G50v-A1, Random freeze and keyboard issue

I just received my Asus G50v-A1 yesterday and have had a few problems. One problem i mentioned in the Gentech review, since one of their videos shows crysis freezing for 1-2 seconds every 10 seconds or so. This problem happens while i'm playing tabula rasa, and actually sometimes during any normal tasks(typing constantly, i'll see my text stop, then suddenly a full word or two will appear). It seems I've solved this issue by turning off the lights on the direct console. I've turned them on and off testing it.

My other problem i can't seem to solve, maybe i'm having a dumb moment...
While playing any WASD game, if i'm holding down S + D, to move diagonally, i cannot press another key(spacebar to jump for example).
I can hold down S + A and hit another key without any issues.
(This also happens if i press D + F, and another key)

This will also happen if you try to type(if for some reason you hold them down just to test it). Sticky keys are off, and i'm not sure how to fix the problem.

Now the next keyboard problem... If i hold down Fn and press F10, F11, or F12 to change the volume, it turns my touchpad on and off, as if i was hitting F9.

If anyone has any suggestions or can verify they have the same problems that'd be great.

 

I will have to test the keyboard issue as that could be serious, but a key limit is usually 6 for standard and 8 for good keyboards.

When I used to play O2 jam you have to press 8 keys at once sometimes and not every keyboard lets you do that, my C90S couldn't do it so my score was always lower than at home on my desktop.

Af for freezing i have not noticed any but I have not gone too deep into any games yet since I am just benchmarking.

I definitely do not have the touchpad issue when changing the volume so I dunno man maybe you got a lemon?

 

i am having the same freezing problem even when i am not playing games someone help us lol! its getting really annoying.

 

Hm, I was noticing some issues today with my system hanging for approx 4 seconds at a time, happens maybe once an hour. And I've got the latest BIOS and I'm still losing keystrokes and can't press all the key combos mentioned in the keyboard problems thread. I also notice that page up and down don't work in Battlefield 2142. I'm on XP Pro.

 

Been fine playing TF2/Age of Conan and UT3, haven't noticed this issue ;/

 

oh weird only some of us have the problem someone find a solution haha

 

I am starting to think my lockups are to do with the synaptics driver. During the lockups where even my hard disks pause, my sound loops, etc, my mouse still moves (and NOT my USB mouse, the trackpad ONLY). I disabled edgemotion and tapping in the synaptics CP and it seems to have gotten better. Only time will tell.

 

i got the same problem as you the sound loops!! update us if you find your solution.

 

I've updated my BIOS to the 207 beta from GenTech, and also tried the trackpad control panel tweaks, disabling edgemotion and tapping. I have been running for a couple hours now without one of those 3 second hangups, and I've been streaming my slingbox and doing some web browsing and whatnot, putting a decent load on it but the real test will be compiling the Qt libs (trolltech.com) and examples in visual studio later today, I'll see if that makes it hang up because that should be pretty hefty in terms of system load. It took me about 4 hours on my G1S, so I'm looking forward to this as a sort of benchmark.

 

I JUST GOT ANOTHER LOCKUP!

So forget my optimism. This issue still exists even despite the BIOS beta and touchpad control panel tweaks.

AS I TYPE THIS IT HAPPENED AGAIN!~

And I can VERIFY DEFINITIVELY that my trackpad is the ONLY THING that works while this hang happens, so that HAS to be the problem!!

 

so would an updated driver for the trackpad fix the issue?

 

I dunno, I have the latest from synaptics.com... I had the stock driver and that had the issue. I just tried disabling "internal pointing device" in the BIOS so I will let you know if that did the trick. I can't say whether it's a hardware issue or a driver issue.

 

so far so good for me i haven;t had a lock up yet haha

 

Ya it's locking up for me too but only if i'm playing FPS's.

 

I haven't had a lockup since I last posted that I disabled my touchpad in the BIOS. So give it a try if you have a USB mouse. I'm running perfectly smooth!

 

how do you disable it?

 

Press F2 at startup to get to your BIOS Setup screen.

Then hit your right arrow to get to the Advanced tab.

Disable 'internal pointing device' and hit F10 to save settings and exit.

Voila!

EDIT: to attach image

 

so that will fix the problem?

 

It's fixed the problem for me. It's been almost 24 hours since I disabled the trackpad and I've not had a single hiccup. I've been using my G50V heavily too, and I had a long Battlefield 2142 session last night which went flawlessly (it used to happen in games too).

 

oh ok mine just happened like 5 minutes ago i'll try it out in a sec

 

can't you just turn off the trackpad with the FN + ?? key?

 

Yes, but it doesn't disable the driver at a low enough level. It will still steal interrupts and hang if the driver gets loaded. When you disable it in the BIOS it will not show up in device management and the driver never gets initialized. This can be seen in the synaptics control panel tab, where no devices are listed.

 

Is this simply a case of a bad driver that could easily be fixed?

 

Who knows? I have the latest from synaptics.com, tried the drivers from Asus, none of them fix the issue. So my only recourse is disabling it in the BIOS entirely, weeding it out of the system essentially. Some people had posted that disabling edgemotion and tapping helped, but it didn't for me. So maybe there is something going on with the driver. But I've also heard of people having problems in linux with the newer synaptics touchpads on ASUS machines, so it could be anywhere between the actual hardware, the BIOS, or the driver. I'm clueless except for pinning down the hanging issue to the touchpad, that's all I can say definitively!

 

Just like to let y'all know I re-enabled my toucphad to go outside and catch the sunset, and the 3 second hangup is back. That's about all the evidence I need... 24 hours with it disabled and no hangups, about 30 mins with it on and they come back. I hope this gets fixed somehow, I've tried everything as you can see by reading this thread.

 

I just got mine from the UPS guy and am in the process of removing bloatware/updating vista. What's the best way to try and recreate these hangups?

 

Bog it down, run a lot of heavy stuff. When it happens most I'm running slingplayer beta and visual studio and also running youtube vids and posting on forums etc. So try to run a video in the background, like in windows media, open up some youtube vids, and start alt+tabbing! ;-)

 

Just put an audio CD, a DVD or watch a video file and sit back. You'll get a lockup at least once!

Turn your volume down. The sound stuttering is really loud. I had the laptop plugged on a hifi audio poweramp and was listening to some Pink Floyd when all of a sudden the unexpected sound stuttering scared the hell out of me... Meh, this system has already started to mess with my mind. Now I can't listen to music without being afraid of those evil lockups haha.

EDIT: Trying right now with the touchpad off.
So far I have been able to listen to a complete audio CD (~50 mins) without a single lockup!! It seems that the random lockups are gone with the touchpad off! I used to get a few lockups while listening to an audio CD.

Right now I'm watching a DVD and so far it's been lockup free.

 

Hi guys, i got this laptop today. First thing i did was to update the video drivers to the latest version from laptop video to go (177.98 2008-08-24). Then i installed Warhammer Online and i noticed some clipping every 10 secs. I exited the game and went to notepad and I noticed the same clipping every 10 secs when i was holding a key down. I rebooted to safe mode and I wasnt getting the clipping in notepad so I rebooted back to normal mode and went to device manager to rolled back my video card drivers and now everything is working fine!

Hope this helps

 

warhammer online is doing great for me with the 177.79 drivers.

40fps average 70fps max in the shadowlands 1680x1050 with all the settings on the highest. It lags at loadup while it caches all the textures and things for about 5 or 10 seconds then from there its super smooth. I have yet to get into any huge epic battles tho it may lag in that situation requiring me to lower my settings.

 

YOU PROBABLY WANT THIS NEWER VERSION: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3927456#post3927456

** I HAVE UPDATED THIS BELOW WITH A DOWNLOADABLE ZIP FILE PLEASE SCROLL DOWN **

If anyone is feeling adventurous... I may have a fix for the 3-5 second hanging issue which lets you use the touchpad. Open notepad and paste this code in and save it as a .vbs file. Double click it. It won't pop up or anything, it's silent. Try it until you reboot, and if it works throw it in your startup folder. It changes the priority of the synaptics helper application. I know I said I thought it wasn't a CPU consumption problem but I might be wrong! I haven't gotten a hang yet but it's not been nearly long enough for me to be convinced, so I'm looking for some collaboration and corroboration ;-) Here's the VBScript code:

--CODE BEGINS HERE--

Const IDLE = 64

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colProcesses = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = 'SynTPEnh.exe'")
For Each objProcess in colProcesses
objProcess.SetPriority(IDLE)
Next

-- CODE ENDS HERE --

I basically ganked this script verbatim from here (so you don't think I'm trying to sploit you lol):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/resources/qanda/may05/hey0516.mspx

EDIT: You can also just go to task manager and right click on syntpenh.exe and set the priority. But that won't fix it every time you boot, thus the script in the startup folder.

EDIT #2: Changed it to idle instead of normal priority, since it makes no difference in the touchpad sensitivity for me.

 

i thought you fixed the freezing by turning off the pad in the bios?

 

like he said, this lets you use the touchpad without the hangup.

 

oh ok thanks haha din;t see that part

 

If anybody tries it let me know the results. So far so good for me.

 

Here's a zip file with the script file in it. This is pretty much ready to rock all I need is someone to help me test it. If you've already tried my above script, add this line to the top:

wscript.sleep(45000)

This fixed the issue for startup with me, the script was loading before the application intialized which it was supposed to control, not so great!

45 seconds should be enough for most systems. If not, up the value.

There is an easy way to tell if it's doing its job -- wait about a minute from when your desktop loads and run task manager. Find SynTPEnh.exe in the process list (easy if you sort by image name), right click on it, hover over 'Set Priority' and make sure its priority is set to low. It will be 'above normal' until the script runs.

Again if you didn't use my above script, I've got it here in a zip file ready to go, so hopefully this will make it easy enough to get some wider testing on this possible fix.

Unzip the touchpad.vbs file into your Start Menu->Startup folder.

Thanks for any help!

P.S. Edit: I wouldn't be bothering you all with this if I had had a lockup yet. Knock on wood.

 

What consequences/side-effects could this have besides the intended?

 

None, all this does is change the priority of the SynTPEnh.exe application, as if you went thru task manager and set its priority manually. I'm trying to find a permanent workable solution to the trackpad issue. The script is explained in the microsoft URL I posted with the original code in terms of what each line means.

 

OK, just downloaded the script file and copied it to the Startup folder.

I´m going to re-enable the touchpad and test if it works.

EDIT: Looks like the script file doesn't work like it should in Vista64. I've been monitoring the task manager for 15 mins and "SynTPEnh.exe" stays on "Avobe Normal". However, when I opened the task manager after starting Windows and logged in I did notice that "SynTPEnh.exe" does start with a "Below Normal" priority until "SynTPHelper..." runs.

If I click on the script file it does change "SynTPEnh.exe" priority to low.

I haven't had a lockup so far in 30 mins but I can't tell if it's because of the script file. "SynTPEnh.exe" was on "Avobe Normal" for about 15 mins and I didn't had a lockup. I'm going to remove the script file to see if I do get a lockup.

 

any updates so far on the script file working?

 

Any way to reproduce the lockup everytime? Or how are you guys noticing this lockup? The way I was doing it is by holding a key down in notepad, and sometime it freeze for .5 seconds..

 

Well, I removed the script file from the Startup folder and got a lockup again (with the default settings: touchpad enabled at the BIOS and "SynTPEnh.exe" in "avobe normal" priority).

So it seems that setting the "SynTPEnh.exe" priority to "low" if fact does get rid of the random lockups. I have only been testing this for an hour or 2 so I'm not 100% convinced if it does work but so far no lockups. I'll give it a few days to be sure if it does stop the random lockups.

I notice the lockups because I have music playing on my computer all the time. When it gets a lockup the sound start stuttering really loud. Same thing with video and DVDs.

 

The script seems to have been doing the trick for me. But it's not been long enough yet for me to be 100% convinced.

I can't test in vista. Thanks for the info though, that does help! SynTPHelper.exe doesn't ever run for me in XP. It's there though in the program files.

edit: **if this works for vista users plz let me know and I'll roll it into the zip file **

The only thing I can think of is to do the same thing for the helper application but wait ten seconds. Try pasting this code at the end of the file if you're using vista:

wscript.sleep(10000)

Set colProcesses = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = 'SynTPHelper.exe'")
For Each objProcess in colProcesses
objProcess.SetPriority(IDLE)
Next

 

Works for me but the timeing is too long.

 

You can change the wscript.sleep value to be lower, I just wanted to be safe. It's in milliseconds

 

I got another lockup. This time I had "SynTPEnh.exe" set to low priority but "SynTPHelper.exe" in avobe normal. So, for Vista64 users, it seems that setting "SynTPEnh.exe" to low priority alone doesn't stop the random lockups.

I'm going to set both processes in low priority to see if the lockups stop.

 

Sparky did you try adding my code at the end of the file, it does exactly that!

 

I'm tweaking the script file to get the times right. It seems that "SynTPHelper.exe" take some time to run after "SynTPEnh.exe".

I noticed that "SynTPEnh.exe" runs first and on "below normal" priority. About half a minute later "SynTPHelper.exe" starts running and "SynTPEnh.exe" priority goes up to "avobe normal". So if the script runs before, "SynTPHelper.exe" may override the priority setting and set it back to "avobe normal". I'm not so sure if "SynTPHelper.exe" indeed does set "SynTPEnh.exe" up to "avobe normal". I'll have to verify that.

I have set both manually to low priority and haven't had a lockup. I have to do some work now so I can't keep testing but will keep and eye for any lockup.

 

try changing wscript.sleep to 450000 then for the second block. 10 seconds isn't enough in that case. Thanks for the update!

 

thanks for the updates im waiting for the script to be fully tested and complete