Asus G50V-A2 CPU Problem (About to Pull Hair Out... or just RMA)

Anyone else seen something like this?

Have the Asus G50V-A2, stock specs. Got it in and set it to raid 0 and reinstalled the OS from the recovery disk and all drivers. Things seemed ok until I realized that about 75% of the times that I turned the laptop on, the CPU would be running at 80%-100% (100% max frequency) at all times.

Vista Indexing, Windows Search, and all the little idle processes were disabled. I checked the performance monitor, downloaded xperf, and ran through the processes and no specific issue could be found except that the System (Kernal) process was constantly running between 50-70% of the CPU at all times (Not the System Idle Process). I tried to isolate a driver, but was not able to do so.

Tried reinstalling Vista again, non-raid. No change.

Gave up and attempted to install XP Home, thinking "Vista problem?" No joy. Even under a clean, formatted XP installation with all proper drivers, the CPU again runs at 80-100% load while "idle." On top of that, when in XP, I get a message of "Power Surge on USB Port" stating "USB item has malfunctioned and is drawing too much power." There was nothing plugged into the USB.

(Just as a note, a friend of mine has the G50VM-X1 from Best Buy and he can't run more than a mouse and keyboard off the USB without running out of power... not sure if there is a general issue with the USB ports on this board).

Anyway, anyone seen anything like this before? Sounds to me like a motherboard level hardware error. After spending an extra $100 for another copy of XP, I'm about done trying and ready to give up and RMA this computer, and now I'm scared that if I get the same thing, it'll have exactly the same issues. Anyone gone back and forth from stock config to raid or back and found no issues with CPU load?

Seriously thinking about giving up on the G50 even though I really like it as a machine and it's specs.

 

I dont know about all that, but i am in raid 1 and everything seems to work fine, it is almost never at 100% cpu and i have a mouse and flash drives all hooked up to the usb's at the same time with no problem

 

Nice to meet with seriously thinking person.
I'm positive you know that RAID 0 requires 2 identical drives, don't you?
Your stock machine came with 1 little tiny hidden recovery partition on drive C and I have no doubt that you removed this partition prior to RAID 0 and thereafter your operating system is not busy trying to equalize 2 different in size drives.

Sager NP5796 has 1 drive only so I'm afraid you will have a problem with RAID.

 

The drives were idenitical and everyone thing was done, more or less exactly as Vicious stated in his post on the subject.

However, that said, I deleted the raid volume and reinstalled Vista on two normal NTFS primary partition non-raid drives, with the bios SATA/IDE setting to Enhanced. Same problem, 80-100% CPU. Set to compatibility, full format, installed XP. Same problem.

Problem persists again on reinstall of Vista that I have in preparation for sending it back, if it's not a known problem and I'm just experiencing a hardware error, as I expect.

 

The best thing to learn RAID is to build your own system

 

Unfortunately, this is not related to raid and I really don't care now whether I run in raid 0 or non-raid. The only thing I didn't like about the standard stock install was that it came with 2 drives with 2 partitions each. (4 partitions... really, why?)

The problem is related to CPU load whether under raid or not, Vista or XP. However, unless anyone has heard of anything like this, or experienced similar issues and can point to a specific interrupt or driver fault (high load of interrupt calls in the System kernal process), then I can only conclude that this specific board is faulty.

 

Out of curiosity: do you have peergaurdian installed? My CPU was pinging and I couldn't figure out why. I don't know if it was a coincidence, but about the time I uninstalled it the problem went away.

 

No, it runs heavy on a completely fresh install, pre-drivers and post drivers.

 

What you need to do is open your resource manager and see WHAT is using your cpu. Also download cpu-z and see whats up with the cpu. Maybe its locked at a super low operating speed or something. Cpu-Z will show you real ime information on the cpu multi and operating speed.

 

When mine was pinging a few days ago, there was nothing running and nothing showing up in the resource manager. I used a third party cpu monitoring program and it too wasn't showing what was utilizing the CPU. Like I said, mine sort of went away but it's interesting.

 

I did see exactly what was using my CPU in resource monitor. As I said, it was System (NT Kernal & System). No specific svchost process or other process causing the issue. Opening up even more, the System process was showing about 20%load from Deferred Procedure Calls and about 30% from the System thread generically.

That's why downloaded kernrate/xperf, etc, but could not isolate an issue there. I did consider that maybe the CPU was underclocking itself for no apparent reason, but that shouldn't be happening on clean installs and further, the System process should generally run below even the perfmon.exe if the system is idle.

I'll look into CPU-Z and see if that helps bring up more information, but this shouldn't be a persistent problem under multiple installs, multiple OS's if it is a simple driver or software issue.

Thanks for considering though. This has been really frustrating.

 

Im just trying to isolate if its a software/driver issue or a hardware issue.

We can probably figure it out with enough testing, there are many brilliant minds here on the forums and if we cant figure it out you may just have a bad unit and will have to RMA it. That does indeed happen.

 

There's a very long discussion by Mark... something or other... one of the gurus out there, about a very similar issue. However, when he did it, he went through xperf and was able to isolate a Bluetooth driver (Broadcom 10.10) that was the issue. When I did it though, there was no driver that could be isolated as the problem. That's not to say it's *not* the problem, but I have trouble understanding if that's possible considering the difference between Vista and XP in the way the kernal handles drivers (And that the system does it whether the updated drivers are installed or not at all). When I started this thread, the computer was running low load. After 1 reboot, it's running high again. This current configuration does not have most of the updated drivers installed.

If it turns out to be a bad piece of hardware, that's fine, in the end. It's just especially frustrating because I travel for work, so while I have a very fine home built (old Alienware box I completely rebuilt from mobo out once the original specs became too old) desktop to run games on, I play MMO's and other stuff with my wife when I'm on the road... and it's about 3 weeks till Warhammer goes live, so I would like to resolve all this by then at the latest.

 

You did install every diver off the disk that says recommended right?

As for BT drivers... I hate the ones it comes with I am using bluesoleil right now but only the trial version so its good for my wiimote but sucks for my headphones since it has a data limit. So may have to go back to the old drivers.

 

I do not have a clue what the source of the problem could be, and I can't favor either software or hardware as the cause, at this point. But I can think of some troubleshooting steps.

Firstly, make sure that the CPU is upclocking properly when it is asked to. For that, open up CPU-Z or RMClock (with no management), use either a Performance-on-Demand type of profile (High Performance in Power4Gear, I believe), run a CPU intensive taks, and watch if the clocks of the CPU go up to full speed. This was suggested by ViciousXUSMC as well. What I want to eliminate here is an ACPI bug where the CPU would be locked into a low frequency, or an otherwise performance-limiting power saving state.

Second, you could try doing a clean install. Or, does this happen even before you install any drivers? If so, then you already did it... but if not, do a clean install and make sure you install only the ATK (ACPI) drivers and utils, and nothing else. If with that setup the problem does not appear, then it's some other software that is causing it (e.g., ASUS utils are known to be buggy sometimes).

You could also try running the notebook in a Live Linux distro such as Knoppix and monitor CPU utilization. Now that's a different kernel from Windows If it does similar things there, then it's almost sure to be hardware, in which case you can just RMA it.

Edit: If you're not running the latest version of the BIOS you could also update that. Who knows.

 

Did the CPU-Z, seems to change frequencies fine. Also have done 4 different installs. Twice it started doing this while the install was completely clean, no drivers and with only the chipset driver, and then again with just that and the ATK drivers.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think it's probably isolated down to hardware now. Going the Linux route is a tad farther than I'm going to go on this one, lol. It's still within the "send it back no questions asked" period, so I'll probably just go that route.

 

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, and newb'ish but I have the same laptop and want to go into the Bios but I'm not sure which key to hit during the Intel/Asus splash screen at the start.

Any help would be great....thanks!

Also, has anyone else have their laptop plugged in but its showing as only 97% charged? I've yet to have my laptop unplugged but the charge never gets to 100%

 

F2 to go to bios.

Anyway, the reseller asked I call Asus, which I did. Asus asked me to update the bios. Using the BIOS utility that came with the machine and the BIOS off the Asus website, the machine now blue screens at windows.

That's pretty much it for trying to figure out the problem. If no one else had this problem, I'd say it's a hardware fault and RMA time.

If you do have a G50, please let me know if you've seen/noticed/watched for similar problems and it hasn't happened. I now have to decide what to do, whether replacement or just go for a different machine.

 

Where did you find the BIOS update? I was just on asus.com and on the support/download page and saw nothing for BIOS for the G50V except a BIOS update utility.

 

support.asus.com/download/

Then just go through and select the product.

 

Live Linux is not that difficult, you just download an ISO, burn a CD, and boot it. You don't need to touch the harddrive.

If the computer bluescreens with the new BIOS, rollback to the old one (which is to say, download it and rewrite it over the newer BIOS). The BSOD might be due to the BIOS settings being reset to default when you wrote the new BIOS (example: HDD put back into SATA Enhanced mode, but you installed XP in Compatibility mode).

But yeah, for a new machine this may start to become a bit too much effort to be worth it...

 

Duh on me, thanks. Changed BIOS back to compatibility mode, where I left them on the last Vista install....

Windows now starts up again normally. Will see if I can replicate the issue though. As normal after a prolonged shut down, the CPU isn't acting up. Usually 2 or 3 soft restarts does it.

 

What's considered normal? I have the same system and when I'm just surfing the web or emailing I'm usually around mid to high 80's in percent according to Task Manager.

 

80% should not be normal, even if it's indexing. How often is it like this and for how long does it stay like that?

On my side, now that I have windows running again, I have another weird error, second time I've heard of this on the G50 series. The BIOS now run *twice* at start up. (???) I've hit ESC to force it to show the post and allow me to select the boot device, but now when I get to the boot device for the first time, it starts back over at POST again. So, if you do nothing, the Republic of Gamers logo runs twice.

However, since then, I have not been able to replicate the CPU load issue after multiple restarts, will keep watching it. I thought for a few minutes it was back, so I went to download CPU-Z and by the time I came back to run it, the load had dropped down to 3-4%, which is the first time it's dropped from high to low on it's own.

POST twice? Should this be a cause for concern?

 

I would concern myself about it, at least slightly. It can be a BIOS bug, or some kind of forced restart event caused either by a bug or by hardware problems.

80% what? CPU, memory?

 

Irritatingly enough, now that it's posting twice.... the high cpu load issue has not *yet* restarted and CPU-Z and Perf Mon both show the CPU adjusting it's frequency on the fly alot more based on the load.

I'll considering calling Asus about the BIOS running twice.

 

CPU Usage, but it seems to be fine now, hovers around 0-10% and spikes up to 40% when first launching IE7.

Is it ok to set the 'Performance' in DirectConsole to Turbo or Turbo Extreme and leave it, or will things eventually over heat? Is that something that should just be used when working with Photoshop or playing games?

Finally, is there a way to combine the 2nd drive's partitions into one without reinstalling the whole system? I hate that I have 4 drives, yet don't want to reformat and start from scratch.

 

Yeah, I hate the default set up of 2 drives 2 partitions... each.

I *think* if you go to disk management (diskmgmt.msc) you can rearrange the extra drive. If not, then probably diskpart.exe will work. Someone else may know better on that though.

 

Alarien

You are not alone. My CPU usage is around 90% at times and acts just like yours. I got my A2 last Thurs and did a clean install with Vista64 Ultimate. At first I thought it was indexing and would give it a few days to see if it would come down. Sometimes after rebooting, the CPU stays around 10% idling but will eventually go back to 90%. After seeing your thread tonight I decided to load the 204 BIOS to see that would fix it. When it rebooted, the CPU was back down to around 10% but I had to put the laptop away and get back to work. When I get home I will check to see if it is back to 90% and maybe reboot a few times to try and reproduce. If it does go back to idling at 90% one of my co-workers suggested to load the modded updated Nvidia drivers to see it that will help. I will let you know how it goes.

 

Yeah, let me know. I've seen more problems reported with the A2 than the A1. Odd?

 

i think that you just need to change the cpu
cuz i heard that there were some that were shipped with the cpu always being high

 

Maybe you need to flash the BIOS one more time and see if it will correct both problems? Just a thought. I'd definitely call ASUS if it keeps happening. I doubt it's in any way fatal, but it shouldn't boot up twice like that.

 

When I got home last night. I rebooted a few times and cycled the computer in and out of sleep mode to try and recreate the high CPU utilization. After a hard reboot, the CPU would stay at 90% for a couple of minutes and then drop back down. Now after coming of sleep CPU stays around the 10-20% range depending on what it is doing. It seems the 204 BIOS may have fixed the problem for my but I will keep an eye on it this weekend. Like Joe said maybe try to reflash the 204 BIOS. It seems to have helped me.

 

Antivirus scan on boot? My Symantec Corporate AV is doing this.

As to the double-boot issue, I would suggest trying to flash the older BIOS (rollback). If that fixes the issue, I'd stick with the old BIOS for the time being.

 

About the double boot issue, check to see if the BIOS detects the second hard drive.

I think there is a conflict between HD1 and HD2, at first post, it detect both hard drive and then it reboot again and disable the 2nd HD.

 

As an update, I sent the computer back and am having it replaced. Regardless, I simply don't trust that box now.

As for Ken's comment, I think he's possibly dead on. I did notice that if you hit escape to choose the boot device, on one boot, both hard drives show, and on the the next, only one shows. Sounds like good info Ken, thanks.

Mac8800, thanks for the suggestion, but I watched very closely to see if after the BIOS were flashed I could recreate the problem. At first it didn't seem that it would recreate... and then it did and just as much as before. So I do think the BIOS probably fix an issue with the CPU... but I just don't think that that was what was wrong with my particular board.

Further that whole unrecognizable USB "power surge" error I was getting under XP scares me.

 

Hi,

I saw this thread yesterday at work and couldn't log in here to reply but I do have the same problem. For now, I didn't do all the update (bios and all) because I didn't have time really. Hopefully, after the update, everything will be fine. For now, my CPU is at 90% to 100% when I start-up and its all in the '' NT kernel & system ''. After 5 to 10 minutes, the CPU drop back to 0 - 3% and everything is normal. The only update I did is the VISTA update and installed WinDVD (the one that come witht the laptop) to test a DVD.

I don't know alot about laptop (its my first laptop actually) but it may be something to do with vista. My probleme is only when I start the computer.I try to google it but couldn't find any answers. I give you more update soon (may try to do raid 0).

 

Thats exactly what is happening I bet, now whats the best way to fix it I wonder. I guess remove the 2nd hdd from the boot list? I know you can change priority but not sure if you can take it off completely. Also maybe its just a matter of priority maybe its trying to read the non-os disk first.

 

I am not sure if it's the controller problem, I couldn't fix it so I sent it back to Asus.

When it happens the 2nd hard drive bay will be disable when using enhance mode, the RAID and compatible still works it's only the enhance mode.

Things I've tried:
-update BIOS
-use only one hard drive in 2nd hard drive bay
-swap hard drives
-remove optical drive (I thought it was a conflicting in IDE channel but it was not)
-set priority on on each drive in the BIOS.

nothing works, the BIOS will post twice and at second post it disable the 2nd hard drive.

 

I was going to buy right this model but I wonder if ALL of them have this same problem...

 

They don't. I got my G50V-A2 yesterday, and it's running beautifully. No problems whatsoever!

 

Naw, put this into perspective: People usually come here with questions or if they need help with a problem. You're just seeing the problems. We honestly have no way of comparing how many people own this laptop without any problems, with the people who have them. I doubt any responsible company would ship out a laptop filled with problems and expect to have recurring customers.

 

You'd be surprised. I'm joking But I think things like that happen from time to time. It's a calculated risk though, and it's not "filled with" problems but I believe there are sometimes problems that the manuf knows about but just doesn't have the time to fix before the release deadlines.

It's just a belief of mine though, I have nothing to support it except my own experience reading about electronics...

 

I think that is often true in large industries. For example, from reading internal document I know that Atari was aware that the Pole Position cabinets they were shipping had chips that were going to overheat and fail in a few weeks. They chose to ship them anyway and try to band-aid the problem once it occured by having field service techs install extra fans in the cabinets.

There are calculated risks in letting things slide and paying to fix them if they fail. If it's cheaper to fix the problem later than fix it before it ships, some companies will go for the wait till later approach, even at the cost of lives. Which brings up the brightside of the matter for this industry. At least it's much harder to get killed because of manufacturing negligence on a laptop. Electrocution and having the battery explode come to mind as the biggest possible dangers. I'd much rather my motherboard failed than my seat belt or my gun.

 

No, this is not a known issue for G50V notebooks, at least I know there are only 2~3 units has probably a bad SATA controller.

 

I had the same thing happen to my laptop (as indicated earlier in this thread), but mine went away. Now it's comeback and I've noticed that it's been right after I've installed my Logitech VX Cordless Mouse. As soon as I plug in that cordless USB receiver the process hits 100% and stays up over 85% for a long long time. I've now uninstalled the driver and am letting the laptop sit turned off for a little bit to see if it goes back to normal.

Any idea why it would be doing this?

 

No idea honestly, but that's odd. See if that continues to cause you issues. I use exactly the same mouse.

 

I've had the exact same problems you've had with CPU running high. I updated the BIOS and that seemed to do it. I decided to do a re-install anyways as I wanted to just have the two drives instead of 4 partitions. Everything had been going great up until today. All I did today was intall Office '07 and that mouse. Now its slow as hell, I check the processes and SVCHOST or something like that is running high, as is TrustedInstall. I have no Windows Updates to install, they're all in, and haven't done anything else but now out of nowhere it's running super high and for some reason it came about, both times, when I plugged that little USB receiver into the USB port in the back of the laptop. I didn't even install the Logitech software at that point and the CPU just took off. I dont get it, now I'm getting all kinds of other issues like the network icon saying i'm disconnected when I'm not, downloads taking 30 seconds to actually download once they hit 99%.

So like you before, I'm ready to pull my hair out...

 

Maybe the mouse driver is faulty? It seems unlikely, but maybe the default driver and also the Logitech driver may both be faulty...

If removing the mouse radio dongle causes the problem to disappear for all three of you, then the mouse is almost certainly the cause of the problems.

 

The odd thing is, I'll take the dongle out, remove the drivers and the laptop just acts oddly still. I'm going to do another reinstall, and the first thing I'm doing after is installing the mouse, if everything is fine after then i'll know it was something else. I have some odd feeling that something isn't working right with the 64 bit version of Vista, I run the 32 bit version with no problems on my desktop, but I've never seen so many quirky things happen before like now.