G74SX-NH71 No Boot, black screen, caps lock & numlock lights on.

[OldNESJunkie]

Well, came home from work today to some severe storm warnings coming into our area, unplugged my laptop for safety, storms never came, plugged it back in, now it will not boot. When you turn it on, the BD-ROM drive makes a powerup noise, no BIOS logo comes up, numlock & caps lock are on, keyboard lights are off, nothing ever happens past that point. I tried taking out the battery & using just power, no go. Tried battery only, no go. Tried unplugging it & pressing the power button for 60 sec, no go. Tried removing RAM to see if I could get a beep code, nothing. Tried removing HDD, nothing. I've been having some BSOD's since about the 2nd week of ownership, did a fresh OS install, but got some more. Failed memtest+ even with the factory RAM, so I replaced all the RAM, passed memtest+ after that (that was yesterday when I replaced the RAM), but it had been rebooted & power cycled since then without issue. Anyways, I'm out of ideas on anything else to try so I figured I would see if anyone else had any suggestions. Purchased on Jan 17, 2012.

[ColonelS]

ouch~ i srsly do recommend a RMA.

[OldNESJunkie]

Well, just got off the phone with support, pretty much an RMA :mad:, ah well will send it in ASAP, hopefully the turn-around time will be good. Weird thing is I have no clue as to what happened. I was using it for a few minutes worked fine, then powered off & unplugged, then later on, hooked it back up & nothing....

[OldNESJunkie]

quick question about the headphone jack on these units ? Do they support SPDIF or optical output? Reason I ask is because yesterday I noticed a red light was on in the headphone jack when I was unplugging the external speakers to shut it down.

[OldNESJunkie]

Well, help me figure this one out. I put the original RAM back into the system, the 12GB of ASINT & now the damn thing boots up without issue ??? WTF is this ?? This is WEIRD, could be the memory timings on the RAM I had, but they matched, voltage maybe ? Anyone have any ideas ??? I have shut down, power cycled several times now, working like a champ again.....

EDIT:

NVM, spoke too soon, had 2 BSOD's in the last few minutes. I;m gonna try the new RAM in there again, but at this point I suspect I have a bad motherboard.....

[fostert]

Thats good news @OldNESJunkie: sometimes its the result that counts. Could be a wee bit of oxidization on the RAM pins combined with an intermittent or flaky contact, and resetting the sticks (or even rotating them into different slots) made the difference. Or there could be a small capacitance on one of the RAM chips (a bit of thermal paste or something conductive maybe got under them on their legs?), and removing them discharged the stored charge?

I have seen these same symptoms on my desktops very occasionally: a RAM reseat has worked.

[OldNESJunkie]

OK, I believe I found the problem. I think it is the RAM Slot 1 on the MB, when I bought the system only slots 2-4 were in use for the 12GB. I moved those to slots 1-3 & put the new G-Skill I purchased into slot 4, BSOD's appeared. I had 4 new sticks of ram in all 4 slots, BSOD's if I put the original RAM into slots 2-4, no BSOD's, passes Memtest+. Anyways, when I get home from work today, I'll try running HotCPU & see if it find anything.

[OldNESJunkie]

One last question for any in the know. I purchased my laptop (G74SX-TH71) off of eBay, will Asus still honor the warranty period ??

[OldNESJunkie]

Well, just shipped my unit out for RAM today, hopefully it will be in much better running shape when I get it back.....

[OldNESJunkie]

Well, just shipped my unit out for RAM today, hopefully it will be in much better running shape when I get it back.....