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G74SX-ST1: Two obscure issues

jonfl1
Level 9
So I'm hoping someone in the community here has some ideas about what might be occurring with two seperate (and very annoying) issues I'm having with my G74SX-ST1:

1) My blu-ray drive will NOT read any media other than blu-ray discs UNTIL I put in a blu-ray disc. So basically, it will not read any CD-ROMs, DVDs, etc, until I play a blu-ray disc. After that, it reads any disc fine until I reboot. I should note that I dumped the default blu-ray player in favor of Cyberlink's PowerDVD 11.

2) Periodically, and without warning, my G74S will start acting odd, then blue screen. When I reboot the laptop, it doesn't recognize my boot sector OCZ Agility 3 SSD I have installed as the boot drive. After completely powering the system down and then starting it back up, I can then go into the bios and it recognizes the drive again, at which point I have to set it as the boot drive again.

I'm hoping that both of these are simple settings issues, and I strongly suspect that it is a software issue and not a hardware one. Any help or ideas with either of these issues would be greatly appreciated!
ASUS G74SX-XT1 (maxed 16GB RAM and added OCZ SSD 120GB boot drive)
BIOS 203
Hannspree ST289MUB 28" LCD
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14 REPLIES 14

This problem occurred with the default player, which is what prompted me to install and test with new player software.
ASUS G74SX-XT1 (maxed 16GB RAM and added OCZ SSD 120GB boot drive)
BIOS 203
Hannspree ST289MUB 28" LCD

if its been happening since you got it with the default player it looks like its a hardware related problem and not just software.
G74SX-BBK8
i7 2670QM
16GB 1600MHz
NVIDIA GTX 560M 2GB
120GB KINGSTON HYPER X SSD
INTEL CENTRINO ULTIMATE-N 6300

If it's BSODing, it's probably creating a minidump file. Have you tried debugging it to see what the cause is? Also, have you checked the event viewer to see if there are any issues in there showing up?

If I am correct, BD Drives have 2 lenses in them; One for BluRay and another for the DVD/CDs. It could be that the drive is having a hard time initializing the arm for the DVD/CD lens, which could lead to a bad drive. Have you tried switching to a different SATA port? Make sure your BIOS is up to date, along with various chipset drivers?

I haven't tried checking the dump file yet, so I'll do that tonight. I'll do the same with event viewer.

I'm hoping this isn't a physical problem with the drive, but I suppose it very well could be the case. I'll probably contact ASUS support on this issue and see what they say.
ASUS G74SX-XT1 (maxed 16GB RAM and added OCZ SSD 120GB boot drive)
BIOS 203
Hannspree ST289MUB 28" LCD

jonfl1
Level 9
I just wanted to follow up on this thread for those interested.

On the first issue with the blu-ray drive, the issue was resolved after I did a clean installation with an ISO image of Win 7 Home Premium (and NOT the factory restore), and installed TotalMedia Theater 5 for BD-ROM playback.

For the second issue, I'm fairly certain that a firmware update will resolve the issues with intermittent, random, crashes of the SSD, but I will note that since the Windows reinstall, I've not experienced any issues. Yet.

Hope this information helps someone out there!
ASUS G74SX-XT1 (maxed 16GB RAM and added OCZ SSD 120GB boot drive)
BIOS 203
Hannspree ST289MUB 28" LCD