HELP my asus wont boot!

I just recieved a new asus w3v-s this week and I have been using it a
lot. It worked great at first but then it began to crash. The computer
would blue screen and then restart or sometimes the screen would just
go black and I would be forced to unplug it. At first this problem
rarely occured and I thought it might have been because I undervolted it, but I turned off rmclock (which I used to undervolt) and the problem persisted. Today I was converting a large file on the hard drive and it crashed again. I suspected that there was something wrong with the hard drive so I downloaded a hard drive benchmark program to test the hard drive and when I ran it the computer blue screened again. Now the computer won't boot up, when I turn it on the asus logo appears and then it stops. After a while an American Megatrends screen comes up and does a sort of system check. When it checks the hard disk an error appears and the hard drive makes a loud clicking noise. It then says "Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

I ordered my w3v from agearnotebooks.com and I had them upgrade my hard drive to an 80 gig 5400 rpm. I haven't touched any of the hardware since I got it. I did undervolt it but no errors occured in the first 24 hours while I was running the torture test on prim95. However, when I started doing hard drive intensive things it began to crash a lot. I have emailed agearnotebooks about this problem but I would like to know what could possibly be wrong with my new laptop!

Thanks for any help

 

My guess is either ram or hdd issues. Try downloading and running the hdd checking utility from the maker of your hdd. If you get errors, you can use this utility to do a low-level format...will take approx 10h, but this will completely clear the drive and may solve your issues.
Otherwise if you have ram in both slots try taking out one and see if that helps.
a


ps have you tried re-installing windows? could be just a dodgy install aswell

 

It sounds like you just have a bad sector on your hard drive, and when the computer is trying to access that particular sector its crashing. Try downloading this IBM hard drive check utility, you can tell it to look for all bad sectors on a hard drive and fix them. Check out the second one on the page:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

Hopefully that fixes your problem, otherwise just format that thing and see if it helps. It'll also tell you if the hard drive is going bad, and if it is then it should be covered under warranty since w3 is less than 1 year old!

 

After leaving the computer off for about an hour or two and letting it cool down it booted up again. It seems to be working fine currently but I still want to test it to see what happened. Do you think that over heating could have possibly caused this crash? The bottom of my laptop was extremely hot at the time, I dont know the exact temperature but if you held you hand there for more than a minute it would probably get burned. Also, the hard drive would make a loud clicking noise of sorts when trying to boot up.

Thanks for the help

 

Its quite possible that overheating is your problem. Check your cpu temps when you reboot, maybe the heatsink isnt on right or perhaps the fan has broken down...should be able to feel/hear if its still working. Where on your notebook was it hot...hdd, memory...or cpu? This will help you isolate what the issue maybe.
a

 

The right palm rest was hot but the hottest part is directly under the right palm rest on the bottom of the laptop. From what I hear this is where the hard drive is.

 

Well given the clickin noise etc, I would say its a bad hdd, or at least is corrupted. Running a few of the above tools should help isolate the problem...also I know centrino harwear control has SMART monitoring not sure about the one your using to undervolt does or not but this is another place to start.
a

 

That default SMART hardware control is garbage, never catches anything significant. The only time that it does catch stuff is when you've already figured it out yourself.

When you're running you laptop is that asus fan utility running? (the one that monitors temperature and fan speed). Also can you hear the actual fan running?

 

ray50000,

It sounds like HDD went bad but I would not struggle with the notebook. I would just send it back to Asus and have them checked entirely (if they actually would)

Call the customer service and arrange something.

Take an advantage of their Warranty. You paid for it so use it when you can. I personally don't have any experience with their customer service but I would give it a shot.

I'm sure it would be at least better than Acer (horrible by the way).

My 2 cents

 

A person from agearnotebooks called this morning. He said that said that I should wait a week to see if the problem goes away and if not then send it to Asus (I live in Fremont so there wouldn't be any shipping fees).

I tried to use of the diagnostic tools in the link posted, but I don't know the manufacturer of my hard drive (80gig 5400 rpm) and I also cant seem to get the boot disc to work.

 

Just a thought,
I don't know if I would wait a week just to see what happens. I think I would get an RMA number now.

Valsmere

 

Yeah, I agree. It's gone long enough already. But if you can wait, go ahead. Also did you do a clean install and installed only the drivers from the included CD? A friend of mine screwed up his computer with the wrong drivers and not only that, but the wrong bios too.

 

Ray, was the OS loaded on the 80gb drive that they swapped out for you? I'm just curious as to how much they could actually test those drives that they swap out when they change the ensembles. You don't want to wait a week. I can't criticize that too much, because for some things, that *may* be called for, but for a hard drive that's giving you the issues it is.... waiting isn't going to help and it shouldn't have even been an option they threw out at you. If it wasn't an option and it was just what they told you to do, that's even worse. It would be one thing if they issued and RMA and told you that you may want to just give it a few days to see if things get better or worse.... then send it in if there is still a problem. That's something we do often. But to hold someone off to even get an RMA for another week doesn't sound right, especially given the situation.

 

Ok, I'll contact agear later and tell them that I want to send it in now. By the way, what does RMA stand for?

 

return merchandise authorization. It's a number that I know we require our guys to look for, for two reasons.

1. we can't just have random things being shipped back to us as without an RMA or they could get lost. Once the RMA is scanned in, we're responsible for it and all the documentation of the problem is linked right to that box.

2. Anything without an RMA that isn't otherwise expected is usually refused.... you'd be surprised at the stuff that just gets shipped to us.

 

Just as a follow up I felt that I should post what happened. I contacted www.agearnotebooks.com and told them that I wanted to send my notebook in to get fixed. This was thursday night at like 10 pm. Friday morning someone from agear come to my house and personally picked up my laptop (I happen to live just a few minutes from agearnotebooks.com and asus hq). and on the following monday morning I got my notebook back.

As it turns out I tried removing the annoying partition with a demo version of partitionmagic and somehow screwed up the drive. Since I was under agearnotebooks warranty they replaced my hard drive and also gave me new kingston ram. Overall they have been very helpful and had extremely fast response times to my inquiries. I had a very good purchasing experience with agearnotebooks.com and would definitely recommend them to anyone interested in buying an asus laptop.

I would also like to thank Justin and others who replied to this thread.

 

Wow, talk about service... Did they happen to wash your car and cook you dinner?
That sheds a new light on Agear in my book.