Question Gigabyte laptop aero 16 xe4 will not work after windows update plus other issues

[Glen440]

My kids laptop started freezing after 30 seconds after turning on last thursday. I went and bought another one as its needed for university. I started playing with the problem one.

Its a gigabyte aero 16 xe4 laptop, was built 11/02/22 12th gen intel i7 12700h with a nvidia rtx 3070ti gpu.

It would start to freeze in safe mode so I decided a clean install of windows was a good start. It will not allow me to install windows. It just either cannot see the drive but mostly has an error message. I put the ssd in my desktop and installed windows up to the point it asks for what country and put it back in the laptop. It finishes installing and it works fine and I can performance test it.

After doing all the windows updates it then has the screen freeze and have to power off. I have windows on both hard drives now, one has no updates. After it crashes on one I can just boot in the other and everything is fine. I'm just making sure it is not hardware related.

I'm not very knowledgeable on the software. The computer will freeze before I can do anything so no idea how to roll back drivers once I have installed it. I'm not really sure which update is bad.

Any ideas how to narrow down what is happening?

Thanks

 

[bill001g]

Dig around and find the option that tells windows to not update the drivers. They love to change where they hide this.

Most time the windows image you download has almost all the patches on it already. If you are using a older one then it needs to download stuff.

Installing on one machine and then moving it to another is kinda risky. Almost surprised you got it to work. Things like the drivers for the motherboard itself tend to be different.

 

[Glen440]

Using my desktop was the only way to get windows on the hard drive, even now the laptop will refuse to install. Every attempt has a different issue.

The motherboard must have a problem. It crashed after leaving it on for a couple hours and will crash after 30 seconds screen goes black with lines. Does this now on both windows installs.

I will take it apart and see what I can see.

 

[bill001g]

Before you take it apart maybe try linux. Most times I recommend people run from the USB stick but since you have reinstalled windows multiple times you might as well put linux on the disk to be sure it is not a disk issue.

You can run some basic tests with the web browser that is included.

I am sure there are some stress benchmarks you can run but it has been so long since I did much with a linux system I can't say how.

Although I doubt you find anything memtest64+ is easy to run. You want to run it from the USB boot since it does better tests and you don't have windows needing to actually work/boot. It likely will run fine but at least you then know your memory is ok and likely the CPU chip is ok. It does not use enough resource though to show if overheat or something is the issue.

 

[Glen440]

The laptop will not run the memory test on bootup. My desktop will.

I installed Ubuntu and it triggered bit locker. Since windows is gone I cannot get rid of it. I will use my desktop to wipe the hard drive and try again. I have never seen bit locker before. I have quite a few codes in my Microsoft account.

When I try to load windows there is 4 different things happen. Can't find the hard drive, error code, says windows key failed and fails at 10%.

 

[bill001g]

Sound like a hardware issue. Laptops are pretty close to not repairable unfortunately. Unless it something silly like a broken fan or lots of dirt I doubt you will fix it yourself.

 

[Glen440]

It does not look like much can be changed.

 

[bill001g]

This all depends on the current value of the laptop. You are going to pay at least shipping costs and a diagnostics charge even if it can't be economically fixed. From what I can tell getting laptops fixed that do not have some major issue is still about $350 and can be much more if there is some expensive chip needing replacement.

 

[bill001g]

I did not reread the thread did you try using a different power brick.

 

[Glen440]

I do not have another charger that fits.

There is someone selling motherboards for this computer for $450 can. I do not know if I want to put any money in this laptop as it seems to have alot of problems when you google it.

I will play around with it for awhile and decide what to do.

 

[Glen440]

I found a failed component. It's easy to get. It's called flash memory. Has a hole with green ooze.
My sister builds circuit boards, will see if she can change it. It's too small for me. I will update when it gets changed if it's fixed.

 

[bill001g]

Problem will be if it is the bios and or something else that you would need to get the software contents for. You might need a external programmer.