Help : I'm not sure if this is a problem or not

[clarkbell27]

I have only had my ROG G551JM for 3 months, yesterday morning as I was starting up my computer there's this weird flash that showed up, I'm not sure if I should consider it a problem or not because it's only been visible during the boot up, other than that there are no other signs of it affecting the performance of my computer or at least not yet. So, I want to ask the experts here that if it's a problem I should attend to ASAP or not.



This is the thing that flashes for one second in between the ROG logo during the boot up and the login screen of Windows 8.1

Note: The computer is well taken care of, never been dropped even once, or been physically hit or damaged . The computer has just been used for normal school stuff and gaming such as League of Legends and World of Warcraft: Warlords Of Draenor. It's also kept dust free, and cleaned everyday. Every week, it is maintained with an antivirus scan (avira), antimalware (malwarebytes), and kept cookie free (since I'm paranoid like that) by using incognito all the time. All drivers are updated too! CCleaner with cleaning of cachce and registry is often checked and done too every 2 weeks.

[clockworksatan]

Normally when you see lines of any type that shouldn't normally be there, it's down to a fault with either the monitor or graphics card. However, I'd rule the graphics card out in this case as normally when you see lines on startup with a faulty GPU, Windows will start but your screen would be completely blank so I'd say that you've either got a slightly faulty display or an odd windows glitch. It could, of course, be down to several other things, but it's best to start with the simple and potentially obvious ones.

Here are a couple of things to try:

1) If you can, connect your laptop to an external display (such as a Full-HD TV or monitor) and boot it up; if you DON'T see the lines, it's likely to be a fault with your laptop's screen and it would be best to RMA it. If you DO see the lines it could either be the beginnings of a fault with your GPU or just an odd Windows glitch.

2) Try playing about with the resolution of your screen and switch down to the lowest it can go and progressively work through the resolutions until you're back at 1920x1080 and see if the lines appear on any of the lower resolutions - if they do I'd definitely RMA it as it could get worse over time.

Small caveat: I googled the issue you're having and nearly all of the results that come back were down to faulty graphics cards. The other guys on here might have some other suggestions, but it wouldn't do any harm to get in touch with Asus in the meantime to see what they say as they'll run you through some extra troubleshooting.