Close to scrapping N56VJ

I honestly am shocked as to how Asus N56VJ has preformed over all the years of work that I have done when it came to laptops and computers.. even servers.. this is the worst unit I have ever encountered in my entire life.

I have tried so many things from testing the memory to even the hard drive.. taking out the batt and running it with out it.. running it in battery mode only.. and this thing.. i swear just resets over and over and over..

ive checked for viruses and trojans. .and there is nothing.. Nothing found.. this thing is clean as a whistle.. all the latest updates and patches are on the OS including the drivers listed on Asus' website.. All the time this thing shuts down.. this time it shut down when i was playing GW2.

I had checked the *Cs... the highest it ever got was 61*C... but even then.. running the AC in my room and keeping everything relatively cooled down bringing it to the 50*Cs... it still would shut down.. this is the first time it shut down when i was playing a game..

So honestly I am getting close to just scrapping this entire laptop.. it is nothing but a piece of crap and I would never recommended anyone to get an Asus.. they are known for problems.. just almost as bad as a Dell!..

I will never forget those optiplexes from back in the early 2000... those systems where nightmares.. and had so many issues..

I can't even RMA this thing because this laptop was a gift from my uncle Frank.. whom is now dead.. and the receipt is gone lol....

so i am going to take apart this thing and sell it for parts.. I cannot believe a $1,100.00 is only worth 300.. that is my value price on it on the most.. And that is how much around i will be selling this thing on ebay for PARTS only.

Here is a list of all the info that occurred around the time of the shut down: like i said.. Stay away from this unit.. Stay away from Asus.. I never in all my life seen so much software and hardware issues in my life.. and Asus has yet to correct this despite the countless reports on this unit :l

The system has returned from a low power state.

Sleep Time: ‎2015‎-‎11‎-‎15T10:22:43.970505300Z
Wake Time: ‎2015‎-‎11‎-‎15T10:31:00.188659600Z

Wake Source: Power Button

--------------------------------
A service was installed in the system.

Service Name: NvStreamKms
Service File Name: C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NvStreamSrv\NvStreamKms.sys
Service Type: kernel mode driver
Service Start Type: demand start
Service Account:
----------------------------------
The start type of the Background Intelligent Transfer Service service was changed from auto start to demand start.
_______-----------------------
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:30 AM
Event ID: 32
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
The bootmgr spent 0 ms waiting for user input.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot" Guid="{15CA44FF-4D7A-4BAA-BBA5-0998955E531E}" />
<EventID>32</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:30.711745800Z" />
<EventRecordID>34104</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="BitlockerUserInputTime">0</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
__________________________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:30 AM
Event ID: 18
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
There are 0x1 boot options on this system.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot" Guid="{15CA44FF-4D7A-4BAA-BBA5-0998955E531E}" />
<EventID>18</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:30.711745800Z" />
<EventRecordID>34103</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="EntryCount">1</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
______________________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:30 AM
Event ID: 20
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
The last shutdown's success status was false. The last boot's success status was true.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot" Guid="{15CA44FF-4D7A-4BAA-BBA5-0998955E531E}" />
<EventID>20</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:30.711745800Z" />
<EventRecordID>34105</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="LastShutdownGood">false</Data>
<Data Name="LastBootGood">true</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
______________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:30 AM
Event ID: 12
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
The operating system started at system time ‎2015‎-‎11‎-‎15T10:35:30.496492200Z.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General" Guid="{A68CA8B7-004F-D7B6-A698-07E2DE0F1F5D}" />
<EventID>12</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:30.711745800Z" />
<EventRecordID>34098</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="MajorVersion">6</Data>
<Data Name="MinorVersion">2</Data>
<Data Name="BuildVersion">9200</Data>
<Data Name="QfeVersion">17438</Data>
<Data Name="ServiceVersion">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootMode">0</Data>
<Data Name="StartTime">2015-11-15T10:35:30.496492200Z</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
_________________________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Ntfs
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:37 AM
Event ID: 98
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords: (2)
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
Volume C: (\Device\HarddiskVolume4) is healthy. No action is needed.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Ntfs" Guid="{3FF37A1C-A68D-4D6E-8C9B-F79E8B16C482}" />
<EventID>98</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000002</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:37.118321800Z" />
<EventRecordID>34109</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="44" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="DriveName">C:</Data>
<Data Name="DeviceName">\Device\HarddiskVolume4</Data>
<Data Name="CorruptionActionState">0</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
____________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:38 AM
Event ID: 6
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
An I/O operation initiated by the Registry failed unrecoverably.The Registry could not flush hive (file): ''.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General" Guid="{A68CA8B7-004F-D7B6-A698-07E2DE0F1F5D}" />
<EventID>6</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:38.352759600Z" />
<EventRecordID>34110</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="FinalStatus">0xc000014d</Data>
<Data Name="ExtraStringLength">0</Data>
<Data Name="ExtraString">
</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
____________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:38 AM
Event ID: 41
Task Category: (63)
Level: Critical
Keywords: (2)
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power" Guid="{331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}" />
<EventID>41</EventID>
<Version>3</Version>
<Level>1</Level>
<Task>63</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000002</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:38.962165600Z" />
<EventRecordID>34114</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="BugcheckCode">0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter1">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter2">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter3">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter4">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="SleepInProgress">0</Data>
<Data Name="PowerButtonTimestamp">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootAppStatus">0</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

__________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: EventLog
Date: 11/15/2015 5:35:54 AM
Event ID: 6008
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: Pride
Description:
The previous system shutdown at 5:34:54 AM on ‎11/‎15/‎2015 was unexpected.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="EventLog" />
<EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:35:54.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>34099</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>5:34:54 AM</Data>
<Data>‎11/‎15/‎2015</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>153585</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Data>
</Data>
<Binary>DF070B0000000F000500220036006202DF070B0000000F000A00220036006202600900003C000000010000006009000001000000B004000001000000FDFFFFFF</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>
__________________________________
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-UserModePowerService
Date: 11/15/2015 5:40:32 AM
Event ID: 12
Task Category: (10)
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: Pride
Description:
Process C:\Program Files\ASUS\P4G\BatteryLife.exe (process ID:2848) reset policy scheme from {512a6ac6-efc1-4441-85c9-cccf29b69cd2} to {512a6ac6-efc1-4441-85c9-cccf29b69cd2}
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-UserModePowerService" Guid="{CE8DEE0B-D539-4000-B0F8-77BED049C590}" />
<EventID>12</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>10</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x4000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-11-15T10:40:32.019155300Z" />
<EventRecordID>34144</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="1020" ThreadID="3780" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Pride</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="ProcessPath">C:\Program Files\ASUS\P4G\BatteryLife.exe</Data>
<Data Name="ProcessPid">2848</Data>
<Data Name="OldSchemeGuid">{512A6AC6-EFC1-4441-85C9-CCCF29B69CD2}</Data>
<Data Name="NewSchemeGuid">{512A6AC6-EFC1-4441-85C9-CCCF29B69CD2}</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>
______________________________

 

They don't get any praise from me either, when it comes to follow up actual problems with some of their setup conventions. I mean, I own three asus mobile and laptop devices, and they work fine. And it's also true that Asus is only bad compared to a sensible standard a half-technical person would expect . Or that they're actually better than most of the competition in the laptop market. Which... is shocking, in a sense. Or at least it should be, instead of generating articles like "things we love about how the laptop industry has improved over the years" on the frontpages of notebookreview, etc.

But there are two things that can happen with the n56. The power contact to the mainboard is soldered on not too far away from the radiator, on the backside of the mainboard. So that solder can break a bit faster than you would expect, and cause the laptop to start randomly shutting off if the mainboard is bent a bit, etc. I thought it was a joke or something, and that if I wrote Asus about it, they'd fold instantly, recall the entire line, and offer me a replacement and thank me for the feedback, or something like that. But instead they basically told me to **** off.

So turns out that this mainboard power-contact solder underneath the radiator for the cooling array is a feature for pretty much all the laptops in production on a panther point mainboard sandwich. And that this is not an Asus exclusive by any means. And likely it's affected laptops from a lot of vendors for a very long time - and indeed, the location of that power-contact is changed and made into an actual power-contact on the lynx point, haswell boards later. But that can happen.

The other thing is the direct calls to acpi that their driver package uses. In Win10, some of the intel components have actually been removed - some of the calls are disallowed, I think, and I doubt there are any other reasons than reducing support calls to MS that would motivate doing that. And the power4gearawesome app actually can cause errors and kernel panics on Win7 and 8 because it does use some sort of direct acpi call without any validation or something. I looked at the code, and it's some vb-compile mess, some Windows package or other. Knowing Asus, this is based on old libraries, and contain direct calls that have never been recommended, but are allowed, etc. And it actually causes errors with the power-states in Win10, and interfere with drivers and power-state sets.

So you can try uninstalling power4gearawesome, and creating a new default power-profile from scratch, before giving up completely.

But yeah, it sounds like the mainboard contact problem, and they should obviously replace it and repair it, even - specially - when it's out of warranty or the store won't intercede on your behalf. Instead of telling you to **** off, like they typically do.

I mean, seriously - they have these config tools for intel firmware, nvidia firmware, bios, efi-setup, secure boot config, etc. And the only thing they're using this for is to put in a custom picture in the bios, and to specify the timing and clock speeds on the setup so there's a very clear differentiation between the ROG models and the "consumer" models. And in the process they often happily overclock ram and cause protection faults, prevent power-state management, interfere with power-saving functions, create profiles that spin up fans for no good reason, and fails to have fans running when they're actually needed, etc. Because the guys who tweak this stuff doesn't know a damned thing about how the laptops actually work - they sit and punch in defaults that are "recommended settings" from Intel, even if those settings seem to be for laptops from 10 years ago, on ddr2 ram, and core2duo setups, etc. They basically don't have a clue, and they're not knowledgeable enough to realize that they should react to it. And.. none of their competitors seem able to either. They just say the same thing: we punch in default intel recommended settings, and prevent you from updating or changing components outside the standard setup. I mean, that's the main reason why you get soldered ram and components on the mainboards now. Even though it's not actually necessary, and doesn't actually save that much money - but having a known and a single setup on all the laptop models with a specific code, that's worth something as it makes support easier and more automatic.

It's like Apple - they have the same hardware, so any computer is the same, and all the results are predictable, etc. It's a nice story. But the truth is that you do this for support-reasons. You don't compile programs in a different way if the computer has a different processor variant. But you tweak the bios-settings differently, and we can't be having with any of that!

So until haswell, where Intel has basically removed some of the pitfalls (and AMD has done it as well - they've removed some of the firmware "tweak" options) - undoubtedly because of the amount of support requests and problems that come as a direct cause of idiotic firmware tweaks from vendors. There's been.. a lot of stupid crap going on.

And I think that Asus is sort of getting nailed for it, in spite of most of their models actually working well enough, and better than the competition's (though that's not saying much), because so many of us are used to Asus motherboards being the top of the line go-to brand for overclocking and tweaking on desktop. I mean, their bios and efi setups on desktop and routers are excellent and eminently tweakable. They're one of the few brands that actually know the problems with routing tables getting overflowed because of too many network maps, and why not choosing the same 1 dollar chip with 100k memory was a good idea. One of the few brands to actually get that, and they've addressed it and capitalized on it by selling features like that, in the same way they did it on desktop motherboard tweaking.

So getting this braindead collection of total morons on the laptop software/bios side is kind of.. unexpected. And frankly, it does surprise me a lot that Asus are willing to let the damage to their Rog/consumer brand laptop line happen like this. Because they, of all the vendors out there, know on beforehand that they could turn this to an opportunity. Instead of just pissing off all their customers, technical people or not. In solidarity with the rest of the laptop brands, or something..