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ASUS TUF FA706IU.316 - NEW UBER issue, notebook is unusable! Black screen freezes

Afamocc
Level 7
Hello all!

I am writing to you here as a last resort, before sending the computer back to Asus tech assistance...

The issue has gotten worse over the last month and the notebook is really unusable.

I bought this notebook last January. 2 months in I added a 2nd RAM slot and changed the wifi card. No issues whatsoever, I run MemTest86 as soon after installing that RAM, all was OK.

At a certain point after summer, random freezes started happening. At first, sporadic, but then they started getting more and more frequent.
Within the last month, I am getting like 2 freezes per day.

The freezes are like this: the screen goes black. No connected device works. Stop. The fan keeps working normally, no other hardware sound anomalies.
It appears at random: while web browsing, or playing, or just browsing through folders. Sometimes I go to pee, leave the notebook as it is, and when I come back it's black.

I've read the top post in the forum, about the freezes, but my situation is different: in my case, the notebook doesn't start working again after a couple of seconds.
It's just black. I tried the solution in the pinned post about the freezes, even though the situation is different from me - what happened is, instead of a black frozen screen, I get a screen frozen stuck at the moment of the freeze (ie webpage, game...).

So I thought it was a display driver issue, but what boggles me is that the notebook is not responding in any way - for example, when clicking BLOC MAIUSC, the red light doesn't turn on or off! I can't interact in any way, I just keep the power button pressed to force a restart.

What I tried:
- Memtest for RAM again: all OK
- Windows RAM tester: all OK
- Testing AMD internal VGA and NVIDIA VGA: all ok
- Used many times the sfc/scannow and related repair commands for system files: all OK
- Run antivirus scan (MS defender), antimalware too (MBytes): all OK
- Reverting drivers to original ASUS ones (I recall I did reinstall all of them): issue still here, maybe it changes a bit like described above (frozen screen instead of black frozen).

Sometimes, and only a few times, in the last months I've got a ntoskrnl.exe bsod, which would be a driver issue...

I'm turning to you as my last hope! :confused:
What advice can you give me? I attach a n event, system and driver report using K/sky Get System Info, if you think any other report could be useful, please tell me and I will upload it!

Update 02/01: yesterday I installed all latest AMD software from their website. Just now, I got BSOD "IRQL not less or equal".
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16 REPLIES 16

Afamocc
Level 7
Up - anyone able to help?

cl-Albert
US Customer Loyalty Agent
Welcome to the forums!

No idea if this will make a difference, but memory problems can be tricky in my opinion and do not expect memory testing programs will catch all the problems, so if it makes sense, would want to remove the memory upgrade as well as wireless card upgrade if possible and see if the problems re-occur just to confirm the problem is not related to those two items.

Repair normally needs to catch the problem to fix it though, so if you have a good way to make the problem show up, make sure you let repair know if you go that route.

Afamocc
Level 7
Hello Albert! Thanks for the answer 🙂
I though the same thing as you, but I didn't want to do the upgrade removal because I need them, and also because I had those for many months before these issues started appearing...I highly suspect it is a software issue, as I see many users online with similar freezes, although mine appears to be more "hardcore" as the freeze doesn't go away after a few seconds / minutes, or after re-plugging AC.

What I'm trying now, as I've noticed into the event viewer a pattern for "Faulting application name: cpumetricsserver.exe", is to use the "Adrenalin 21.12.1 Optional" (non-WHQL) drivers for the processor, as I saw some users online talking about this fix for a similar issue.

I have the drivers since yesterday, no fault yet, but I used the PC for a small time, so I'll let you know how it goes for the next days.
If I don't see a freeze or BSOD within a week, I'd say it was that...I wanna be optimistic 😛

Afamocc wrote:
Hello Albert! Thanks for the answer 🙂
I though the same thing as you, but I didn't want to do the upgrade removal because I need them, and also because I had those for many months before these issues started appearing...I highly suspect it is a software issue, as I see many users online with similar freezes, although mine appears to be more "hardcore" as the freeze doesn't go away after a few seconds / minutes, or after re-plugging AC.

What I'm trying now, as I've noticed into the event viewer a pattern for "Faulting application name: cpumetricsserver.exe", is to use the "Adrenalin 21.12.1 Optional" (non-WHQL) drivers for the processor, as I saw some users online talking about this fix for a similar issue.

I have the drivers since yesterday, no fault yet, but I used the PC for a small time, so I'll let you know how it goes for the next days.
If I don't see a freeze or BSOD within a week, I'd say it was that...I wanna be optimistic 😛


Update: random freezes still happening, despite changing the drivers. Tried switching to another brozers (from Firefox to Opera), still the same.
Now I have tried disabling the 60% battery limit I had set up in MYASUS app. I'll let you know. I remember I set that up some time after the purchase...

PS. What's strange is that crashes NEVER happen while gaming, even under super heavy loads, fan, ram, CPU and VGA at max!
Only randomly when using the notebook.

cl-Albert
US Customer Loyalty Agent
Afamocc wrote:

PS. What's strange is that crashes NEVER happen while gaming, even under super heavy loads, fan, ram, CPU and VGA at max!
Only randomly when using the notebook.


Assume the Nvidia graphics is used during heavy graphics loading and guessing there may be some kind of software or driver issue when the graphics is switching between Nvidia and AMD graphics which I may be wrong about.

Anyway, if you haven't already tried it, thought you may want to rollback to the latest AMD graphics and chipset drivers as well as the latest Nvidia driver on the ASUS download page to compare.
Below is the link from our global page.

https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Gaming/TUF-Gaming/ASUS-TUF-Gaming-A17/HelpDesk_Download/

You may have seen the sticky thread below related to the AMD graphics driver version.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?120621-TUF-A17-FA706IU-Freezing-Issues-Fixed

Afamocc
Level 7
Yes I rolled back to
AMD Graphics, Chipset Driver
Version V26.20.14048.2
2020/05/27
We'll see how It goes...
If It doesn't work I'll roll back NVIDIA as well, but honestly I'm never using NVIDIA VGA when it is crashing.

Afamocc
Level 7
I reinstalled windows - issues persists, even though it lasted an entire day without errors.
It failed me with a minidump that I attach / I was not at the PC when it happned.
I now installed BIOS update only from ASUS website, version 316.

xeromist
Moderator
If/when you decide to send the laptop to ASUS I would highly recommend restoring everything to stock. If they need to replace your machine or significant portions of it you don't want your upgrades to get lost.
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

xeromist wrote:
If/when you decide to send the laptop to ASUS I would highly recommend restoring everything to stock. If they need to replace your machine or significant portions of it you don't want your upgrades to get lost.


Yeah, the issue is I don't want to be without laptop for (months?) while I send the laptop to assistance...I'm trying everything because it looks like a software issue really...now running on AMD website drivers Adrenalin 22.1.2 Optional (WHQL) for chipset and integrated graphics, let's see how it goes...could it be a defective CPU unit if it was HW issue? Or HDD? But I get no errors whasoever...