Asus G73JW Strange Windows crashing

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sledge

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Hello all,

Just last night my laptop started doing something awfully strange. After being on for 4-5 minutes, windows will grind to a halt and eventually blue screen, with the error being a random .sys file, or loads of hex codes. During the grinding nova halt phase, the hdd light will stay on full (no flickering). After the computer restarts itself, the primary hard drive is no longer in the boot list, however if I hold the power button to force it off and turn it back on again, the hard drive is there and I am able to boot from it.

The primary drive is an ocz vertex2 ssd. At first I thought the ssd had kicked, but both ssdlife and hdtune report the drive in good health. I also tried removing the ram and testing each individual stick, but to no avail. I figured at this point it was either windows was broken, or some more critical piece of hardware had failed, or the hdd programs were lying to me.

Unfortunately, I am out of state on business for the next couple weeks, and didn't think to bring a windows disk with me, so I am unable to do a system repair, nor can I do a system restore since windows just dies before it can even finish initializing.

Here's the really odd part, if I force shutdown the computer before the blue screen, the ssd doesn't vanish from the boot menu and it boots up just fine. Also, once it's up and running, it runs as if nothing is wrong. I've also tried just idling after a boot, but it still just dies. Though as of my typing this, the machine has been sitting on the bios screen for 40 minutes, and nothing strange has happened yet, if that means anything.

I can't really download any large files, or execute any long processes, but if anyone has any ideas as to what may be going on here, I'm all ears.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!

Also, I ought to mention that just before windows dies, all temperatures are in normal ranges.

Also also, same thing happens in safe mode.
 

hpfreak

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Does this happen when you are running on battery? or regardless if it is on power line or battery it freaks?

You can rule out Windows as a problem, if you can get your hands on a flash drive, and download a light distro of linux, if you're able to get that running for awhile.. it may help rule out Windows or a problem, or show that it is.

I'm know that you probably would have noticed if this was the case- but when did this start happening? Possibly after restarting for an update? Installing an update? modding something? using a registry cleaner? anything out of the ordinary.
 

sledge

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Hey there,

Thanks for the reply, I'll answer your questions in order, and report some of my own findings.

The problem happened regardless of the power situation (battery only, battery + ac, ac only), I tested this early on thinking there may be an issue with my adapter surging or the like, but the problem persisted no matter how I was getting power.

I actually went out and bought a small usb thumb drive, kept windows up long enough to download and copy over a small linux iso (puppy linux in this case) and get it up and running. It ran just fine off the USB drive, though I noticed when I tried to mount my primary hard drive (the ssd with windows), it would seem to work fine for a bit, I was able to traverse the drive, then after a couple minutes it would no longer respond, and eventually unmount itself, and I would be unable to get it back. My secondary drive (a traditional 500gb mechanical drive) worked just fine.

At this point, I grabbed a windows 7 repair iso, and gave it a quick spin (off the usb drive), it started up fine, I did a memory test, just in case, but the memory was fine. Then I attempted a system restore from the usb drive, and wouldn't you know, it died after a couple minutes. Now I'm thinking the problem is hardware rather than software, but I did a couple more tests.

While puppy linux is great for simple diagnostics, I wanted to try a more fully featured distro to stretch the rest of the hardware, and maybe better isolate the issue. Again, I kept windows up long enough to download the linuxmint13 iso, and copy it over to the usb. Since I had been having issues with the ssd, I partitioned off a 16gb section of the secondary drive, and installed mint to it. The installation went fine, rebooted, and was up and running, no problems. However, after mounting the ssd, and following the same processes as with puppy, the file explorer stopped responding and the ssd unmounted it self.

At this point, I've pretty much isolated the problem as either being the primary connection, or the ssd it self. I swapped the hard drives, booted up again, ran just fine. Tested the ssd, unmounted itself, same as before.

I'm almost positive at this point that the ssd is simply dead (well, mostly dead, I am able to get files off of it before it unmounts, and at this point, I just reboot, and resume copying until it unmounts again).

So as I stand right now, I am running linuxmint just fine off of the 500gb drive, and have copied the important data from ssd, and removed it from the computer. What baffles me the most is the fact that I am able to browse the ssd for a couple of minutes before it unmounts. Can only portions of an ssd go bad? It was my understanding that when even a part of an ssd went bad, the whole thing went bad. Either way, it seems I am in the market for a new hard drive, though I doubt I'll be getting another ssd. This one was only a year or so old, and its a hefty investment for something that only lasts a year, in my opinion.

To answer your final question, I was playing the game EVE Online when the initial crash occurred, nothing out of the ordinary, just business as usual, which added to the strangeness, since I routinely play the game an hour or so a day, and had been since I got the ssd, but I suppose these things just happen.

Again, I really appreciate the response.
 

hpfreak

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Thank you for your detailed response, :)
There is a possibility that the problem isn't the SSD, I have a G73 myself and had a bit of a problem at one point when it was taken a part, and when it was re-assembled, the SATA cable was not connected properly. My primary drive worked fine, but my media drive wouldn't show up- even on BIOS. My solution was to take the laptop a part until I took the keyboard off the chassis, and I disconnected the SATA cable and reconnected it. And sure enough it worked from that point. You're most likely right- the SSD is the culprit, but there is a possibility that the SATA cable has been moved.... those pins can go crazy if they're off by just a 1mm... And it's worth a look consider the investment an SSD is. :pfff:

Good luck,

 
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