchpad driver do you have?

 

Search the G-series area on the AsusROG forum for "touchpad problem" or "touchpad issue." You'll have a lot of reading to do!

In short, there are touchpads in some G73s and G74s that malfunction as previously described. Their response behavior becomes increasingly erratic to the point that it's virtually unusable as an input device. The problem's been apparent since the G73 was released, and owners have attempted every kind of software and hardware fix imaginable. Asus says they've been working on it too, but there's no consistent, reliable fix yet.

The OP of this thread was attempting to perform one well-known hardware repair when he damaged something in his laptop.

You are obviously amongst the fortunate owners who didn't get a problem touchpad in your G73. Consider yourself REALLY lucky, because it's an incredibly frustrating issue to deal with.

 

The TP defect is pretty much a JH only issue. Asus had two models to find problems to fix before they launched the SW.

 

I don't think that's true. I believe other G73 configurations have also had problem TPs, and multiple configurations of the G74 certainly do.

 

Removing all of the covering from the underside of the touchpad has pretty much resolved it here. I stripped the underside of the touchpad down to the green circuit board, and it's naked in there now. Things are running fine for me compared to how it was when I got it.

 

Did you restore the ground, or leave it bare?

 

Wouldn't the tp mb connection ground it anyway?

 

Yes, it does. But I was just curious whether that user restored the chassis ground or not.

 

Huh? I didn't have to remove any ground connections or anything from the TP in order to strip all of the coverings off. I had to remove the ribbon cables to get them out of the way, but stripping everything off (tape, foil cover, plastic adhesive cover) did not require disconnecting anything that looked like a ground.

I just exposed the circuit board and cleaned off any adhesive residue to the best of my ability.

 

You probably just didn't realize that it was the ground, because Asus uses a "tape" ground on these models. It looks like a piece of heavy electrical tape (with some foil on the underside), and it's specifically attached to the grounding pad, that bare, copper-colored area on the TP.


This one's a Sentelic TP, not Synaptic, but I just post it to illustrate what I'm talking about. All these kinds of touchpads have a copper grounding pad like that, which has some kind of conductive connection to the adjacent chassis. In G73s and G74s, it's just foil tape.




Correction: I just found a photo of a G73 Synaptics TP, and it looks like the grounding tape is actually integrated into that whole silver tape backing. It forms one big continuous ground to the chassis.

 

Ah, now I understand... Yeah, that copper exposed piece on mine is not grounded now, it's exposed basically just like the screenshot without anything grounding it. Maybe I'll put some foil tap on there at some point when I reopen my case, but it's not causing any issue exposed as it is.