Help! G53SW with Hard Drive Recognition Problems!

[Retired]

I have been a proud owner of the G53SW since the end of June, and it has been great! Playing games on high-very high settings is a breeze! However, in the last two weeks, a lot of problems started to happen. I was hoping to see if anyone could help me out!

It started with the computer crashing during gameplay, on games like sc2 and LoL, but I updated all my graphics drivers and all that, and they seem to work… for now.

BUT! This morning, when I went to turn on my G53, the laptop said “Reboot and Select proper Boot device. Insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key.”

My laptop would say this every once in a while, and usually I just reboot it once or twice, then it works again. But this time the problem seems to be more permanent!

I even tried running the Asus AI Recovery disc, and it said no hard drive found.

After many tries, however, it booted up normally. Does anyone know why this problem would intermittently happen? Thank you for all your help!

[xeromist]

It could be some sort of loose connection but my money is on the drive's control board failing. I would make sure to back up anything important and keep an eye on it for any symptoms.

[Retired]

Oh man, the drive’s control board is failing? That sounds pretty serious . Is there a way to fix it via software? Or will I have to send it back to ASUS? Also, do you know if they’ll let me just send the HD back, or do they want the whole computer haha.

And thank you so much for your reply! It means a lot. I was so lost.

[xeromist]

I can't guarantee that is the issue but it can be one of the symptoms. Because you can't be absolutely sure that is the issue, and ASUS would do their own diagnostics, you would have to send the whole unit in. First, grab a program called HDTune and run some tests with it. See if you can confirm anything that way. Even if you can't fix the problem yourself it would help in setting up an RMA.

[Retired]

Ok thanks for your advice. I’ll be sure to run HDTunes when I get home today.

Has anyone had any experience with Asus RMA’s? How long do they usually take?

[Retired]

:(. i ran HDTunes and SeaTools, and both report back to me with no errors.

but right before this, i had to try like 10 times to get my computer to even boot windows properly. it kept saying errors with status 0xc00000e9. or that there was no bootable drive found. and sometimes just plain disc read error.

[xeromist]

Well, SMART diagnostics won't always find controller failures but given how you are describing the problem I don't think it matters. Someone is going to have to open it up and do a physical inspection. If it is really that intermittent then there should not be a problem for them to duplicate the issue if you send it in. RMA time can vary so I would make sure to get copies of anything important first.