BSODs, nvlddmkm.sys problems & my overall exp. with my G2S notebook

I've owned my Asus G2S now for about a month and a half. Ultimately, it has turned out to be my best and my worst laptop ever. I will explain why I feel this way.

First, I'd like to point out that I an advanced PC user, with many years of dealing and fixing computer issues that come up. I chose to Asus, as the brand for my new laptop, mainly due to my long time satisfaction with their PC components, from which most of my custom PCs have been built from (mainly motherboards). I've also read a lot of good things about the preview G2 series machines.

MY REVIEW

I want to first talk about why I consider it the best notebook I've ever worked on. If you want to skip my review and just goto my problems with the G2S, scroll down.

Performance:
The G2S is an incredible machine when it comes to performance. Gaming, is without a doubt, incredible. I have been able to play games on this laptop, at resolutions my current desktop cannot (it's due for an upgrade). It cuts through Vista's Aero glass like butter.

Construction and Appearance:
The laptop is beautiful from all angles. If a laptop could have muscles, the G2S would be jacked. It just streams performance, just by it's appearance. The housing is the best I'm ever seen on a laptop, especially because the LCD screen does not bend or bulge when moving it.

I'm not crazy about the flashing lights on the side. I expected the lights to be able to responsive to sound or at least have some sort of customization. However, the blinking red lights, have only attracted people around me to come over and ask what they are for and disturb my game playing. So, I've just turned them off because the only time I notice them is when someone points them out to me. I prefer to game in peace, thank you very much.

Display:
One of my favorite things about the G2S is it's incredible LCD display. At 1920x1200 resolution, this thing makes everything look like eye candy. It's really bright also. I can even use it in the sun. The difference is very clear when comparing to some other notebooks.

Battery Life:
The battery life is nothing special, but I wouldn't expect much more from a high performance gaming notebook. Gaming on the battery won't last too long, especially in 'High Performance' settings mode. I like the fact that it has preset settings, such as 'High Performance' and 'Battery Savings' mode at the push of 1 button. It allows me to optimize my battery time. Too bad Asus doesn't provide an option for a larger, higher capacity battery.

Package:
The G2S comes fully loaded with a very nice gaming mouse and a backpack. I never really payed attention to the performance of computer mice, but this gaming mouse that comes with the G2S is a lot better than any I've owned in the past. The backpack is also very handy as I use it all the time to transport the notebook. It's very roomy and has plenty of room for other essentials, however, I'd prefer not looking like I'm carries weights on my back, so if the backpack could be a more of a tighter fit and smaller overall, that would be better for me because aside from the laptop, I don't usually care much else.

Weight and Dimensions:
This is my first 17" laptop, it I'm very satisfied with it, however it is bulky and I think a better design job could have been done to trim the edges of the LCD and laptop itself. I'd estimate about an inch of excess space that could have been removed.

MY PROBLEMS WITH THE G2S

First, let me mention that this is my first PC with Windows Vista 32bit on it. As someone in the 'know', I was planning on waiting for the first service pack to come out, but I couldn't hold out that long. With that in mind, I am not sure whether some of my problems stem from a problem with the notebook's architecture (ie. memory problems, graphics card) or Windows Vista (ie. OS problems, drivers, etc). Either way, I expect a performance laptop like this to perform reliably and without hassle.

'nvlddmkm.sys' issue:
One of the post annoying issues I'm currently dealing with is the problem with the nvlddmkm.sys driver crapping out on me. This happens at random times and it usually last for a significant amount of time ranging from 2 to 15 minutes. As I am working on the laptop, it would suddenly hit an enormous lag spike, where only the mouse moves but barely. Generally, I wouldn't be able to do anything for the next 2 - 15 mins, until Vista resumes a bubble pessage appears, telling me "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." I've tried changing the drivers as well as many other suggestions I've heard from other forums. This is a very frustrating problem and has yet to be resolved.

BSODs:
Another problem is the overly frequent number of BSODs, that occur randomly. It's not even a single BSOD message that keeps reoccurring, it seems to be a few different ones, as if they are shuffled on some torturous playlist . Sometimes, there's not even a BSOD, it just restarts itself. I've lost a lot of work because of this including entire site layouts. When I run chkdsk utility after the restart, it deletes and recovers a lot of material. I don;t know exactly what is deleted and recovered. Having my Firefox settings defaulted, corrupting my MS Office 2007 installation, messing up my Photoshop CS3 profiles, etc. are some of the recent results of these BSODs/random restarts. Once, I even had a corrupted registry, which caused Vista to stall during boot up. I had to use various system recovery tools to diagnose and correct the corruption. A typical user would have had to send it in for repairs.

Vista boot time:
The G2S's boot time is horrendous. I've been ordered my with the 1GB Turbo memory and it still takes well over a minute to boot up completely. Is this common for Vista users? I've resorted to hibernating, instead of shutting down because it is faster, however, from time to time, the hibernation state gets corrupted and fails to load, either triggering another BSOD or loading Vista with default user settings and prompting an error message saying the user's session is corrupt.

Among other problems (many of which have been resolved), this has left me with a feeling that my laptop is unreliable to do important work on. I plan to contact Asus about these problems and see what they can do for me. However, without a consistent error behavior, it's difficult to diagnose, or even explain the specific problems.

So, I've run through the reasons why I think the G2S has been my best and simultaneously my worst notebook to date. I'd like to know if others have experienced similar problems or could offer helpful suggestions.

(Please excuse any typos, this has not been proof read.)

 

Is no one else experiencing the same problems I am?

 

My first question is have you run memtest ??
Have you added ram ?? if so just 1 2gig or ??
have you removed the Turbo ram (try it you won't see ANY speed change) and it could be the culprit.

 

Sounds like a bad memory module or HD bad sectors.

 

I had some similar issues with my G2S. I got it shipped with the memory upgraded to 3GB, Intel Turbo Memory and replaced the HDD with a Seagate Momentus 7200.2.

I got the spare parts, the "old" HDD and the 1GB memory module that was spare. I replaced the HDD, removed the Intel Turbo Memory and the problem was still there, so finally I replaced the 2GB memory module with the 1GB that was initally in the G2S.
Finally the G2S was stable, so the problem was a faulty 2GB memory module.

So as both x3baddad and raikay said, it might be RAM related At least that was the problem in my case.