Weird problems with Asus G73JW-A1

I have not had any issues with the Track Pad so far running the New Bios, but I just had a strange slow down of the Track Pad and the keyboard. The keys got behind and it did miss one.
After a reboot this went away. Hmm it seems we still have a small issue with the Track Pad and all. I will keep an eye on this and see if it happens anymore.

 

Woo Hoo! I don't want to jinx myself, but I am happy to report, with all the tweaks I have implemented, and using my laptop (G73JW Series) in all I do, I have not had any lockups / freezes in 4 days now! Longest time yet since purchasing!

Personally, I think the problem is with the Power4Gear Hybrid High Performance power plan. In addition, sleep mode I believe is also a factor.

But I am now on a roll!

 

veriatech - Did you remove the Power4Gear software or just not use it? Sleep on mine is acting weird as well.

 

First of all, I updated the Power4Gear Hybrid software to the latest version. Then, I switched from "High Performance" mode to "Entertainment" mode. Then, I went into the settings AND advanced settings and disabled (set to NEVER) anything and everything that puts stuff to sleep, including hard drives, displays, etc. etc. The only thing my laptop does is go to screensaver after 5 mins... but don't have anything go to sleep! I think that, in addition to not using High Performance mode (for whatever reason), is the key!

 

veriatech - I hope your streak continues.

My G73JW was mailed out last week for an RMA. I was getting the freezes along with USB port problems. The company I purchased my laptop from, XoticPC, has been very helpful in setting the RMA for me and assisting through the process. Here's hoping I get my laptop back with ZERO problems. Fingers crossed!

 

Best of luck to you with your RMA transaction ispeshaled! I hope your problems are fixed when you get it back! Personally, I cannot see how it is possible for ASUS to be shipping out such a flawed product to so many. It should just work! I use this computer as my main business computer and it would take a near system failure to pry it away from me for any duration at this point.

When I am working on the system, I absolutely love it. For a laptop, it is super fast and does everything I need it to do and more.

I have also "kitted" my laptop with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I always use an external mouse for my notebook computing environments, and given I am a fast typer, I really don't like the keyboard on this laptop, and only use it if I absolutely have to (when out and about on site at my client's locations).

I didn't really buy this computer for gaming (although I've loaded on a couple cool games just to experience the awesome graphics). I use it to run my business and develop custom software.

Again, best of luck to everyone in solving this issue. I cannot say with any real certainty I or anyone else has solved the problem, but I am happy I haven't experienced any lockups in a few days!

 

Should I RMA my laptop back to Asus as it is which just had a clean Windows 7 install and all the recommended Asus software recently installed or send it in after I do an Asus recovery back to original settings?

 

Since december 8 the computer have not froze and the sleep mode have work fine. December 8 I have installed Norton antivirus and make daily scan since then. Now I will make my computer work from morning too evening without the sleep or the hibernation mode.

 

Update: After uninstalling all of the Asus apps (including the Power4Gear app) except for Virtual Camera, SmartLogon, AP Bank, and Recovery, I've had 3 days of no lockups.

I've even had no lockups when letting Flash audio streaming apps run in the background for days. (Flash seemed to be triggering these lockups; at first, I suspected Flash and not Asus' software.)

Perhaps I should also mention that I've disabled hardware acceleration in Flash. I don't know if that's even doing anything at this point (an Adobe rep had recommended it to me back when I suspected Flash), but I mention it in case it helps someone.

 

I bought an Asus G73JW-A1 3 months ago and I can say that I am disappointed.

Afer installing Power4Gear software, Windows 7 started BSOD. Probably it had to do with the turbo mode. I think what I did was to uninstall this software and restore the bios to defaults (I don't know if the second thing helped, but definitely it had to do with this asus software). In general, I completely removed all ASUS software from the laptop except to the drivers, because from previous experiences, I have found that most of them are either useless or badly implemented with several bugs.

One month ago, my laptop started to freeze immediately after windows startup. After checking the startup programs and services, I did not find a solution. While rebooting, my laptop stopped powering on completely. Thus, I got an RMA and I can say that Powernotebooks were fast in arranging it. A week after, I got it back with a fresh windows install. The problem was the LCD cable got disassembled somehow (probably unrelated to the freezes, but related to the non-powering problem).

After a few days using my laptop, again, I got random freezes in Windows 7 after startup. Ubuntu worked fine, thus it was probably a driver's windows fault. After disabling each driver individually, I found that the Atheros ethernet adapter driver caused the freezes. I think I installed the enternet card driver from the ASUS website. Now after 2 days, there are no more freezes. It might be also related to the windows 7 freeze problem due to the conflict of lsass.exe but I am not sure how.

In general, I find most ASUS software annoying and I am sure that it is badly tested. Well Windows have problems by default, especially when there is no service packs for it out there. Also, be careful with the windows drivers for this laptop. Based on the threads I read, there are many problems with broken drivers. It seem that developers have a really serious incapability in testing the drivers thoroughly before they release them.

 

Yeah, thankfully Microsoft addresses the problems, rather than convincing you that it's actually a feature.

 

This hot fix was delivered and installed on my machine the other day. It might be helping to stop lockups as well.

A Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) driver hotfix rollup package is available for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2

Something else I have noticed, the two times I have tried Express Gate it has caused Windows to lock up on boot up. It takes three tries to get it back up. Once I do have a successful boot I quickly do a normal shut down and then the machine will be stable after that.

 

For those with the USB issues, on average, how many usb devices do you usually have plugged in? Some how when I have 2 or less usb devices plugged in, I never get "shorts" with my usb devices. When I plug in a 3rd and or 4th, I start getting usb shorts as if there isn't enough power to run 3+ usb devices. I'm not saying the ports don't work with 3+ devices, just that once a 3rd one is plugged in, that seems to be when the issues start. Might be something worth testing?

 

I have had all the USB ports in use and for quite a while and with no problems .
The only issue I had with the USB was when the Touch Pad was turned on and this was before the Beta Bios install. After that I did not have any issues with the USB ports.

As I think back the only issues I have been seeing are related to the Touch Pad. I think that this is the cause of a few of the problems we are seeing with other hardware and can not find. And how a reload of the drivers seems to fix the problem for awhile for some and not others.

This seems to be the cause of some of the random lockups and hardware not working at times.

In till this is fixed it is going to be hard to track down all of the problems we are seeing as we do not know what the Touch Pad firmware and drivers are doing or causing .

 

I'm thinking its absolutely power / sleep related and probably something with the USB. My system has locked a few times randomly in the past few days...

but...

Today it has been running fine for a long length of time (48 hours or so) straight, then I decided to change some power saving settings.

I go into the power4gear profile, opened the usb tab and my machine spontaneously rebooted.

So I got my machine to basically lockup / reboot instantly by simply going to the power profile and attempting to change the USB sleep settings.

So I'm thinking this is a power control issue either in software or hardware / BIOS.

as for those who have completely removed power4gear and STILL have the problems... then not sure.

.

The problems I have had under windows 7 are:

1) USB port not coming back alive after sleep (one or more usb ports dead after recover from sleep)
2) Random lockup where the last thing you were working on stays on the screen / screen stays on, but it is locked up.
3) Lockup and instant shutdown when launching games.
4) Lockup and instant re-boot when adjusting power settings in power profile (the USB sleep settings).

A few more days before my return period is up, at this rate it looks like its going back however. Hopefully there is a fix eventually for others.

 

I've recently bought an Asus G73JW and I have a freezing-type of problem with it.

First, I tested the notebook with the included software, to see if it works okay. It did for a few hours, so I've wiped it clean. I mean, I've wiped *all* partitions and then installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit from an original kit.

(By the way, this reduced the boot process with 18 seconds! Even now, after I've installed everything, I still have some 9 seconds less boot time, and consider than my Windows-residing drive is system-encrypted with TrueCrypt.)

Windows found all the drivers except the video, card reader and USB 3 ones, which I've installed these from the DVD from Asus.

(I should mention that I'm using an external monitor and keyboard, so the keyboard's backlight isn't important to me.)

Then the notebook started having often freezings, taking tens of seconds each (maybe over a minute). This could be from anything, although I've used this setup with my previous notebook (and I've experienced similar problems with it only in very rare cases).

The freezing manifests as partial system freezing, that is, the mouse, keyboard, windows are still responsive, but I just can't start programs anymore or explore the file system. (There are no other problems, like others have reported.)

One symptom is that the harddisk (probably the one with Windows; my notebook has 2 HDDs) appears to enter in power saving mode quite often, and while the system is frozen, the HDD is silent. Just before the moment when the system starts to be fully responsive again, the HDD starts to make spinning-like noise.

I've altered the power saving mode in various ways and I have to say that there is no reason for the HDD to enter in power saving mode more often than once per minute (as it does).

Then I've updated the firmware from 202 to 203, plus the latest video and USB 3 drivers, but the same thing happened. Then, I've also installed the latest "INF Update Driver" and "ATK Package" (which restored the keyboard's backlight).

Everything was okay for a few hours, but the HDD still had the same behavior, pausing and resuming even more than once per minute.

However, after a restart things started to freeze again. Even after I've installed the Windows hotfix from http://keznews.com/7291_Fix_Windows_7_Randomly_Freezes_and_Stops_Responding , the freezing persists.

It looks like the freezing occurs (almost exclusively) during the first several minutes after a reboot. After those few first minutes I am able to access non-cached parts of the file system without a freeze (well, I didn't access those files before, so they are surely not cached).

Even after those first minutes, the insane HDD power saving mode is still causing occasional small delays when I try to access the file system.

 

Hey Guys!

Add me to the list. But, I want to clarify something. Are you guys having freezing which the system recovers from, or is it locing up requiring a hard reboot? A poster above says temporary lockup, but mine are permanent until hard reboot.

Right now I am going to turn off P4G Hybrid (and make sure nothing turns off), turn off Twin Turbo, and apply the two Windows Hotfixes mentioned in this thread). I'll post with results in a few days (or the next crash).

As with the rest of you, mine will be about once a day, and it started about 4 days ago (I've had it for about a month). From the beginning I did a fresh install of WinPro-x64, and only installed some of the Asus apps.

Does anyone know exactly what the P$G power settings do that the win7 max performance doesn't? I mean, I see a lot of options in there that aren't in the built-in one, but idk what and of those options actually do. Is there a list somewhere (Google didn't pull up a listing). It might be best to just uninstall and be rid of it for good.

 

The lockups have been primarily after the system sits idle for a while... not due to anything or any application we have been using. Mine would mainly occur after leaving it for the night (since I use it so much during the day), and then coming back to it in the morning looking at a frozen / locked screensaver screen.

Again, I am happy to report I've had no lockups for the past few days after implementing my blend of fixes. I am almost entirely sold on the fact it is directly related to Power4Gear High Performance mode. Perhaps something sleep related.

I am still going on quite a few days of no lockups now... better than a week now and pretty happy overall now after the initial problems after the purchase.

Also, I did not go to the lengths some have of starting the OS from scratch, although I am certainly not opposed to and may very well at some point anyway, especially given I have done that on every single system I have ever built or owned. It just takes time to get all my business apps re-installed which is usually always about a 2 day process for me done right.

For those still having lockup problems I would highly recommend following my posts of things I have turned off / disabled, etc. because they have worked well for me.

I don't believe this is a problem that warrants RMA'ing the unit. I'm sure a fix will be developed sooner or later (hopefully sooner).

Good luck to all!

 

Received new G73JW-XA1 on Dec 24th. Noticed the freezing up on Dec 25th after it sat for a few hours unattended. The machine freezes at random, always when I leave it alone for several hours (always on AC). This morning (Dec 26th) it was frozen again. So, following suggestions here. I did the following:

1.) Removed Power4Gear completely and rebooted.

Will report back if the freezing problem disappears. Thanks!

 

My lockups required a hard reboot. I was getting the random freezes with no Power4Gear even installed. I was getting freezes with only the most basic drivers installed (video, audio, wireless card, etc).

 

This is good news for you is, that this is working.
The thing that has me wondering is that I am using Power4Gear with my system and I am not seeing any issues , I have to wonder if this has something to do with the software that you or I are running .
Or if it is that your system has an Nvidia video card and mine has the AMD/ATI Video card.
This may be due to the Bios are not the same as of the two types of Video cards.
It would be nice if we had a good piece of software that would monitor and record our systems so we could see any changes in what is happening.
I have one but due to an NDA I can not give it out at this time.

Does anyone know of any open source software that would fit this profile that we could use that would do what is needed? I have tried some in the past but the packages just did not work as needed.
I really would like to see what is going on in these systems.

Please keep us updated on your progress if you have the time. I would like to understand more of this error.

 

I've reinstalled the OS and its updates, nVidia AV driver, some applications (TrueCrypt without system encryption, MSE2, etc), and avoided to install the drivers for the card reader and USB 3 (since those were not found by Windows during install).

So far, so good, no more freezes (with the OS's default power saving mode).

If I find the culprit (which now appears to be software), I'll let you know.

 

I just had a weird computer freeze. My mouse was not working but my keyboard was. So I try to reboot with my keyboard. It was shutting down well but not all the way so I have to shut down with the power button. I was thinking perhaps there is a problem with the driver of my mouse or the mouse itself. What do you think?

 

Some process hung that was running. Ignore it for now.

 

I bought Asus G73JW. I am getting wierd issues when I connect it to my HDTV (LG Scarlet 2.0)
The text is not very clear on the screen, plus the resolution is going out of screen even in 16:9 screen mode.
I have updated the nVidia driver to latest, but didnt help.
Any ideas ?

 

cruising2hell: What type of cable / connection are you using? Is it HDMI? I have connected mine with success to a couple HDTVs with no issues, using both HDMI & PC/VGA cable. You just have to make sure your resolution is set appropriately (1920 x 1080) and that your TV is configured to the right mode for which you are feeding it. If you experiment with some of the different settings you should be able to find the right mode sooner or later...

 

I removed power4hybrid software and continued testing with just the normal power profiles...

My system was running fine for another 48 hours or so... then another lockup (spontaneous reboot actually)... but found some interesting things in the system log....


ACPI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal PCI Operation Region (0x4), Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

\Device\Harddisk1\DR1




Then shortly after the critical kernel power error (like 15 minutes later though):

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.


Sometimes the ACPI error happens on:

\Device\Harddisk2\DR2


I'm going to disable the hard drive from sleeping in the power settings..


I have never had the system lockup or reboot during use.. I've played warcraft for hours on end with no issues... it does look like a sleep / power issue.

If this can be driver or bios fixed, I'd like to keep the laptop since everything else on it is fine...

Or perhaps simply not allowing hard drive sleep in the power settings will fix the problem... testing this now.


edit: I removed the hex code since it was causing the messageboard to go into a wide margin view.

 

It freeze again. The mouse and the keyboard wouldn't respond so I restart by pressing the power buttton. That is not normal.

 

Might want to check your system logs after each crash or freeze... you can check them now also to see if you find anything....

Right click "computer" (in start menu or desktop).. select manage / event viewer / windows logs / system

Look for any errors there.. look for Kernel power errors first (may have to scroll down the list, these are the system crash / freeze errors)... there should be other errors before that like the BIOS ACPI one I have or other errors that perhaps may have caused the kernel power critical.

 

Hi GlennOC. By following your instructions I just found a Critical and a Error Level messages. It say that the computer have shutdown unexpectedly. Don't know how to retrive more usefull information.

 

I have the same freezes on my ASUS G73JW AND also on my ASUS EeePC !!!
Seems to be an BIG ASUS-Problem.

I have contacted ASUS - Seems that they live behind the moon - no usefull answer since 8 weeks!!! (and i contaced them more than one time)

I will not spend my time for testing 1000 tipps. This Notebook must work like a car - buy - start - drive - without installing a new motor!!!

So the only solution for this problem is: NEVER BUY AN ASUS AGAIN!!!!!
ASUS EeePC and ASUS G73JW IS the very bad Notebook i ever used !!!
Shure, it runs fine - when it runs!!!
So i will bring it back to the dealer soon...

ASUS G73 has very bad PROBLEMS and ASUS should read the book
What Would Google Do? from Jeff Jarvis

Maybe the can learn from DELL...

"Hello ASUS - can you hear me ????????????????????"
my CASE ID's are:
[CASEID=TM2010121000054]
[CASEID=TM2010120900069]
[CASEID=TM2010121001172]

 

Hey guys! I just wanted to check in and report that I have installed the first of the hotfixes listed in this thread (NOT the WFP one), turned off TwinTurbo and uninstalled P4Hybrid. I'm on day 3 since making these changes and so far no crashes! I hope this works for everyone else!

 

Or you have a Win 7 problem....

1) Have you updated anything? There are reasons why the OS and drivers get updated.

2) Have you applied any of the hotfixes listed in the sticky thread about freezes in Win7?

3) Have you tried installing Win7 SP1 RC?

4) Have you tried disabling any hardware systematically to isolate any potential hardware and/or their drivers?

5) Have you turned off TwinTurbo?

6) Have you considered getting a Mac when you returned your laptop? If you want zero maintenance system, then a gaming pc laptop was a very poor choice since it's a bit cutting edge.

 

Great points Chastity, especially#6!

On that note, TeddyBean, regarding your comment "This Notebook must work like a car - buy - start - drive - without installing a new motor!!!", if this was your expectation for a high end / cutting (near bleeding) edge PC gaming laptop, probably not very realistic. There are many more mainstream brands / laptops out there you should expect this from.

If you are comparing this laptop to cars, this is more like NASCAR or INDY, where I would definitely NOT expect a "buy - start - drive" experience.

Granted, ASUS could stand to be a bit more responsive... I'll give you that.

But given the complexity and high performance this laptop potentially brings to the table, it would be expected there are going to be some tuning / maintenance tasks warranted by the owner. That said, and back to the car analogy, this is more the car for the mechanic as opposed to the Honda for mom. Make sense?

Overall, and as an update on my own plight, I have had a couple freezes in the last two weeks, one after idle and one while using. So, pretty happy about that! I can expect with W7 updates and fixes, etc. it is only going to get better in time.

 

A few things... (long winded sorry)...

From what I read, this freezing issue has been hitting every type of user from people that leave their system totally bone stock... all the way to the overclocking, BIOS re-flashing, SSD installing, GPU/CPU re-pasting, driver hacking, led keyboard re-coloring, fanpeeps.

The freezing issue (looking at just this one issue) also seems to be hitting JH and others in the G73 series. There are some people that have done everything all these threads tell them to do 2x over and still getting freezes.

Many are only sill here reading in this ASUS subsection because they dread the RMA return procedure and are looking for an in-home fix if at all possible. Some also dread the return for refund procedure depending on where they purchased, restocking fees, etc.

I am sure many of the people with freezing issues have many (many) years of experience with laptops (win/mac) and own many brands of laptops / computers, etc... and probably own a few ASUS as well (like myself and others).

but....

We can all agree... there are gaming laptops that don't have some of these issues "out of the box", including many G73's that are running fine... the silent masses as they say... so stating that a "gaming laptop" needs more attention to work properly is ridiculous considering the people with G73's (and other laptops) with no issues that have most likely done nothing but un-install bloatware to get to stable system bliss.

Sure you can re-install windows, install an SSD, tweak clocks, re-paste, etc. to squeeze out a bit more.. but absolutely required for everyone to do for a stable system ? Of course not. ASUS would never put that in their advertising and think what the average Amazon customer is actually doing. Who knows if some even know they have a problem, some may just think windows update re-booted their system.

I own and have reviewed many "gaming laptops" as some others have. These days, in stock form, a "gaming laptop" should perform as good as any other laptop right out of the box.

If there are any problems with the out of box state and normal windows updating procedures for some on the G73, specially critical ones like system freezes, then ASUS should be taking note and people with these problems should be posting to inform them and help others.

This is why forums like this exist.

This far into the G73 model production cycle, ASUS should absolutely hear about it. The product hopefully gets improved, and on life goes.

and...

I'm sorry, the advice to "get a mac" to solve your ASUS freezing issues is also just a tad ridiculous. Mac's have their share of problems as well, many will tell you this first hand. Plus recommending people to "get a mac" for an all out gaming machine would not, in my opinion at least, be first choice. This would be like telling someone who came in to buy a truck to get an SUV instead. Similar, but different beasts in IMHO.


All the help here has been awesome... BUT all the people with perfectly performing systems, please consider the frustration "level" some of the users here have, specially the ones with no choice but an RMA.

Think of the guy / gal opening up their brand new Christmas G73JW for the first time with a copy of Black Ops in hand and a few days later their computer freezing up, etc.. (and their parents looking at the $1500 receipt)

I don't think they want or really need to hear "get a mac" as the solution to their problems.

Sorry for the long rant....



As for getting back to resolving the particular freezing / lockup / rebooting issue I'm having, I have disabled the HD from going to sleep and so far no lockups since my last post, so perhaps that last tweak solved it for me. I sure hope it did.

 

I have a stack of Mac computers here that do not work any better than the others.
As you stated the Mac does have just as many issues as a PC, I went to the PC to get away from Apple for reasons that most do not want to hear.
This is a Hardware problem that ASUS is going to have to fix, And it is getting bigger as there are others with the Newer models that are having the same problems and more that are posting on forums all over.
Everyone where I live that bought a G73 is having problems with there machines, that is too many so to me this issue is larger than I would want to think.

Some here have given up talking to ASUS and are doing something about it. So I am waiting to see what happens with this and what is done to fix the issues that we have, but after seven months I am starting to get tired of the wait just like others are.

 

Uhm, guys, the "get a mac" reference was very tongue-in-cheek, regarding the original poster's trollish attitude and post. He's not interested in a fix, but in venting and telling people not to buy the product. If he or anyone is interested in getting their systems working, by all means let's get something started.

The problem with system lockups is that they usually do not leave a error trail, since things locked up, and never had a chance to update the error log. Causes can be from:

Corrupted CMOS data, requiring a resetting to defaults to clear, or use of the CMOS Reset button

Marginal errors with some component, including RAM, CPU, or GPU, or requiring proper seating.

System chip drivers getting quirky from a long series of updates, and build components aren't uniformly updated. (Thus the reason I recommend using -overall with Intel INF updates)

Hang-ups with drivers. Wifi and NIC drivers can be notorious for this, as are Bluetooth. On my system, I disable the BT and Camera in BIOS, since I do not use them. I also keep my SATA, Intel Wifi and Atheros LAN drivers updated, as well as Power4Gear Hybrid.

In regards to having everything working "out-of-box", my G73JH was working fine, until I updated the ATI drivers, and then BOOM. Not only should a laptop work out of the box, it should also work with updated drivers that are meant for the unit. The problem was based on a modded revision of the HD5870M card Asus makes, and the flaw came out after production. So technically, it didn't work out of box, but at least the issue was addressed, and still is being addressed.

So I know how it feels when their investment doesn't work as it should, and my baby bears the scars of success. As for TeddyBean, let him return his unit and buy another model, it's his choice and money.

 

(First I want to say that Asus is saying that after a firmware update, the settings have to be reset, so consider this; I didn't do it and it still works for me, but for some might be different.)


In my case, the culprit was TrueCrypt's system encryption feature.

The freezes started as soon as I started the system encryption. Each freeze took about 45...60 seconds. It happened in the first 10 minutes after starting the computer, 4 times in a row (sometimes a 5-th and even 6-th time), each freeze separated by about 10...30 seconds (sometimes more between the first two freezes) of responsiveness. The weird part is that I had the computer running for hours yet there was no other freeze after those first 10 minutes (which makes me wonder about how easily they've dismissed this issues - see at the bottom).

After I removed the system encryption, it all works smoothly. (But the harddisk still has the same power saving mode, disregarding what the OS power saving settings are saying. This causes small delays from time to time when trying to open some files / applications. Oddly, these delays didn't occur while I was trying a few game demos.)

This issue is listed on TrueCrypt's website. Unfortunately, they don't say any technical details as to why this happens.

For some reason, these options are not available in the G73JW's BIOS. (I would have wanted to disable the power saving of the HDDs, since they are clearly ignoring what Windows is saying about power saving.)

Okay, here is some more information from the TrueCrypt's forum, in a thread called "Hangs/freezing caused by power saving features". (You need to be a member to see the "Problems" subforums.)

So, it looks like this issues can be solved with a BIOS update (if Asus looks into this problem).

 

The option is buried in the USB options. (Lock/Unlock)

 

I'm glad i found this thread, i'm a new Asus G53 owner (10 days), and having the same issue as well,

Copy&cut of my problem from another forum:

Background: I have a new Asus G53 with upgraded ocz SDD. everything else is stock. Nvdia card has updated by using nvidia 260.99.

I was just browsing the web, no video or CPU intensive stuff,.. and my external keyboard backlight went off plus my USB mouse light. then froze. Other occasions occured overnight when the computer was not in use or doing some light downloading.

Control+alt-del didn't work, so I just forced shutoff. I also notice that when i unplug the power cord, the computer shuts off completely.There was no blue screen, just froze.Checked the event log and nothing was showing up other than a pause of events.

One more thing to add, there was this occasion that after the computer went to sleep, the USB2 ports no longer work after "waking up" again, the single USB3 port still work for some reason.

SO, I have since uninstalled the power4hybrid app from asus and disabled the sleep/hibernation/HDD off options in hope to cure this problem!!

 

I had that happen to me to on my desktop recently, so it's not Power4Gear Hybrid. I decided to update my Intel INF using 9.2.0.1015 package found on Asus.

Decompress it to a dir, open a commandline prompt in that dir, and run "setup.exe -overall" This will force upgrade ALL the components to the 9.1.1.1026 build of the components. (don't ask me why the numbers don't match, I do not know)

 

Is this an upgrade to the intel chipset ? would this work for G53/G73 as well ?

And I've just disprove the Power4Gear Hybrid theory for my G53 as I have completely uninstalled it and used the windows "high performance" setting disabling everything (sleep/hibernation/HDD off). However my screen still turns off after 10 mins.....

any ideas???

 

Didn't disable everything I'm guessing

 

In addition to the things I did in my above posts I also disabled the HD's from sleeping...

After a few hours I got a bluescreen in regards to the USB (though this probably had nothing to do with the HDD sleep settings):

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: fe
BCP1: 0000000000000008
BCP2: 0000000000000006
BCP3: 000000000000000B
BCP4: FFFFFA8010C15C80
OS Version: 6_1_7600
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1



So I un-installed the USB 3 drivers....

Now the G73 can't stay on overnight or say it looks like 10 hours or so without a freeze, the kernel power / spontaneous reboot happening.

so to recap:
Disabling the sleep on the HDD, my HDD related ACPI errors in the logs stopped happening...

I'm still getting ACPI related USB errors in the system log... not that many but they are still there.

then that USB driver debug blue screen happened...

removed Fresco USB driver.. and now the laptop can't stay on for more than it looks like 10 hours or so before it has a kernel power error.

will try other combos like installing the updated USB driver, etc.. with this unit..

the good news is that another G73JW is being overnight shipped to me and I'll be testing both units with just the out of the box settings and normal windows updates.

I'm guessing at this point that I may have just got a defective unit (bad luck), hopefully the new unit works out and this proves to be the case.

 

Yea i know, rather annoying.

I've installed the fix KB2265716 and wala, it went again last night......

 

It'll work for any Intel based PC

 

I will give it a try after testing the "not turning off the display" method...

Maybe worth trying reinstalling windows 7 ?? (but i already did a fresh win 7 install as I changed my HDD to SSD)..

Update:

I tried to disable the turn off screen in advance power setting and no lock ups for at least 14 hours.....

But the thing is the usb2 ports have become non-responsibe. the single usb3 port still works..

very odd..

 

I've not hard locked today, but i did get bluescreens. after checking the logs, i was getting a bugcheck error. quick google search revealed this:

Bug Check 0x3B: SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION

Note at the bottom, it says "This error has been linked to excessive paged pool usage and may occur due to user-mode graphics drivers crossing over and passing bad data to the kernel code." Could this be related to our old nemesis, the graphics drivers? Every hard lockup I've experienced has been while gaming, and i recently updated them when i did the beta bios.

 

I haven't been 100% happy with 10.12 WHQL. I've helped out too many people recently with system crashes using 10.12. However the 10.12 RC3 Hotfix has been excellent. Yes they rolled back to a 10.11 fork, but maybe there was a reason for it.

 

Found 10.11 drivers and installed them this morning (Protip: make sure you add "mobility" to the google search.) >_<

First good sign, the computer isn't complaining about being unable to load the razer naga tray icon, which its been doing for a few days.

Update: So far so good, after several hours of gaming, web surfing and sitting idle, no problems whatsoever.