Question Brand new Asus laptop is freezing & rebooting without any BSODs ?

[liberty610]

Hey everyone,

I just got an Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2025) laptop today. Model G835LW-XS97.
I had it on for 3 to 4 hours without any issues. I installed all my apps, and have been getting all it all setup. I have ran a couple 3D Mark bench tests without any issues. But recently there was a couple full Windows freezes and then the system reboots itself. No BSOD or anything. Just hangs there, and then shuts off, and reboots.

I have updated the BIOS and drivers to the latest versions, and I am running Windows 11 Pro with all the latest available updates for the 24H2 version.

These freezes have happened randomly. Four times it happened when I was not doing anything heavy at all. The first time it happened, it was attempting to switch from the Intel on chip GPU to the dedicated NVIDIA gpu. It froze and I was forced to hold down the power button and restart.

The next time it happened, it was just sitting on the desktop idle. The third and fourth time it happened, I was simply going through some of the power plan settings.

Everything would just freeze up. No mouse movement, no keyboard responses, no blue screen of death. And then it would shut itself all the way off, and then reboot.

I originally had the latest NVIDIA studio driver installed (I do more production work than gaming). I thought that may have caused these freeze blips. I am now am running the latest game ready drivers. No issues yet, but it's only been a few minutes. I know Nvidia has had some 50 series driver issues, but what else can I do to monitor this and see what is causing it? I only have a 2 week return window on it and this is the second one of these laptops I have attempted. The first had issues with the keyboard.

How would I go about getting proper windows log files to share and what not?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[foxcraft_deacon]

I have strix scar 18 G835LX for almost 3 weeks. I had return to first laptop due to freezing and battery drain so fast (only 1.5hours), the freezing I did notice due to HW Monitor and HWInfo. I thought it was hardware failure but when I return the laptop and got the new laptop I still experience same, freeze after 15 minutes I ran HWMonitor. So what I did is I completely rely on AC to check temperature. And so far works fine, sometimes freeze only at login screen.
May I know when you guys use G Helper, is there any freeze ? And how about reboot and boot time from power button to windows login? Mine is 1min for reboot and booting time took 25 seconds. I still wonder about do I need to clean install my windows ? Thanks

 

[liberty610]

I have strix scar 18 G835LX for almost 3 weeks. I had return to first laptop due to freezing and battery drain so fast (only 1.5hours), the freezing I did notice due to HW Monitor and HWInfo. I thought it was hardware failure but when I return the laptop and got the new laptop I still experience same, freeze after 15 minutes I ran HWMonitor. So what I did is I completely rely on AC to check temperature. And so far works fine, sometimes freeze only at login screen.
May I know when you guys use G Helper, is there any freeze ? And how about reboot and boot time from power button to windows login? Mine is 1min for reboot and booting time took 25 seconds. I still wonder about do I need to clean install my windows ? Thanks

I have been using HWInfo pretty regularly the last 2 days and no other crashes or freezes have occurred. Since the other user told me about HM Monitor, I ditched it and have not re-installed it,

I have not installed G-helper yet. It's been on my radar for a couple weeks now, even with my old laptop, I just have not gotten around to it.

Boot times and reboot times seem normal to me. When I am running hard apps on it, I do get some higher temps according to HWinfo. For a moment earlier today, I was 1c away from thermal throttle and I had peaked at 104c, but I am not sure if that was just a quick spike, or if it was running at that for an extended time. I have not done much thermal checking yet. I plan to start that the next couple of days.

I personally would always do a clean Windows install on any of my systems, but that is just me being a little uptight about my setups. I like to know what is all on it and when it go there. The problem is, when you do a reinstall the way Asus tech wants you to do it, you're basically just re-installing all the bloatware again from their recovery partitions. When I do it, I wipe the entire drive and all of it's partitions and start from scratch.

I have noticed it can take a moment to shut down sometimes, but that isn't too concerning to me. I turned off 'fast boot' on mine because fast boot option can cause issues with my VeraCrypt app which is a file/hard drive encryption tool. As far as battery life goes, you'll never really know for sure what it should be. Laptops like these are power houses, and even when limiting them with energy saving options, they still eat up some juice. The LED bar and lights, the screen, the processors.... between 1.5 to 2 hours is about normal on battery if you ask me. And that's doing lighter tasks like email or web browsing while in energy saving modes.

If it where me, I would wipe it and start over. And these are the steps I would/did take to do so - Make sure you have access to another machine with internet just in case you need to download something. And an external mouse will also be handy, as your touch pad will not work right away until you can get to a point to install the driver after windows installs.

Step 1: Grab a couple USB drives. On one, download the Windows Media Creation tool and use it to make a bootable Windows 11 Flash drive.

Step 2: Take the second flash drive, and go to the Asus website and download every single driver for your laptop model. Avoid the utilities section where Armory Crate is and what not. I personally refuse to use it or any of those other apps. They just slow stuff down and are too buggy (although I do use the MyAsus app from the Windows store after I install windows, It's handy for some stuff).

Step 3: Take your new windows bootable drive and insert it into a USB slot. Reboot the laptop. When you see the Asus splash screen where it begins to boot up, tap the F2 key. This will enter the BIOS. Turn on advance options, and go to the advance tab and disable VMD mode. If you don't do this, Windows setup will not see your installed SSD drive as an option to install Windows on without taking an extra step to install an Intel driver you don't need unless you plan on running RAID (and If you don't know what that is, you don't need it anyways.) Now goto the boot tab, and make your USB flash drive the first boot priority over your installed SSD, Hit F10 to save your settings, and reboot.

Step 4: If you have done the previous steps correctly, you should see the windows 11 setup install asking you for options like keyboard, language, etc. Make your choices, and continue. When you get to the screen that says something along the lines of where do you want to install windows, you will see several options listed, and all of them but one should start with 'Disk 0'. Go through and select each one of these, and DELETE them. These are all the pre-installed partitions that will just restore the laptop to factory settings, which for a true clean install, you don't want.

Step 5: Once you delete all the partitions, it should say that disk 0 is 'unallocated'. Select it and click 'New'. It will bring up a box with a number in it. Click okay. Windows set up will now make a few partitions for recovery and what not. Once this is done, select the partition with the most space on, and install Windows to it. Let it do it's thing, and it will restart.

Step 6: When it restarts it will start asking you some options. Click through them, making your preferred choices. When it gets to the screen that says 'Connect to the internet' you're NOT going to connect to anything. Do NOT plug in an ethernet cable, or connect to a wifi option if there is one (there shouldn't be one because there is no driver for the wifi card yet). Instead of connecting to anything, you're going to want to press SHIFT and F10 TOGETHER. This will bring up the Command Prompt window. With your external USB mouse, click inside the command prompt window and type in the following:

OOBE\BYPASSNRO

Then hit enter. Those are letter O's, in the beginning. not numbers.

If you typed it in correctly, when you hit ENTER, it will reboot. When it reboots, you will go through all the basic setup questions again., This time, when it comes to the 'lets get connected' screen, you SHOULD see an option at the bottom that says 'I Don't Have Internet'. Click on that. You will then be asked to make a basic username, password, and make 3 security questions/answer options. Select them, type in your choices and continue. You will now get Windows to install the bare bones of the OS without needing to be online. This will prevent Windows from getting all the bloatware packages from Asus for these model laptops.

Step 7: Once Windows does all the setup restarts and gets you to the desktop, grab your other USB drive with all the official ASUS drivers on it, and install them all. You don't have to reboot after each one. Get them all installed, and after the last one is installed, then reboot. When you reboot, you should have everything you need to get online with wifi and your track pad should be working (that is if you grabbed all the drivers. My model, the G815LW had 18 drivers total).

Step 8: Goto settings, and then Windows update and grab all the updates. While they are downloading/installing. you can goto the Microsoft store and grab the Myasus app. It will help you download and install other drivers you may have missed in the app's update section.

From there, do the Windows reboot cycles from the Windows updates, and after the reboots, go back to the settings/update section and make sure Windows has all the updates. Once the green check mark pops up and says you are fully updated. pause updates as long as you can. I went with a Windows Pro install on mine, and I can pause them for 5 weeks at a time.

Another series of optional steps I did was using Revo Pro Uninstaller. It's an uninstaller app that once any program or app is uninstalled with it, it will also scan for empty folders and registry junk those apps leave behind, and it gets rid of them. You have to buy a license for the pro version, but I believe I paid like $25 for 2 years. It's well worth it. Get the portable version, and you can install it to an external storage device and use it on any machine you connect it to. If you wanna know more about the app, you can goto youtube and search for 'Jays2Cents Revo app'.. His video turned me on to the Revo setup.

Hopefully this helps you out if you decide to do the fresh install. And I hope you have stability with the laptop regardless if you try this or not. The past couple weeks has been such a headache chasing this freeze issue.

 

[Arcuel]

I have been using HWInfo pretty regularly the last 2 days and no other crashes or freezes have occurred. Since the other user told me about HM Monitor, I ditched it and have not re-installed it,

I have not installed G-helper yet. It's been on my radar for a couple weeks now, even with my old laptop, I just have not gotten around to it.

Boot times and reboot times seem normal to me. When I am running hard apps on it, I do get some higher temps according to HWinfo. For a moment earlier today, I was 1c away from thermal throttle and I had peaked at 104c, but I am not sure if that was just a quick spike, or if it was running at that for an extended time. I have not done much thermal checking yet. I plan to start that the next couple of days.

I personally would always do a clean Windows install on any of my systems, but that is just me being a little uptight about my setups. I like to know what is all on it and when it go there. The problem is, when you do a reinstall the way Asus tech wants you to do it, you're basically just re-installing all the bloatware again from their recovery partitions. When I do it, I wipe the entire drive and all of it's partitions and start from scratch.

I have noticed it can take a moment to shut down sometimes, but that isn't too concerning to me. I turned off 'fast boot' on mine because fast boot option can cause issues with my VeraCrypt app which is a file/hard drive encryption tool. As far as battery life goes, you'll never really know for sure what it should be. Laptops like these are power houses, and even when limiting them with energy saving options, they still eat up some juice. The LED bar and lights, the screen, the processors.... between 1.5 to 2 hours is about normal on battery if you ask me. And that's doing lighter tasks like email or web browsing while in energy saving modes.

If it where me, I would wipe it and start over. And these are the steps I would/did take to do so - Make sure you have access to another machine with internet just in case you need to download something. And an external mouse will also be handy, as your touch pad will not work right away uttil you can get to a point to install the drive after windows installs.

Step 1: Grab a couple USB drives. On one, download the Windows Media Creation tool and use it to make a bootable Windows 11 Flash drive.

Step 2: Take the second flash drive, and go to the Asus website and download every single driver for your laptop model. Avoid the utilities section where Armory Crate is and what not. I personally refuse to use it or any of those other apps. They just slow stuff down and are too buggy (although I do use the MyAsus app from the Windows store after I install windows, It's hand for some stuff).

Step 3: Take your new windows bootable drive and insert it into a USB slot. Reboot the laptop. When you see the Asus splash screen where it begins to boot up, tap the F2 key. This will enter the BIOS. Turn on advance options, and go to the advance tab and disable VMD mode. If you don't do this, Windows setup will not see your installed SSD drive as an option to install Windows on without taking an extra step to install an Intel driver you don't need unless you plan on running RAID (and If you don't know what that is, you don't need it anyways.) Now goto the boot tab, and make your USB flash drive the first boot priority over your installed SSD, Hit F10 to save your settings, and reboot.

Step 4: If you have done the previous steps correctly, you should see the windows 11 setup install asking you for options like keyboard, language, etc. Make your choices, and continue. When you get to the screen that says something along the lines of where do you want to install windows, you will see several options listed, and all of them but one should start with 'Disk 0'. Go through and select each one of these, and DELETE them. These are all the pre-installed partitions that will just restore the laptop to factory settings, which for a true clean install, you don't want.

Step 5: Once you delete all the partitions, it should say that disk 0 is 'unallocated'. Select it and click 'New'. It will bring up a box with a number in it. Click okay. Windows set up will now make a few partitions for recovery and what not. Once this is done, select the partition with the most space on, and install Windows to it. Let it do it's thing, and it will restart.

Step 6: When it restarts it will start asking you some options. Click through them, making your preferred choices. When it gets to the screen that says 'Connect to the internet' you're NOT going to connect to anything. Do NOT plug in an ethernet cable, or connect to a wifi option if there is one (there shouldn't be one because there is no driver for the wifi card yet). In stead of connecting to anything, you're going to want to press SHIFT and F10 TOGETHER. This will bring up Command Prompt. With your external USB mouse, click inside the command prompt window and type in the following:

OOBE\BYPASSNRO

Then hit enter. Those are letter O's, in the beginning. not numbers.

If you typed it in correctly, when you hit ENTER, it will reboot. When it reboots, you will go through all the basic setup questions again., This time, when it comes to the 'lets get connected' screen, you SHOULD see an option at the bottom that says 'I don't Have Internet'. Click on that. You will then be asked to make a basic username, password, and make 3 security questions/answer options. Select them, type in your choices and continue. You will now get Windows to install the bare bones of the OS without needing to be online. This will prevent Windows from getting all the bloatware packages from Asus for these model laptops.

Step 7: Once Windows does all the setup restarts and gets you to the desktop, grab your other USB drive with all the official ASUS drivers on it, and install them all. You don't have to reboot after each one. Get them all installed, and after the last one is installed, then reboot. When you reboot, you should have everything you need to get online with wifi and your track pad should be working (that is if you grabbed all the drivers. My model, the G815LW had 18).

Step 8: Goto settings, and then Windows update and grab all the updates. While they are downloading/installing. you can goto the Microsoft store and grab the Myasus app. It will help you download and install other drivers you may have missed in the app's update section.

From there, do the Windows reboot cycles from the Windows updates, and after the reboots, go back to the settings/update section and make sure Windows has all the updates. Once the green check mark pops up and says you are fully updated. pause updates as long as you can. I went with a Windows Pro install on mine, and I can [ause them for 5 weeks at a time.

Another series of optional steps I did was using Revo Pro Uninstaller. It's an uninstaller app that once any program or app is uninstalled, it will also scan for empty folders and registry junk the apps leave behind, and it gets rid of them You have to buy a license for the pro version, but I believe I paid like $25 for 2 years. It's well worth it. If you wanna know more about the app, you can goto youtube and search for 'Jays2Cents Revo app'.. His video turned me on to the Revo setup.

Hopefully this helps you out if you decide to do the fresh install. And I hope you have stability with the laptop regardless if you try this or not. The past couple weeks has been such a headache chasing this freeze issue.

Nice reply, man! You pretty much covered everything. Just want to add that with proper energy management, I was able to extend the battery life to around 3.5 hours. I'm pretty sure it can be pushed even further — 4 to 5 hours with a 17W drain seems totally achievable.

But if I hadn’t turned on battery saving mode, lowered the brightness to around 50%, and disabled HDR, I’d still be stuck with just 1 hour of battery life."

As for GHelper — it's a lifesaver for me. So much lighter than Armoury Crap and way more intuitive. No freezes at all; everything runs stable. The only "issue" I'm seeing is slightly high temperatures in demanding games like The Callisto Protocol. The CPU sits in the low 80s, occasionally flirting with 90°C, while the GPU is consistently about 10 degrees cooler. I’m attributing this to the room temperature being around 30°C (yeah, I know, I really should get a freaking AC).

 

[liberty610]

Nice reply, man! You pretty much covered everything. Just want to add that with proper energy management, I was able to extend the battery life to around 3.5 hours. I'm pretty sure it can be pushed even further — 4 to 5 hours with a 17W drain seems totally achievable.

But if I hadn’t turned on battery saving mode, lowered the brightness to around 50%, and disabled HDR, I’d still be stuck with just 1 hour of battery life."

As for GHelper — it's a lifesaver for me. So much lighter than Armoury Crap and way more intuitive. No freezes at all; everything runs stable. The only "issue" I'm seeing is slightly high temperatures in demanding games like The Callisto Protocol. The CPU sits in the low 80s, occasionally flirting with 90°C, while the GPU is consistently about 10 degrees cooler. I’m attributing this to the room temperature being around 30°C (yeah, I know, I really should get a freaking AC).

Thanks.

Battery update - I have been using the laptop the past 30 minutes on energy saving mode (windows built in mode) and doing standard web browser and email related tasks. I have battery care turned on in the MyAsus App so it doesn't charge past 80%. With all LEDS off on the keyboard, screen brightness down to 0 (it's plenty brite still for me) I am seeing 4 and 1/2 hours of battery available.,

Another useful tool I use is called EaseUs To Do. It creates full Windows back ups so if you have a boot drive failure or want to upgrade your current SSD to a bigger/faster one, you can back up your entire OS drive, use the tool to restore everything to the new drive, and be back up and running as if nothing was ever done. There are a couple ways to go about it. You can clone the drive, or what I like to do is make a mirror image.

When everything has been running solid like it has been, I will make a backup image before I do any major updates or run Windows Updates. The fastest way to do the back ups is if you run the back up on another SSD. An external SSD connected to the Asus thunderbolt 5 ports is a good option. Me personally, I slapped a second SSD into the empty SSD slot. Put a WD Black 2tb drive in it. With the way these Asus laptops are laid out and how easy it is to add, swap, remove SSDs, it was an easy thing to do. I think the design of these was a fantastic idea.

Hope you guys all have working laptops from here on out. Mine has been solid and I am loving it.

 

[Arcuel]

Thanks.

Battery update - I have been using the laptop the past 30 minutes on energy saving mode (windows built in mode) and doing standard web browser and email related tasks. I have battery care turned on in the MyAsus App so it doesn't charge past 80%. With all LEDS off on the keyboard, screen brightness down to 0 (it's plenty brite still for me) I am seeing 4 and 1/2 hours of battery available.,

Another useful tool I use is called EaseUs To Do. It creates full Windows back ups so if you have a boot drive failure or want to upgrade your current SSD to a bigger/faster one, you can back up your entire OS drive, use the tool to restore everything to the new drive, and be back up and running as if nothing was ever done. There are a couple ways to go about it. You can clone the drive, or what I like to do is make a mirror image.

When everything has been running solid like it has been, I will make a backup image before I do any major updates or run Windows Updates. The fastest way to do the back ups is if you run the back up on another SSD. An external SSD connected to the Asus thunderbolt 5 ports is a good option. Me personally, I slapped a second SSD into the empty SSD slot. Put a WD Black 2tb drive in it. With the way these Asus laptops are laid out and how easy it is to add, swap, remove SSDs, it was an easy thing to do. I think the design of these was a fantastic idea.

Hope you guys all have working laptops from here on out. Mine has been solid and I am loving it.

As for Hwinfo, are you using portable version or installed one? Not sure which one should I go with. I'm really becoming somewhat paranoid about monitoring softwares at this point

 

[liberty610]

As for Hwinfo, are you using portable version or installed one? Not sure which one should I go with. I'm really becoming somewhat paranoid about monitoring softwares at this point

I get that for sure. But at least we know now that if freezing occurs, there is a good chance it's the monitoring software.

I have been using the full standard free version of HWiNFO, not the portable one. Just make sure you grab the latest version off their website. I let it run in the background a good couple of hours last night with no issues, and I have been launching it here and there while I have it plugged in and on battery to see if it behaves. No issues so far. I am actually running it right now as I type tis out.

Temp wise, when I have it on battery with energy saving mode on for doing light tasks or even letting it sit idle, she runs between 42c and 45c. Doing a full test yesterday I eased into it with some lighter gaming that I believe used the Intel igpu. All I got where a couple a of quick throttle spikes at some point while running through a couple of in game days of Dinkum (super fun game if you're into that sort of thing btw). Played for about 45 mins to an hour. I had the laptop connected to my 52" LG OLED tv via the laptop's HDMI port. Average temp ran at 70c to 72c.

Today, I have some video work to do for my studio. I use Vegas Pro 22, and in that app you have rendering options where you can use JUST the CPU for the render, or you can use an option that uses more of the GPU's cuda cores to render. I'll try both options and see what it does temp wise. I also use the app called Handbrake to make compressed videos for cloud uploading. That will beat the piss outta of the CPU and bring temps up. I'll run that as well and see what they are and report back. But so far, nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[Arcuel]

Thank you for the detailed response, I appreciate it!
So I think I'll go with the standard version too then

 

[liberty610]

Good luck! Let me know how it goes! Like I said, so far I have not had a single hiccup since you shared your issue with HM Monitor. And I have been doing all sorts of tasks. I don't plan on returning this now. I have a mobile recording session for a band this week. I'll be using this laptop for the session, but I will also have my older rock solid Asus with me as a back up just in case. But yes, my confidence in this unit is rising now.

 

[Arcuel]

Good luck! Let me know how it goes! Like I said, so far I have not had a single hiccup since you shared your issue with HM Monitor. And I have been doing all sorts of tasks. I don't plan on returning this now. I have a mobile recording session for a band this week. I'll be using this laptop for the session, but I will also have my older rock solid Asus with me as a back up just in case. But yes, my confidence in this unit is rising now.

Thanks man! I'll post an update here in couple of days. It's good to hear that your machine works fine now!
Good luck at your recording session btw =)
Cheers

 

[liberty610]

Thanks man! I'll post an update here in couple of days. It's good to hear that your machine works fine now!
Good luck at your recording session btw =)
Cheers

Extended thermal testing from today.

Vegas Pro 22 and Handbrake - using rendering options that only use the CPU and not the NVIDA cuda cores. Both these apps push the CPU where it's constantly being utilized between 93% and 100%. Running these for almost a full hour straight, my CPU temps averaged at 69c. Only a couple high temp spikes when the renders first started. Once the fans ramped up, temps dropped right down.

Running a good hour on the game 'Detroit Become Human" which is pretty intensive on the NVIDA GPU and I was averaging 65c. HWiNFO was running the entire time. No freezes.

Not bad at all. Pretty happy with this mini tank. Looking forward to more testing with my audio apps this week whole recording.

 

[Arcuel]

Extended thermal testing from today.

Vegas Pro 22 and Handbrake - using rendering options that only use the CPU and not the NVIDA cuda cores. Both these apps push the CPU where it's constantly being utilized between 93% and 100%. Running these for almost a full hour straight, my CPU temps averaged at 69c. Only a couple high temp spikes when the renders first started. Once the fans ramped up, temps dropped right down.

Running a good hour on the game 'Detroit Become Human" which is pretty intensive on the NVIDA GPU and I was averaging 65c. HWiNFO was running the entire time. No freezes.

Not bad at all. Pretty happy with this mini tank. Looking forward to more testing with my audio apps this week whole recording.

Thanks for the update on temps. I’ve been testing them myself too. I also tried Detroit: Become Human at first—beautiful game, a real masterpiece—but it doesn’t really push the GPU and CPU hard enough to properly test temperatures. So I ended up running Cyberpunk instead with Overdrive + RT, DLSS 4, and frame generation, averaging around 140+ FPS.

It gets hot—80–90°C, averaging about 85. But with the vents ramped up to 83% (probably around 5,000 RPM), I managed to bring temps down to the high 70s/low 80s. I'm also using a Flydigi BS1 cooling pad, which helps keep things somewhat stable, but wow—it’s loud! Easily twice as loud as the laptop itself.

I read that temps under 95°C during heavy loads especially for a mobile powerhouse like this are considered normal, but 80°C is kind of my personal psychological limit. So now I’m thinking of light undervolting to bring temps down a bit. Should investigate about that as I've never done it before.

By the way, whether I’m in an air-conditioned room at 21°C or a hot room at 30°C, the temps only change by 1–2°C at most.

Edit: I'm speaking about CPU temps here, because GPU never goes above 75

 

[liberty610]

Thanks for the update on temps. I’ve been testing them myself too. I also tried Detroit: Become Human at first—beautiful game, a real masterpiece—but it doesn’t really push the GPU and CPU hard enough to properly test temperatures. So I ended up running Cyberpunk instead with Overdrive + RT, DLSS 4, and frame generation, averaging around 140+ FPS.

It gets hot—80–90°C, averaging about 85. But with the vents ramped up to 83% (probably around 5,000 RPM), I managed to bring temps down to the high 70s/low 80s. I'm also using a Flydigi BS1 cooling pad, which helps keep things somewhat stable, but wow—it’s loud! Easily twice as loud as the laptop itself.

I read that temps under 95°C during heavy loads especially for a mobile powerhouse like this are considered normal, but 80°C is kind of my personal psychological limit. So now I’m thinking of light undervolting to bring temps down a bit. Should investigate about that as I've never done it before.

By the way, whether I’m in an air-conditioned room at 21°C or a hot room at 30°C, the temps only change by 1–2°C at most.

Edit: I'm speaking about CPU temps here, because GPU never goes above 75

I have continued my temp testing. And just like yourself, the CPU gets a little toasty under load for me. The GPU stays under 75c. The CPU isn't staying at higher temps under load for me, but it did hit 106c with a couple of spikes. Not a huge deal because it's not sitting at those temps for extended periods, but I would like to get that under control.

I have installed Ghelper as well. Good lord, Asus needs to hire this guy like YESTERDAY. What an amazing app for these laptops. I will say though, prior to installing it, I was using just the basic Windows power plans. The temps where a couple degrees cooler under those settings, and Ghelper kicked them up a smidge. But when I put everything in evo mode, the battery jumps to over 4 hours of run time now. Major plus. And I am just using stock everything in Ghelper. I am not really too savvy in under volting or over clocking, so I am going to do some more research with all of that before I star messing with it. But yeah, anyone with an Asus laptop needs to
[bad language removed] can armory crate now and switch to ghelper. What an app!

 

[liberty610]

As of this morning, twice within a 20 minute period, I recieved 2 BSOD errors with the same error code. The code was VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR.

I was running everything on evo mode via ghelper, and not doing anything crazy with it. I think I was doing just the web browser.

I am not sure, but I think it could be related to the app Wallpaper Engine I use via Steam. Although, I have been using this app all week and it has been fine, but as of yesterday I had a couple issues with it,

With it in eco mode, the igpu is what was running, not the Nvidia card.

Have any of you come across this error yet?

 

[Arcuel]

As of this morning, twice within a 20 minute period, I recieved 2 BSOD errors with the same error code. The code was VIDEO_DXGKRNL_FATAL_ERROR.

I was running everything on evo mode via ghelper, and not doing anything crazy with it. I think I was doing just the web browser.

I am not sure, but I think it could be related to the app Wallpaper Engine I use via Steam. Although, I have been using this app all week and it has been fine, but as of yesterday I had a couple issues with it,

With it in eco mode, the igpu is what was running, not the Nvidia card.

Have any of you come across this error yet?

I haven't run across this problem but I haven't used the eco mode, only like once for couple of minutes.
I think it’s happening because Eco Mode forces the system to use the integrated GPU, possibly disables the discrete GPU, and applies aggressive power-saving settings. If you’re running something like Wallpaper Engine, which relies on GPU acceleration, this can cause a conflict or instability in the graphics subsystem - leading to the bsod.

If I were you I'd try this:
1) Tinker with Nvidia app and set GPU switch to Optimus mode
2) If the previous didn't work, i'd set Integrated Graphics manually as the preferred GPU in the NVIDIA Control Panel instead of relying entirely on Eco Mode to handle it.
3) Checked Windows power settings and avoided overly aggressive options like “Maximum Power Saving”

 

[foxcraft_deacon]

Thanks.

Battery update - I have been using the laptop the past 30 minutes on energy saving mode (windows built in mode) and doing standard web browser and email related tasks. I have battery care turned on in the MyAsus App so it doesn't charge past 80%. With all LEDS off on the keyboard, screen brightness down to 0 (it's plenty brite still for me) I am seeing 4 and 1/2 hours of battery available.,

Another useful tool I use is called EaseUs To Do. It creates full Windows back ups so if you have a boot drive failure or want to upgrade your current SSD to a bigger/faster one, you can back up your entire OS drive, use the tool to restore everything to the new drive, and be back up and running as if nothing was ever done. There are a couple ways to go about it. You can clone the drive, or what I like to do is make a mirror image.

When everything has been running solid like it has been, I will make a backup image before I do any major updates or run Windows Updates. The fastest way to do the back ups is if you run the back up on another SSD. An external SSD connected to the Asus thunderbolt 5 ports is a good option. Me personally, I slapped a second SSD into the empty SSD slot. Put a WD Black 2tb drive in it. With the way these Asus laptops are laid out and how easy it is to add, swap, remove SSDs, it was an easy thing to do. I think the design of these was a fantastic idea.

Hope you guys all have working laptops from here on out. Mine has been solid and I am loving it.

Thanks, really useful info. I do really love this beast after clean install. A minor drawback is that this laptop is built with plastic.

 

[liberty610]

Thanks, really useful info. I do really love this beast after clean install. A minor drawback is that this laptop is built with plastic.

Yeah, I understand that. I wish they would go the Lenovo route and use aluminum at least, but I am sure cost plays a roll in those decisions. I have loved this unit since the freezing issue was resolved.

You ended up going with the clean install? Did you use the step guide that I posted? Hopefully if you did everything went well and you could follow it easily. Glad you're enjoying your machine like I am mine!

 

[foxcraft_deacon]

Yeah, I understand that. I wish they would go the Lenovo route and use aluminum at least, but I am sure cost plays a roll in those decisions. I have loved this unit since the freezing issue was resolved.

You ended up going with the clean install? Did you use the step guide that I posted? Hopefully if you did everything went well and you could follow it easily. Glad you're enjoying your machine like I am mine!

Yes, I followed every step of your instructions except for the VMD. In the end, I decided to go with RAID instead

I've been using this laptop for 3 weeks with the original OS setup, and I can confidently say that after a clean install, it feels much smoother. From now on, I’ll always do a clean install on new gaming laptops. Thanks for the tips 👍 .

Next I will try G Helper as well, so have to say goodbye with Anime Matrix, RGB and AC Overlay.

 

[Arcuel]

Yes, I followed every step of your instructions except for the VMD. In the end, I decided to go with RAID instead

I've been using this laptop for 3 weeks with the original OS setup, and I can confidently say that after a clean install, it feels much smoother. From now on, I’ll always do a clean install on new gaming laptops. Thanks for the tips 👍 .

Next I will try G Helper as well, so have to say goodbye with Anime Matrix, RGB and AC Overlay.

RGB works fine in GHelper. Also the guy behind it is already working on anime matrix.

It used to be working on previous laptop models but not on this one as it's just released. So I presume it won't take him long to make it work in the next update

 

[liberty610]

Yes, I followed every step of your instructions except for the VMD. In the end, I decided to go with RAID instead

I've been using this laptop for 3 weeks with the original OS setup, and I can confidently say that after a clean install, it feels much smoother. From now on, I’ll always do a clean install on new gaming laptops. Thanks for the tips 👍 .

Next I will try G Helper as well, so have to say goodbye with Anime Matrix, RGB and AC Overlay.

Glad my step by step helped! Fresh install on all my systems is something I try to do every single time.

I don't have any desire to run raid these days. SSDs are plenty fast anymore, and I like having a second internal SSD to record all my audio and video tracks on when I am working on studio projects. But to each their own!

I am glad we're all having better luck with these models. Hopefully these hold us all over for a while.... the price tags are not easy on the 'ol wallets!

 

[liberty610]

Has anyone tried adding a second SSD yet? I am successfully running 2TB drives in both slots, but I am reading conflicting reports online that these laptops can only take 4tb max - 2tb in each slot. Anyone try more than 2tb per slot yet?

 

[Arcuel]

For those who were wondering about anime matrix support, just wanted to let you guys know that the new version of GHelper is up for grabs on GitHub. Works like a charm

 

[taser_face_nic]

I have been using HWInfo pretty regularly the last 2 days and no other crashes or freezes have occurred. Since the other user told me about HM Monitor, I ditched it and have not re-installed it,

I have not installed G-helper yet. It's been on my radar for a couple weeks now, even with my old laptop, I just have not gotten around to it.

Boot times and reboot times seem normal to me. When I am running hard apps on it, I do get some higher temps according to HWinfo. For a moment earlier today, I was 1c away from thermal throttle and I had peaked at 104c, but I am not sure if that was just a quick spike, or if it was running at that for an extended time. I have not done much thermal checking yet. I plan to start that the next couple of days.

I personally would always do a clean Windows install on any of my systems, but that is just me being a little uptight about my setups. I like to know what is all on it and when it go there. The problem is, when you do a reinstall the way Asus tech wants you to do it, you're basically just re-installing all the bloatware again from their recovery partitions. When I do it, I wipe the entire drive and all of it's partitions and start from scratch.

I have noticed it can take a moment to shut down sometimes, but that isn't too concerning to me. I turned off 'fast boot' on mine because fast boot option can cause issues with my VeraCrypt app which is a file/hard drive encryption tool. As far as battery life goes, you'll never really know for sure what it should be. Laptops like these are power houses, and even when limiting them with energy saving options, they still eat up some juice. The LED bar and lights, the screen, the processors.... between 1.5 to 2 hours is about normal on battery if you ask me. And that's doing lighter tasks like email or web browsing while in energy saving modes.

If it where me, I would wipe it and start over. And these are the steps I would/did take to do so - Make sure you have access to another machine with internet just in case you need to download something. And an external mouse will also be handy, as your touch pad will not work right away until you can get to a point to install the driver after windows installs.

Step 1: Grab a couple USB drives. On one, download the Windows Media Creation tool and use it to make a bootable Windows 11 Flash drive.

Step 2: Take the second flash drive, and go to the Asus website and download every single driver for your laptop model. Avoid the utilities section where Armory Crate is and what not. I personally refuse to use it or any of those other apps. They just slow stuff down and are too buggy (although I do use the MyAsus app from the Windows store after I install windows, It's handy for some stuff).

Step 3: Take your new windows bootable drive and insert it into a USB slot. Reboot the laptop. When you see the Asus splash screen where it begins to boot up, tap the F2 key. This will enter the BIOS. Turn on advance options, and go to the advance tab and disable VMD mode. If you don't do this, Windows setup will not see your installed SSD drive as an option to install Windows on without taking an extra step to install an Intel driver you don't need unless you plan on running RAID (and If you don't know what that is, you don't need it anyways.) Now goto the boot tab, and make your USB flash drive the first boot priority over your installed SSD, Hit F10 to save your settings, and reboot.

Step 4: If you have done the previous steps correctly, you should see the windows 11 setup install asking you for options like keyboard, language, etc. Make your choices, and continue. When you get to the screen that says something along the lines of where do you want to install windows, you will see several options listed, and all of them but one should start with 'Disk 0'. Go through and select each one of these, and DELETE them. These are all the pre-installed partitions that will just restore the laptop to factory settings, which for a true clean install, you don't want.

Step 5: Once you delete all the partitions, it should say that disk 0 is 'unallocated'. Select it and click 'New'. It will bring up a box with a number in it. Click okay. Windows set up will now make a few partitions for recovery and what not. Once this is done, select the partition with the most space on, and install Windows to it. Let it do it's thing, and it will restart.

Step 6: When it restarts it will start asking you some options. Click through them, making your preferred choices. When it gets to the screen that says 'Connect to the internet' you're NOT going to connect to anything. Do NOT plug in an ethernet cable, or connect to a wifi option if there is one (there shouldn't be one because there is no driver for the wifi card yet). Instead of connecting to anything, you're going to want to press SHIFT and F10 TOGETHER. This will bring up the Command Prompt window. With your external USB mouse, click inside the command prompt window and type in the following:

OOBE\BYPASSNRO

Then hit enter. Those are letter O's, in the beginning. not numbers.

If you typed it in correctly, when you hit ENTER, it will reboot. When it reboots, you will go through all the basic setup questions again., This time, when it comes to the 'lets get connected' screen, you SHOULD see an option at the bottom that says 'I Don't Have Internet'. Click on that. You will then be asked to make a basic username, password, and make 3 security questions/answer options. Select them, type in your choices and continue. You will now get Windows to install the bare bones of the OS without needing to be online. This will prevent Windows from getting all the bloatware packages from Asus for these model laptops.

Step 7: Once Windows does all the setup restarts and gets you to the desktop, grab your other USB drive with all the official ASUS drivers on it, and install them all. You don't have to reboot after each one. Get them all installed, and after the last one is installed, then reboot. When you reboot, you should have everything you need to get online with wifi and your track pad should be working (that is if you grabbed all the drivers. My model, the G815LW had 18 drivers total).

Step 8: Goto settings, and then Windows update and grab all the updates. While they are downloading/installing. you can goto the Microsoft store and grab the Myasus app. It will help you download and install other drivers you may have missed in the app's update section.

From there, do the Windows reboot cycles from the Windows updates, and after the reboots, go back to the settings/update section and make sure Windows has all the updates. Once the green check mark pops up and says you are fully updated. pause updates as long as you can. I went with a Windows Pro install on mine, and I can pause them for 5 weeks at a time.

Another series of optional steps I did was using Revo Pro Uninstaller. It's an uninstaller app that once any program or app is uninstalled with it, it will also scan for empty folders and registry junk those apps leave behind, and it gets rid of them. You have to buy a license for the pro version, but I believe I paid like $25 for 2 years. It's well worth it. Get the portable version, and you can install it to an external storage device and use it on any machine you connect it to. If you wanna know more about the app, you can goto youtube and search for 'Jays2Cents Revo app'.. His video turned me on to the Revo setup.

Hopefully this helps you out if you decide to do the fresh install. And I hope you have stability with the laptop regardless if you try this or not. The past couple weeks has been such a headache chasing this freeze issue.

Thanks so much for this man. I hope this helps me, I’m going to give it a shot before I go back to Best Buy with it. Question, when installing windows, at any point do you login to your MS account in windows? Or do you avoid that completely.

 

[liberty610]

Thanks so much for this man. I hope this helps me, I’m going to give it a shot before I go back to Best Buy with it. Question, when installing windows, at any point do you login to your MS account in windows? Or do you avoid that completely.

That's a personal preference but I don't log into it.

 

[COLGeek]

Thanks so much for this man. I hope this helps me, I’m going to give it a shot before I go back to Best Buy with it. Question, when installing windows, at any point do you login to your MS account in windows? Or do you avoid that completely.

You really should start your own thread.

 

[taser_face_nic]

I have

Has anyone tried adding a second SSD yet? I am successfully running 2TB drives in both slots, but I am reading conflicting reports online that these laptops can only take 4tb max - 2tb in each slot. Anyone try more than 2tb per slot yet?

a Samsung 4tb installed in the second slot. No issues with it as it works