M51S series Crash

Ya, when things first started getting bad I took the thing apart as much as I could without breaking any warranty strips. Pulled the memory sticks and put em back in, but it didn't do me any good.

 

if there are 2 modules, try booting up with each individually.

 

As in pull one and boot the system then pull the other and boot the system to see if maybe only 1 is bad? Or edit BIOS to only boot with one at a time?

 

It probably won't boot with only one stick since it's dual channel... your memory has to be replaced by ASUS anyway since you're under warranty period so just start a support request with them... the URL is http://member.asus.com/login.aspx

 

Awesome man, you've been sooo friggin helpful. Thank you soo much.

 

It might boot with one stick, you could definitely try it.. but it'd only tell you which stick is likely to be bad, and since you want asus to replace them it's sort of not worth the hassle for you to bother... good luck with ASUS support.

 

It surely will boot with a single stick (it will do it in single channel) IF the other stick is the problem.

For more detailed crash recovery/test instructions, see my No-POST checklist on my Tips and Tricks (link in sig).

 

Some chipset/bios combos will not boot single channel mode. I have already said it possible to try, but probably not worth the bother since the best thing to do is send it into ASUS.

 

Sorry for stepping away from you during your misery. I ended up doing a clean install and am just now up and running again.

When you press the [Shift] key five times and get the Sticky Keys dialog box, click on the text link "Go to Ease of Access Center to disable the keyboard shortcut." You should end up at a window with "> Control Panel > Ease of Access Center > Set up Sticky Keys" at the top, identifying the location you are looking at. Type "explorer" in that address line.

These instructions will help you reload your desktop. At that point, copy files like a mad man. Expect your desktop to crash several times. Just keep trying the Sticky Keys restart and hard reboot when necessary to complete all of your backups.

Also, keep in mind that some applications just will not load. I could not open Windows Live Mail 2007 for some reason.

I hope this helps. And I would love to know the reason why this problem occurs. Consider shooting me some rep so that my greyed out Rep Power comes back to life...

Jeremy

 

Just a little update, I didn't realize I had gotten more posts.

I ended up getting busy and couldn't mess with it for a few days. I ran by a computer shop and asked the guy what the best way to hook my hard drive up to my desktop would be, he said since it's SATA that I don't even need anything and that it would directly hook up, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

I open up the desktop case and there is indeed a power supply for a second HDD, so I hook that up, but theres no data cable...well...i see the data line running from the motherboard to the cdrw drive...and it looks like the same thing as the one going from the desktop's HDD to the motherboard, so I hook it up, and VOILA! I now have my laptop's HDD running as a slave on the desktop.

After inspecting all of my files and everything in the laptops HDD...it looks like everything is intact, so I just ordered new memory. Hopefully it'll come in by the middle of the week so I can pop it in and see if that was the only problem. I'm really kind of ambitious that the only reason everything failed was the memory so I guess we'll see.

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

Thanks so much for all the help guys. Memory came in today and i swapped it out then recovered my OS and the computer is running like a CHAMP now. Believe it or not, it's running better than it did before the crash. Im stoked!

 

UPDATE: After a clean install of Vista Home Premium SP1 two weeks ago, I came to work this morning, turned on my notebook, booted to the log in screen, logged in, heard Vista load, but then saw nothing but a black screen.

This is the first time I have had any trouble with this notebook since I did the clean install two weeks ago. So I checked the Windows Update history. Immediately after my log in this morning, Windows Update installed a Definition Update for Windows Defender.

For the second time in two months, I am blaming a Definition Update for Windows Defender as the source for trouble with my notebook. I am hoping that I will not see the computer freeze randomly, go to a black screen after log in, fail to power down, etc. like it did at the end of January.

Is anyone else facing this? Is this only an ASUS problem (ASUS driver or app conflict) or is it a Vista problem? 66stangfastback, I am very interested in how your notebook handles the latest Definition Update for Windows Defender.

Jeremy