ASUS laptop screen flickering! so freaking annoying!

[spikerS]

Alright, so this was happening for awhile. Continually got worse and worse, but didn't happen all the time. Then one day, the laptop would not even turn on!

Sent it in under warranty, and found out the MOBO crapped out.

Got it back this morning, and lo and behold, it is still doing it.

in case you are wondering what "it" is:

http://s14.photobucket.com/user/Snorakk/media/20130415_172835_zpsc53f228f.mp4.html

does anyone know why my laptop is doing this? I am leaning towards something software or setting related, but who knows, maybe the video card is on the way out too...

Product Specs:
ASUS K75DE
http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/K75DE/#specifications

running windows 8

[Seth1968]

That's too bad as ASUS normally makes excellent quality computers.

You first need to connect the laptop to an external monitor. If the external monitor flickers, then you have a mobo problem.

If it doesn't flicker, then there's a problem with the laptop's screen. That would normally mean the lcd to mobo connection, or the lcd's inverter.

[spikerS]

see, it only happens under load, and if it is JUST the web, it is almost non existant. If I goto youtube or something that is going to put a bit of strain on it, it gets absolutely impossible to do anything.

[Seth1968]

Originally posted by spikers
see, it only happens under load, and if it is JUST the web, it is almost non existant. If I goto youtube or something that is going to put a bit of strain on it, it gets absolutely impossible to do anything.

That means it's a little more complicated, as that can be caused by a software or hardware issue. Either way, the best troubleshooting step at this point, is to test the laptop with an external monitor. If that's not possible at this time, then see if the problem occurs in Safe Mode With Networking.

[Cos]

.

[Idiot Stick]

+1 to the plug it into an external monitor and try it again.

Does the laptop get stupidly hot? Even if its in one specific case.

I've seen cases like this were the LCD's inverter card (Most LCD's these days have them built in) causes it.

Could also be the backlight of the LCD panel going on it (Not an actual light, just a term). When the screen goes dark/black, is there an extremely faint picture of whatever you were doing in the backround?

Might even be the ribbon cable going from the board to the monitor. Not sure how they are run in those but again, I have seen them go bad too.

At this point I wouldn't be pointing fingers at the board, especially how it was changed and still doing the EXACT same thing. Tough case to sell that it's a defective board with same symptoms.

Regardless, you mentioned you have warranty, so call'm back up and tell them exactly what its doing. Tell them the outcome of your test with an external monitor, and make sure they know they've already changed the mobo. No point wasting your time trying to PD the system, thats why you paid for a warranty.


EDIT: Make sure all your drivers and BIOS levels are up to snuff. Strange things can be fixed with driver/BIOS level updates.

[Seth1968]

Originally posted by Idiot Stick
Regardless, you mentioned you have warranty, so call'm back up and tell them exactly what its doing. Tell them the outcome of your test with an external monitor, and make sure they know they've already changed the mobo. No point wasting your time trying to PD the system, thats why you paid for a warranty.


If the issue is indeed being caused by overheating (likely at this point), that may or not be a warranty repair. For example, defective software can cause high load and overheating. If that's the case, then Spikers would likely be charged a fee. That's why it would be a good idea to first determine the actual cause of the problem.

Spikers,

While the issue is occuring, open Task Manager. What is the CPU usage?

Does the cooling fan get louder when this happens. Heck, are you hearing the fan at all?

[Seth1968]

^ You can also download Speedfan to monitor the temps.

[firebane]

I have seen stock Asus G71/73 laptops overheat right out of the factory. Its totally not uncommon.

I have a buddy who worked for Asus for some time I'll pass this video along to him and see what he says for you.

[spikerS]

no, I have never heard the fan kick in on this laptop.

didn't seem to do it over HDMI to the TV, but then I was having a hard time getting it to replicate again.

I just said fuck it, I have a couple videos of this happening, and I think one of the dual video cards is toast. I just got back from Best Buy again and dropped it off for them to send it back to ASUS. The guy asked me to show him the issue and of course I could not replicate it, but I didn't have it plugged in, so I think it was on the other video card. However, I showed him 2 of the videos I had of this happening, and he stopped questioning it, and immediately said it was hardware and would have to be sent back to ASUS again.

So, off it goes to ASUS, AGAIN! :banghead:

I swore off ASUS when SATA hard drives came out, and I had my own computer shop. I used to solely use Gigabyte mobos, but the customer asked for an ASUS setup. no biggie, until I found out that they required a 3.5" drive for a boot disk as in the bios, you could not select a cdrom boot priority until windows was installed. And this was all confirmed when I called ASUS support.

That was 8 years ago, and I swore to never buy an ASUS product after that.

I should have stuck with that. LOL

[spikerS]

Originally posted by firebane
I have seen stock Asus G71/73 laptops overheat right out of the factory. Its totally not uncommon.

I have a buddy who worked for Asus for some time I'll pass this video along to him and see what he says for you.

Thanks man, would be interesting to see what they have to say.

[spikerS]

Originally posted by Cos
If it is under a lot of load, heat soak on the GPU?

And no, there is def no issue with heatsoak, as everything is at most, warm to the touch. My old HP almost gets nucular to the touch and still runs fine.

[firebane]

Did you send this unit away yet? My buddy says he'd take a look at it for you if you like. He says it could either be faulty cable or inverter and I agree with him.

Send me a pm if your interested.

[spikerS]

yeah, it is sent away, just waiting to hear back again.

[codetrap]

This might be a stupid question. But did the problem ever occur when you were running on battery alone? If it was only happening while plugged into the power brick, it's quite possible that it was the brick failing. I've seen that type of symptom before, and it was puzzling as we could never replicate in the lab, but it happened when the laptop was docked. We replaced everything out of known good stock except the power supply. When we did that, the problem was resolved.