W3J infinite loop of restarting!

Okay this just started happening after nearly 4 months I've had the W3J now.

If I ever unplug my power cord from my W3J, my laptop just reboots and keeps on restarting infinitely. What I mean is that as soon as I disconnect the power cord, the computer gets rebooted, then as soon as it passes the windows load scren (the black one with the 3 blue bars scrolling form left to right) the computer just restarts again, and this keeps on happening infinitely. Only way to stop this is to plug it back into the power cord.

Now I'm not sure about you but I'd say this pretty much defies what a laptop should be.. "portable"..

if anyone knows whats wrong please help me. I cannot afford to send my laptop away to be fixed, I use it for more than 6 hours a day!

 

I'm pretty sure its the GPU drivers problems, did you install any new drivers?

 

Sounds like the power circuit onboard, bad battery, bad ram, or a combo of all 3. Contact 510-739-3777 ext. 5110, you can still catch them tomorrow before the holiday weekend.

 

Dear friend,

I have run down this road and it was not good at all since no solution has been found yet! (You can read everything at my thread "asus after-sales service").

If your problem occurs only when your laptop runs on battery you need to ask them change your battery and motherboard as well.

If this happens irrespectively on whether you are running on battery or electric current then you need to ask them replace at least your motherboard!

In my case they claim they have done both but still the laptop does not work!

"Beauty should be deeper that the skin" Brian Ferry sings in "don't stop the dance" but it seems that W3J does not meet this expectation!

I am going to sell mine and buy something else but the problem remaining to be solved is whether there is at least one GOOD company out there......

 

This is exactly what happens with bad video drivers. Use the included drivers on the CD or try updating to 6.8 or 6.10 if that's what you are using.

~ Brett

 

I had the 6.8 drivers which were giving me problems so I upgraded to 6.10. The update fixed some problems but also created others so I updated to the newest one 6.11 now but I'm not sure if its the drivers or not because this was happening from before the updates, it would only happen very rarely. Now I just can't have it on battery.

I personally can only think its a motherboard problem. I don't think its a battery issue as the computer still runs on battery (just keeps on restarting) so I think the computer is just having problems transfering power from the cord to the battery when you unplug it.

But just in case if it is a GPU problem, which driver is the MOST stable with the W3J? The one that came installed with the laptop?

 

That was happening to me, too. I'm not exactly sure when it started, since I usually run off A/C, but if I didn't update the video drivers, I did do the bios upgrade. Regardless, I updated to Vista a few days ago (in-place upgrade), and it seems to work fine on battery now, so at very least, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

 

The most stable drivers are the ones the ASUS provides, and from the forums, people report that 6.8 are good for performance and stability. However you mentioned that you updated them all the way to 6.11 because there were problems even with 6.8? I suggest revert back to the one's on the ASUS CD.

Also what Imychajluk did, looks like and interesting solution.

 

I think we need a sticky, 'W3J video driver issues - use only Asus 6.8.'

Those symptoms could be caused either by hardware or by software... If Asus didn't touch what was on your hard drive and it was caused by software, it could very well do the same thing even after replacing both of those parts.

Anyway, to diagnose the source of the issue, burn a copy of Knoppix or another Linux LiveCD (or DVD). Boot from that into whatever GUI is provided. Unplug. If it does that same thing, it's hardware. If not, it's drivers in Windows.....

 

Hey bijanv, I had the same thing happen on my W3J when I used the Catalyst 6.9 and 6.11 drivers. I was able to just turn off powerplay and the battery worked fine. I'm not quite sure why this is, I was just messing around with settings to see if something would work. Hope this helps.

By the way, the Catalyst 6.10 drivers did not cause my computer to restart. I don't know that you'll have the same experience, but you could try them out.

 

What, exactly, are these new problems?

~ Brett

 

Dear friends,

Thanks for your helpful comments.

I am still trying to find a way out and I can reassure that having tried all the possible solutions (drivers, resque CDs etc.) the problem is definitely a hardware one.

My only question is whether it is possible after diagnosing a laptop's problem to send it back to the company's certified service center, to have it kept it there for a month and then to receive but without the laptop having been fixed in any way!

When I called them up they said " oh, we did all the tests, it SHOULD work fine now".

However, my next question was not answered. The question was "Did you turn on the laptop and let it boot up and load Windows properly before sending it back?"

 

the new problems being crashes within games, random blackouts of my screen (but just for a second), and general crashes once I start doing graphic intensive things

I just returned back to stock drivers and it seems to have fixed it somewhat. If I simply disconnect it now from the AC while the laptop is running, its fine. However, if I suspend the computer and then disconnect from the power, the laptop never starts up fully and the same problem happens.. i guess its a good fix for now

I will be installing Vista and/or Ubuntu once my semseter ends and I have some time to do something other than study

 

Hmm, well if you haven't already and have the time, try re-installing 6.10. Maybe something got messed up in the original - that's what happened to me.

~ Brett

 

Why must you be so annoying? People already told you more then once. Restore your os from the asus restore disks aka format and rinstall windows and dont upgrade your video drivers and your problem is solved. You love for people to listen to you but you dont like to listen or reply to anyone else. I would bad you if i could. Please stop posting if you cant post something productive.

 

Dear Geared2Play,

I would not have come to this forum if I had not done all of this already!

The reason for submitting all the posts is : 1) To inform people about Asus W3J and not all Asus models 2)To inform people about Asus after-sales service (at least in Europe, Italy).

Thanks for reading!

 

You are not doing anyon here a favor. infact you are hurtin your self by ranting. Most people that can help you simply will not read through your post.

 

Just like to say that I adopted the same problem going from Catalyst 6.8 to 6.11. I'm in the process of looking for the old drivers and installing them.

 

Yeah.. I'm pretty sure this was definitely a 6.11 problem

 

I had the exact same problem. Please just install the original video drivers from your Asus disc or install the 6.8's (which I am running) and this problem goes away. The 6.8's are also very stable in all applications including games.

I have yet to solve all of the "hibernation" problems but I've just learned to live with those.

This thread should be dead.

 

I made a post about a possible solution for the hibernation issue here and opened a thread on the video driver issues here.

~ Brett

 

Has anyone considered un-installing and removing all traces of the video driver alltogether..? My guess is that windows will install a 'vanilla' version of the VGA driver.

Then confirm and check if the W3J restarts when the power cord is removed.

 

My problem is I can't find 6.8's anywhere. I can get the older Omega's but they aren't as stable for me. I'm currently running off the stock drivers. If anyone can send me in the right direction, please do so.

 

I really hope that this could solve your problem: http://www.3dnews.ru/download/drivers/ati/
Enjoy!

 

Thanks for the link. I currently have 6.10's installed and I don't have the infinite restarting problem. But now I can't run CS:S or DOD:S for more than 10 minutes without getting an error message. I know going from a newer driver to an older one isn't always clean. Hopefully a new driver will come out soon and I'll try that one, if not, I'll have to reformat.

 

In my case Catalyst 6.8 seems to be fine, all newer versions cause system crash if I unplug power cord. And after that I got restarts. I didn't check Omega's.
cheers