Really beginning to regret the G73JH (won't boot up)

Just like the thread title states, I think I made the biggest mistake wasting my money on this laptop. I bought it a few months ago. Recently I started having problems with BSOD, which was traced to a bad graphics driver. Last night while trying to update the driver I had a problem where it wouldn't boot up. I would press the power button, all the lights would come on, the hard drive would spin up, but display would stay black (unlit). After waiting a bit I tried it again, and it booted up fine, and continued to reboot perfectly while I straightened out the driver issues. Fast forward to this morning I go to take the laptop out of hibernation, and nothing. Same unlit screen. If I hit the power button while it's like this it powers off. I am at my wits end with this thing. And don't say to RMA it, I bought a refurbished version from Newegg, and stupid me, didn't think to look at the warranty period. 90 f###ing days is all they give you (never buy the refurbished one unless you can afford the 2 year replacement, or you may end up with a $900 paper weight).

P.S. Mine is the G73JH-BST7

 

Take the battery out and remove ac power. Let it sit for 30+ seconds. Plug it back in and try powering it on again.

If it does power on, I would go into the bios setup menu immediately (hit F2 key) and reset to user defaults.

 

Sounds to m you are pretty good at doing it wrong. WHQL offical drivers from AMD do not cause BSOD. You getting BSOD from installing drivers indicates to me you are doing something wrong, what it is, I'm not sure. But you're doing it wrong.

And also for most people, if there is any issue that would pop up with a notebook, it happens in the first 90 days. So if you managed to use your notebook for the first THREE MONTHS, and managed to brick it after, sounds to me like a user problem not, not NewEgg's or Asus fault.

I'm just saying this, because from your description, it doesn't sound like a hardware problem, sounds to me it's a user problem.
- I have suspicion you aren't telling the whole truth. Possibly not saying you flashed the vBios or BIOS wrong? Just saying, I suspect there is something you aren't telling so it seems like you are a victim rather than the cause of the problem. AMD drivers bricking your laptop so it won't start anymore after a BSOD is so unlikely.

 

You may think that, but you'd be wrong. Here is the thread from seven forums where my BSOD was dignosed. And those are with the drivers it had for 2 months after I 0 filled the hard drive to remove the factory partition. And I'm not saying it's Neweggs fault. I DID NOT FLASH THE BIOS OR VBIOS! And if EVERY problem that ANYONE experiences with a laptop occurs in the first 90 days, then why do manufacturers offer a 1-2 year warranty on their new laptops...

I have been running without the battery for a couple of days. I have to buy a replacement because the one that came with the the laptop seems to be bad. It only lasts about 45 minutes, and will shut down showing 45 min left on the battery. Also every couple of days the battery charging indicator light will flash red/green. If I drain the battery completely it won't give me that problem for about a week. I left it sitting for about an hour without power and still not luck.

 

Flashing red/green means an error with the battery (or charging circuit), that's not cool.

Have you taken it apart at all to repaste or mess around with anything? is there a chance a cable is loose?

Also, try taking out all but one stick of RAM at a time, and swap them out until you have tried all of them individually, there is a chance one has gone bad.

 

I would wipe your graphics drivers and start again crap clean and install the latest, do you have the latest VBios and BIOS etc? Sadly athough you mention you have not updated them the JH is a model that required several flashes to get it working spot on.

That is all I can think of along with the fact that Hibernation is probably one of the most unusable things on the JH model, people cant explain it but know not to bother using it I have trouble with it randomly so just use sleep or allow the monitor/hdd etc to shut off and leave it running with everything running at idle.

Some of your symptoms do sound like you could have power problems but that could just be a dud battery it does sound driver related to me.

Hulawafu - Did someone steal the jam out of your doughnut recently? Your intelligence is clouded by arrogance in your posts take a chill pill because you clearly know your stuff and forget that a lot of ''us'' are not experts.

 

I also recommend diagnosing a hardware issue first and swap RAM around, or even run MEMTEST86+ for a couple hours and see if it finds any bad RAM. Also a chkdsk of your hard drive. Make sure there's nothing there because those two things can easily cause a BSOD. Let us know how it works out...

And Hulawafu77 - go away. Don't go away angry... but just go away. You're not helping.

 

There is another random thing to try that I have seen work a few times with the blank screen problem - swap the hard drives around, or if your model only has one hdd, swap it into the other bay.

 

Thanks for merging those two threads. I opened up the laptop to see if it was the stick of ram below the keyboard (this was the first time I've opened it up). After trying to boot it up with each stick of ram it seems like they are ok (unless all 3 went bad). When I loaded the video drivers I uninstalled the old ones, then rebooted into safe mode. Everything seemed to work last night after I let it sit when the same issue occurred. If it is the video card, where is a place that I can buy one? I know laptop video cards aren't like desktop cards, but I know this one can be replaced. Like I said, I know I'm not getting any help from Asus. And about that, never was I bad mouthing Asus. What I'm peeved at is the company who refurbishes these (and as far as I can tell that isn't Asus). But I know, it's my own fault for buying a laptop with only a 3 month warranty.

 

There's a chance your card is faulty (maybe VRAM?) especially if it's an intermittent problem.

Your best bet for not getting gouged on a card is probably ebay. Here's a search to start with:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw...+5870*)&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313

Keep in mind if you buy a card, you really need to do a good job with the thermal paste so that your VRAM doesn't roast itself. So read up on repasting threads in the sticky.

 

Swapped around the hard drive. Still no go. When I power it up I can feel the video card heat sink heating up. The laptop just seems like it doesn't want to post. The indicator for the hard drive lights up when I power it on for a couple of seconds, and lights up a couple more times after a few more seconds, then nothing. All of the lights are on.

Thanks for the link. $300 for a card. I might be better off just saving for a new laptop if all I'm ever going to run into with this one is problems. It'd be nice to have an actual warranty for stupid things like this... Just placed a bid on the one for $120. Probably won't get it. but here's hoping.

 

Have you tried it on an external monitor, to rule out a LCD problem? Sorry if you said this before, I don't remember.

 

I'll give that a shot right now. Do you think my BSOD problems could have been caused if the video card was going out? It seem to happen at random times (most often when viewing a you tube video).

Edit: Just hooked up my desk top monitor, no dice...

 

Yes BSODs can be triggered by any kind of hardware failure. Too bad about the external monitor. A LCD would have been cheaper.. :-/

 

Now this might be a bit of a stretch, but could cleaning the screen with Windex (not spraying the screen, but spraying a paper towel and wiping the screen) have done anything. My mom was using it since the mobo on her laptop crapped out (I know, amazing luck). She decided to clean the screen with Windex.

 

Windex will destroy the finish of your LCD. That's bad.

It won't kill the LCD, it'll just make the finish look like it's got holes in it.

 

Ok, She only did it the one time. I guess I'll just have to try and get a new video card for it. Someone on another website had be trying a couple different things. A guy suggested that I remove all the ram and see if it will post. When I try to turn it the indicator light for the hdd didn't come on, and when I pressed the power button again it wouldn't turn off (like it does with the ram installed).

 

LOL. No computer will POST without ram.

 

Ok, well it was worth a shot. So does it seem like it's the video card? I am half tempted to take it to a repair shop and see what they say (there's a pretty good one just down the street from me).

 

You could, although depending on how good the tech is, they will probably do what you have already done and hand it back to you.

The only thing to do now would to be to open it up and check all of the cables, and possibly pull the CMOS battery to reset it.

But if you were having sporadic BSODs before this, it points to a bad video card.

 

Do consider flashing your BIOS and VBIOS before picking up a new card if you have not done that yet. Read up about it if you have not done it before.

The fact that it is intermittent its as the others have mentioned a trial and error fix. Do consider wiping the drivers and starting again though if you have not worst case scenario consider a complete OS wipe try everything before allowing a tech to fiddle with it and your wallet.

EDIT: Also Allurgroceries mentioned to check all wiring earlier, with refurbished models they have usually replaced the Thermal Compound how much do you wanna bet they have not plugged back in the monitor cable properly. If you are planning to go inside its worth checking.

 

Yes you can try the blindflash method. Worth a shot: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...lp-i-bricked-my-g73-vbios-16.html#post6647309

You can also do a blindflash of the BIOS but you will need to make an autoexec script yourself for it, I'm not sure there is one here on the forum ready to go (link one if I am wrong).

 

When I pulled the ram I double checked all the cables were plugged in correctly. The laptop was running great before this. I didn't find anything that looked like it was unplugged.

Now is that something I can do without seeing anything on the screen? The lcd stays black, and looks like no power is getting to it.

One last thing. Where is the CMOS battery located. I tried looking for it while I was in there and couldn't spot it (probably just blind).

 

The CMOS battery is a pain in the butt to get to. You have to do a lot of disassembly to get to it. It's the silver circle in the lower left pic here: http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj284/davidli919/G73_Series_Chapter_02-v10_Page_21.jpg via http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...475907-asus-g73-series-disassembly-guide.html

There are a couple of possibilities. If your external monitor isn't showing any display, there is a definite problem with your GPU.

Now, this problem with your GPU could prevent your computer from passing POST and actually booting, whether you are seeing anything or not. If the hard drive is flashing like it is booting windows, you know you are at least passing POST. You could also check your router to get the IP address of the machine and try pinging it after a minute or two, to see if it's booted.

If you get no HDD activity and you can't ping the machine, it's probably not passing POST, and you won't be able to blindflash in this case.

 

So I'm going to go ahead and try to do the blind vbios flash. I read over the guide, but the link to how to create a bootable flash drive is dead. Anyone have a good walkthrough they can recommend on how to do this. I've done it before, but kinda forgot how to do it, and I'm not sure if this case calls for a different method for creating the drive.

I tor back into the laptop to pull the cmos battery (getting kinda good at it). That didn't do anything, but I found that I hadn't plugged the (I assume) hard drive ribbon cable and the speaker wires. Guess it was good I was in there anyway.

 

Creating the bootable flash drive is included with the v93 vBios package posted by Gary from Asus.

 

Well I downloaded the files and there's nothing in there saying how to create the bootable flash drive. The guide that was linked to in the post is a dead link.

 

From:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/539984-what-do-your-new-g73jh.html

"To update your vBios you will need to download this file http://www.filedropper.com/93vbiosa

Extract the contents to a folder. Inside are new vBios, a HP USB Bootdisk utility, and the win98 bootup commands. Unzip the HP program as well as the Windows 98 boot commands each into folders inside the one you just made. Now run the HPDiskUSB program (vista users must run as administrator), select your USB drive, fat32 file system, un-check "quick-format", check "Create a DOS Startup Disk" & "using DOS system files located at", now navigate to the "win98boot" directory you just unziped (make sure it is the one with the files in it, some zip programs make 2 folders, also ignore the CDROM folder). Then hit start. It takes awhile so be patient."


The bolded part MIGHT help you. Be always careful though.

 

Well, tried blind flashing the vbios, and no luck. I won the auction on that video card. So hopefully that's it. If not I think I'll lose my mind!

 

So now that I'm waiting for the new video card to show up I've started to worry about my laptop a little more. Is it possible that the motherboard has gone out? Do my symptoms sounds like it could be the mobo? Is there anyway of testing the mobo (besides putting the new video card in)? And is it possible to repair the mobo if that's the problem?

 

I thought I'd relate my own story of "black screen boot". Not sure if it's really applicable to your situation, but it may help give you some perspective.

Awhile back I had repasted my G73 due to higher-than-i'd-like GPU temps (95-98c while gaming) The first attempt at repaste showed no major change in temps (maybe 2-3c down). I tried again, same result. I tried yet AGAIN, and this time, when I tested it, temps using furmark spiked up over 110c, and FAST. Obviously I'd screwed SOMETHING up, so I went back in yet AGAIN, and this time made sure everything was JUST AS TIGHT as I could get it.

Put it back together, and thought I'd destroyed the GPU. Same symptoms as you've described. power comes on, you can hear it post, sounds like it's booting. . but no screen.

So I let it sit for a week or so, kicking myself over having essentially thrown away $1500. Eventually, though, I got bored and decided to do a post mortem on it, thinking I'd have to replace the GFX card or buy a new one. Turns out I had torqued the screws down on the heatsink SO HARD, one had actually broken in half. [note: NEVER EVER EVER BREAK THESE SCREWS!! Talk about a pain in the buns to find a replacement]

I ended up removing the C-clips [my replacement screw was the right thread, but not the right length] and VERY CAREFULLY tightened down the screws to seat it as evenly as I could.

It worked. I'd managed to not only bring the thing back to life, but my max temps in furmark were down to about 82-83c. At that point I decided not to mess with fate, and haven't pulled it apart since.

Like I said, it may not help, but perspective is also a good thing to have. And if you're really worried about your mobo, start up the machine, let it sit there for a few minutes, and put a USB flash drive in it. If it starts lighting up and you get the windows sound indicating that a new device has been plugged in, you can rule out problems with most of the rest of the system.

Good luck ^^

 

Thanks for sharing some of the things you did. I don't think I'm suffering from the same issues since I didn't take it apart to repaste it (though I could be wrong). The more I think about it, the more I feel it's probably the video card. With all the problems with it BSOD'ing and the crash being related to the video card. I also think it's the v-card because of how it did this once (no screen, won't boot into windows) and then seemed to fix itself, only to do it again. I think the final nail in the coffin was running Battlefield 3 on it for about a hlaf hour to show my friend. The problems with no screen happened after that, and that's the first intensive game I've run on it. So I think running BF3 killed it off. Before that the most I ran on it was Maya 2011 or WoW (not the most graphical games).

 

Figured I'd let everyone know. I got that new card from ebay in and installed it...







EVERYTHING WORKS!

Yup. Computer fires up without any problems. So I am pretty sure what happened was running BF3 on it killed off the card. I am going to be sure and watch the temps like a hawk. Now all I have to fix is the keyboard. It doesn't light up anymore (think I damaged the leds pulling it off). But that can wait. I'm just so happy I don't have a $900 black plastic brick anymore!

 

Congratulations. That's great news. It's very easy to plug the keyboard backlight cable in backwards. It's a common mistake. You might try popping the keyboard of and flip that narrow cable the other way and see if it works before you go buy a new one.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried that and looks like it still doesn't work. I'm not to worried about the backlighting for the keyboard right now. The keys themselves all seem to work just fine so I'll worry about getting a new board later.