G73JH Black screen :(

[Yemon]

So the other night I Rebooted My G73jh, went to grab some more coffee amd came back to a Black/Blank Screen. Tested the vga out and the HDMI but no response. Called Asus and they claim they won't RMA since the 1 year manufacturers warranty is up by a couple of months, which really doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling about the tech support.

This is the most expensive system I've ever purchased as I usually build my own and to have the system crap out after little more than a year of light use really makes me a little perturbed.

I'm fairly familiar with builds/repair, So I've been throught the usual bit's of checking seats, Battery in/out reset. Cmos Reset. I haven't as of yet pulled the mobo but from what I've been able to see, there doesn't appear to be any burn spots, fat caps or lack of thermal paste on the GPU.

[Verozth]

That **** happened to me too. Sent it in for RMA for the second time this year..... I fear for the warranty to go out and that
something will happen again... the service kinda sucks too, i mean what the hell, why do they sell me a laptop that is already
broken

[vudugan]

I'm going to take apart and try finding that battery to pull tomorrow. I have tried twice by email for rma and havent heard back from asus but what bothers me is i cant find the 3rd stick of ram for 12g total. thats the only 1 of course i havent reseated. I hear nothing but bad responses on rma so I may as well keep working on this with the forums.

[Yemon]

The third stick of ram is going to be on the 'other' side of your mobo. Good luck! 🙂

[Dweebs]

I know that this thread is pretty dated but I have relevant information to attach so I made an account precisely for this reason. My friend bought an Asus G73SW-A1 as a desktop replacement for gaming. He plays World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 mainly, so this laptop should have been more than he needed. Like a few other G73 owners he started to experience severe graphics issues. The Display Driver would stop responding in the middle of game play, causing the laptop to lock up and only resume after a hard restart, so he had plenty of Kernel 41 errors in his event log. Also, he would encounter Black Screens on restart. It was intermittent, but the screen would fail to start even though Windows would continue to boot unseen.

He RMA’d the laptop and it was supposedly given a new Graphics Card, but the problems persisted to the point where the laptop was essentially a $2000.00 brick. It reached a point where it would boot to a Black Screen continuously, and then randomly it would boot properly all of the sudden after about 10-20 hard restarts. This was despite several Graphics driver upgrades and clean reinstalls of Windows.

I took the laptop apart for him and pulled all the connections, checked the graphics card and mobo for obvious signs of wear and damage. Everything looked good, and I could tell from my first disassembly that I was the first person to have taken the laptop apart, so I doubt whether Asus actually replaced his card, but I could be wrong.

After reassembly the laptop worked again for about two months then the problems returned. I took it apart yet again and the problems seemed to be fixed again for about a month this time. But my friend was frustrated so he finally bought a new Alienware laptop instead and gave me the fancy brick to mess around with

After a bit of internet research I came across this thread and thought I would give disassembly another try. Only this time I would pull the battery and let the mobo drain before reassembling. I’m not sure if this will be a better fix than the temporary fixes I’ve come across before. Along with the battery pull I cleaned up and reapplied thermal paste to the graphics card because it was done rather poorly at the factory. I cleaned the contacts with alcohol and reassembled everything. It has been only two days but so far everything seems to be working fine. I have had no display driver stops, and no Black Screens on boot. But whether the problem will stay gone or return is a matter that only time can settle. I plan on updating if the problem does return.

Also, I would be interested to hear if OP still has a working laptop or if the problem returned.

[MissKokane]

I have the exact same problem with my 1 1/2 year old Asus G73Sw. The first time it happened was around 2-3 weeks ago and unpluging and removing the battery worked. Now after 2 weeks I get the same problem again. I've only tried the battery thing and holding the Start button for 15-30 secs. I don't know what made it work but this morning after trying for an eternity it worked again.

I haven't tried reassemblying or applying more thermal paste cause I would have no idea what I'd be doing but if I get the problem again I know what needs to be done.

[Yemon]

I Do still have the laptop. It does "run" but I"ve had continued issues with my g73 since my original post.
I've found that the only way to really keep it operational is factory defaults and old drivers. Updating anything graphics or audio related sends it into fits of uselessness that I can only seem to cure by pulling the cmos battery on the main board and letting everything reset and reverting any new drivers to original. (even with clean installs of new drivers following the official documentation)

I won't be purchasing anything Asus related again.

[MissKokane]

update on my problem:

For the past few days after I got it to work I didn't close the lid after shutting down. And I never got the black screen in the morning turning it on since then. This morning after closing the lid and opening again... BAM.. black screen. And I could hear the windows starting... After moving the laptop around and closing and opening the lid like 50 times it worked..

[xeromist]

MissK, yours sounds like it could be a magnet sensor issue. You should be able to test this by moving a magnet around the palm rest area until you find the sensor (the screen will turn off when you hit it). I'm sorry I don't remember where it is exactly and I couldn't find a picture online so just experiment with a decently strong magnet and it will trigger when you get in the general area. Once you know where it is you should try tapping that spot with the magnet a few times when the screen goes black to see if the screen turns on.

[PILGRIM]

xeromist wrote:
MissK, yours sounds like it could be a magnet sensor issue. You should be able to test this by moving a magnet around the palm rest area until you find the sensor (the screen will turn off when you hit it). I'm sorry I don't remember where it is exactly and I couldn't find a picture online so just experiment with a decently strong magnet and it will trigger when you get in the general area. Once you know where it is you should try tapping that spot with the magnet a few times when the screen goes black to see if the screen turns on.

Is it like this one? (It was for the G53, but it might work also for the G73.):
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?5396-Magnetic-sensor-switch-issue-on-Asus-G53SW-XN1-when-cl...

[xeromist]

Yep, same idea; I'm just not sure if the sensor is in the same location as the 53.