The Perpetrator: 2010 Asus G73JH-A1, 8 gb ram, 2 500 gb drives, blu-ray/dvd/CD optical drive, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, 17" display, Win7 64-bit.
The Problem As it Stands:
1. Battery in, no A/C, laptop is off: push power button, num & caps lock come on briefly, 3 "junk buttons" @ upper left of deck, just below display, come on and stay on. HDD LED flickers and goes dark; as far as I can tell, HDDs are not spinning at all. Optical drive chugs once then goes silent. Nothing more for maybe 30 seconds, then both cooling fans spin up to full speed. No Asus "splash screen," not so much as a flicker from the display; no "ghost images" on screen as if backlight were bad or brightness were turned fully down. Can not access BIOS by any keypress, or combination or sequence of keypresses. Machine is utterly unresponsive to any kind of input. Will not boot from any external source.
2. Battery out, A/C unplugged: Plug A/C in, laptop powers up instantly without pressing power button. Same sequence and conditions as described above.
3. ) Battery in, A/C unplugged: Same scenario as in #2 above. Comes on with A/C plug-in, same sequence and conditions.
Machine is bone-stock, never any repairs, never a problem other than erratic touchpad behavior (never resolved despite trying all Solutions suggested by Asus and several forums.) Did open it up once, after warranty expired in attempt to address touchpad problem, but that was 9 years ago, with no problems since.
Events Just Prior to Failure: Win7 had become progressively squirrely on me (imagine that...), and after fighting with multiple problems like sudden failure to detect ANY wireless networks, then detecting them but failing to connect, then back to no detection again, having the touchpad just abruptly stop working (something disabled it deep in the settings somewhere), and then the blu-ray/DVD/CD drive refusing to read self-burned discs (reads commercially-produced ones OK though... discs are good, wife's Dell reads 'em just fine ), I finally gave up and decided to do a clean install of both OS' s (Win7 and Linux.)
Install of Win7 was problem-ridden to the point that I just started over (graphics stuck @ 640x480, new drivers didn't help, and the network thing again. Also started getting "blue screens of death" periodically.) Got a good install this time, updated just about everything (Win7, latest drivers, etc.) Still can't read self- burned discs, so bought a bootable USB flash drive distro of Linux.
Had to go in and out of BIOS a number of times to force a USB boot to install Linux (again network issues, and bugs in parts of Linux causing app crashes.) Had trouble setting up dual-boot though... wound up re-installing Linux again, too. Linux usually offers to create a dual-boot automatically when it sees the Windows OS installed, but this distro didn't for whatever reason.
Wound up back in Win7 researching how to configure a dual-boot system manually (and still getting the occasional "blue screen of death, though not as frequently as before.) Found and installed a boot-manager, which also didn't work... removed it. Went to shut down for the night, and as it does from time to time, Win7 just commandeered my system and announced it was installing 111 (yes, 111, not a typo) updates; that, despite all the updates I already installed. Hate Windows, it's such a rude OS compared to others; I use it only for gaming. Not much choice... Waited it out, Win re-started the machine; it went black and dead... and it never came back on. Will not boot up, situation as above.
What I've Done: Tried all kinds of re-set button presses, all manner of keypress combinations and sequences... negative. Tried booting from one hard drive ( first Win, then Linux)... negative. Tried booting from DVD and USB... negative. Held "reset" button on underside of case down for a full minute... negative. Re-seated all the RAM sticks... negative. Pulled the motherboard and changed the CMOS battery (let it sit without battery for several minutes)... negative. Pulled and re-seated video card... negative. Connected to external monitor... negative. Confirmed monitor good by connecting to wife's Dell; works fine.
Power jack is firmly attached to motherboard, no visible sign of damage anywhere, no smell of fried electronics... Nothing. Just no boot, dead display, no BIOS access.
My Questions Are: Does the mobo have any video capability at all, or is it ALL handled by the video card? My thinking being that that maybe it uses primitive, low-res graphics embedded in the mobo for boot & BIOS until it loads high-level drivers later. Maybe I can pull the graphics card and try a boot without it... May have failed in such a manner that it's pulling down the whole system with it.
Is there any way to prove definitively a mobo failure -vs- a vid card failure? I've located refurbed/tested-good mobos from several sources for short money; the vid cards are both more scarce and significantly more expensive than the mobo is. Given the cost of shipping from China, I'd like to get this right the first time.
Hoping for some input from you hardware-heads or boot process geniuses who can provide a few choice facts to help make a confident determination as to where to go from here, or any further testing I've overlooked that might shed more light on this mess.
Thanks so much for reading this long-winded tale of woe (typed with one- finger hunt-and-peck on my small smart phone... SO tedious for a touch-typist!!) Thanks in advance for any input!
The Problem As it Stands:
1. Battery in, no A/C, laptop is off: push power button, num & caps lock come on briefly, 3 "junk buttons" @ upper left of deck, just below display, come on and stay on. HDD LED flickers and goes dark; as far as I can tell, HDDs are not spinning at all. Optical drive chugs once then goes silent. Nothing more for maybe 30 seconds, then both cooling fans spin up to full speed. No Asus "splash screen," not so much as a flicker from the display; no "ghost images" on screen as if backlight were bad or brightness were turned fully down. Can not access BIOS by any keypress, or combination or sequence of keypresses. Machine is utterly unresponsive to any kind of input. Will not boot from any external source.
2. Battery out, A/C unplugged: Plug A/C in, laptop powers up instantly without pressing power button. Same sequence and conditions as described above.
3. ) Battery in, A/C unplugged: Same scenario as in #2 above. Comes on with A/C plug-in, same sequence and conditions.
Machine is bone-stock, never any repairs, never a problem other than erratic touchpad behavior (never resolved despite trying all Solutions suggested by Asus and several forums.) Did open it up once, after warranty expired in attempt to address touchpad problem, but that was 9 years ago, with no problems since.
Events Just Prior to Failure: Win7 had become progressively squirrely on me (imagine that...), and after fighting with multiple problems like sudden failure to detect ANY wireless networks, then detecting them but failing to connect, then back to no detection again, having the touchpad just abruptly stop working (something disabled it deep in the settings somewhere), and then the blu-ray/DVD/CD drive refusing to read self-burned discs (reads commercially-produced ones OK though... discs are good, wife's Dell reads 'em just fine ), I finally gave up and decided to do a clean install of both OS' s (Win7 and Linux.)
Install of Win7 was problem-ridden to the point that I just started over (graphics stuck @ 640x480, new drivers didn't help, and the network thing again. Also started getting "blue screens of death" periodically.) Got a good install this time, updated just about everything (Win7, latest drivers, etc.) Still can't read self- burned discs, so bought a bootable USB flash drive distro of Linux.
Had to go in and out of BIOS a number of times to force a USB boot to install Linux (again network issues, and bugs in parts of Linux causing app crashes.) Had trouble setting up dual-boot though... wound up re-installing Linux again, too. Linux usually offers to create a dual-boot automatically when it sees the Windows OS installed, but this distro didn't for whatever reason.
Wound up back in Win7 researching how to configure a dual-boot system manually (and still getting the occasional "blue screen of death, though not as frequently as before.) Found and installed a boot-manager, which also didn't work... removed it. Went to shut down for the night, and as it does from time to time, Win7 just commandeered my system and announced it was installing 111 (yes, 111, not a typo) updates; that, despite all the updates I already installed. Hate Windows, it's such a rude OS compared to others; I use it only for gaming. Not much choice... Waited it out, Win re-started the machine; it went black and dead... and it never came back on. Will not boot up, situation as above.
What I've Done: Tried all kinds of re-set button presses, all manner of keypress combinations and sequences... negative. Tried booting from one hard drive ( first Win, then Linux)... negative. Tried booting from DVD and USB... negative. Held "reset" button on underside of case down for a full minute... negative. Re-seated all the RAM sticks... negative. Pulled the motherboard and changed the CMOS battery (let it sit without battery for several minutes)... negative. Pulled and re-seated video card... negative. Connected to external monitor... negative. Confirmed monitor good by connecting to wife's Dell; works fine.
Power jack is firmly attached to motherboard, no visible sign of damage anywhere, no smell of fried electronics... Nothing. Just no boot, dead display, no BIOS access.
My Questions Are: Does the mobo have any video capability at all, or is it ALL handled by the video card? My thinking being that that maybe it uses primitive, low-res graphics embedded in the mobo for boot & BIOS until it loads high-level drivers later. Maybe I can pull the graphics card and try a boot without it... May have failed in such a manner that it's pulling down the whole system with it.
Is there any way to prove definitively a mobo failure -vs- a vid card failure? I've located refurbed/tested-good mobos from several sources for short money; the vid cards are both more scarce and significantly more expensive than the mobo is. Given the cost of shipping from China, I'd like to get this right the first time.
Hoping for some input from you hardware-heads or boot process geniuses who can provide a few choice facts to help make a confident determination as to where to go from here, or any further testing I've overlooked that might shed more light on this mess.
Thanks so much for reading this long-winded tale of woe (typed with one- finger hunt-and-peck on my small smart phone... SO tedious for a touch-typist!!) Thanks in advance for any input!
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