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ASUS UX303lb dying on me (a month after purchase)

haihane
Level 13
hi, i don't know where to post this yet, but this seemed to be the correct place, so trying my luck here.
on 13th of November 2015, i purchased an ASUS UX303lb from a local computer shop. it came with windows 8 (or was it windows 8.1) ? which i thoroughly dislike (i was an user of windows 7 for quite a long time, then recently upgraded to windows 10 for free). upon obtaining the laptop i upgraded it to windows 10 (free upgrade this year!).

when the pc was done upgrading, i took the extra step to download the updated drivers (win10 x64) for my laptop and proceeded to reset the pc (in order to ensure a clean installation) then installing the win10 x64 drivers. everything worked great for a while.

on the 15th december 2015, i took the laptop along with me to Singapore for an errand (the laptop still worked). when i came back to indonesia, the laptop still worked. until i decided to restart the PC. that's where the problem started:
1. the laptop outright stuck at the boot logo "ASUS, in search of incredible" along with spinning circular dots thing below.
2. i didn't think too much of it, maybe it was applying updates. waited for +- 5 minutes. HDD led was still lighting up.
3. i started feeling something might be wrong, powered off the laptop and powered it back on. the resulting boot screen still lingered. i noticed i could see the mouse cursor and move it, but the screen outright won't go into login.
4. after more and more power off - power on cycle, the laptop screen finally lit up (with every powerup i tried hitting del button, or F2 button - googled how to go into bios for ASUS laptop, then trying F8 button - on older windows versions, F8 button brought up advanced startup options). it showed me an option to reset my pc.
4.1. ok probably by some sheer dumb luck, the OS is corrupted, so i picked that option and left it alone while i went out for late lunch.
5. when i came back and looked at the laptop, the laptop told me the reset was unsuccessful.
6. i picked continue windows as is, to no avail. instead, the problem became worse.
6.1. remember when i said originally i could see the "ASUS in search of incredible" + spinning dots? now there's only "ASUS in search of incredible" without the spinning dots. if i left it alone, the laptop would just repeat restart on its own.


i've registered this ASUS laptop within 3 days from the date of purchase in my own account in this page: https://account.asus.com/product_list.aspx?lang=en-us. the laptop is still sitting there on my desk on a restart loop at the time of me typing this. i can make a youtube video of what it looks like right now upon request (or maybe i'll do it later as a followup post).

i kept all the boxes, the purchase receipt. my question is then:
A. do i send this laptop to where i purchased it? or
B. do i pursue a RMA directly from ASUS? can i get any help as what to do from now on?
B.1. if i pursue a RMA, what should i look out for? the laptop is almost brand new. i paid IDR 14,400,000 for this, and you can be damn sure care for it damn well. not a single scratch yet. i've read cases of ROG Laptops going into RMA and coming back oily or improperly handled or with additional scratches not originally caused by the owner. what should i do to prove i sent the laptop in its prime condition (would pictures suffice? or do i have to take a 360* video)?


by this time i've simply turned off the laptop (it's just doing a restart loop all the time anyway).
advices please?
no siggy, saw stuff that made me sad.
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3 REPLIES 3

cl-Albert
US Customer Loyalty Agent
haihane wrote:

i kept all the boxes, the purchase receipt. my question is then:
A. do i send this laptop to where i purchased it? or
B. do i pursue a RMA directly from ASUS? can i get any help as what to do from now on?
B.1. if i pursue a RMA, what should i look out for? the laptop is almost brand new. i paid IDR 14,400,000 for this, and you can be damn sure care for it damn well. not a single scratch yet. i've read cases of ROG Laptops going into RMA and coming back oily or improperly handled or with additional scratches not originally caused by the owner. what should i do to prove i sent the laptop in its prime condition (would pictures suffice? or do i have to take a 360* video)?


If you haven't seen it already, check the "ASUS Worldwide RMA Guide" sticky thread and let us know if you have any questions.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?4804-ASUS-Worldwide-RMA-Guide


It may be too late to return or exchange the unit through your store, but you may want to double-check.

Otherwise, contact your local ASUS support about setting up an RMA if necessary, but hoping you will be able to find a way to solve it on your end without sending it back.

Doesn't sound good to me if the reset did not go through successfully, but have you tried going into safe mode, or using system restore to try to set the system back to an earlier date if you're not too worried about losing data?

Good luck!

cl-Albert wrote:
If you haven't seen it already, check the "ASUS Worldwide RMA Guide" sticky thread and let us know if you have any questions.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?4804-ASUS-Worldwide-RMA-Guide


i'll follow the template format as in from the Worldwide RMA Guide:

Full model name under the notebook (usually next to the serial number): UX303L Notebook PC
on purchase receipt, the model is listed as: ASUS UX303lb R4043H

Bios version: 206

CPU: Intel (R) Core (TM) i7-5500U CPU @ 2.4 GHz

Memory amount in GB: 8GB

GPU: Intel HD Graphics + Nvidia GeForce 940M (this is as much as i could remember since i couldn't get into windows)

SSD/HDDs/Optical drives:
Serial ATA Port 0: HGST HTS541010A7E630
Serial ATA Port 1: KINGSTON RBU-SMSM151S32

AC Adapter: ADP-65DW C (Original Adapter that came with the box)

Operating system: Original ASUS factory image or clean install? Windows 10 x64 via upgrade rights. originally windows 8.1 x64 when i purchased it.
i did a backup of the win8.1 OS before upgrading (failsafe) which should still be inside the harddrive somewhere. then another backup for Win10x64 clean slate version (after it successfully updated and working flawlessly).

Microsoft Activated yes/no? yes.

Drivers Installed (include version and especially any non-ASUS approved notebook drivers): nearly all Windows10 64 bits drivers from this page.
maybe, just maybe i went and grabbed the Nvidia WHQL drivers from nvidia site for the 940M.

additional info:
during the windows10 drivers install, i took special care in the order of driver installation: Chipset driver install -> Restart -> Audio driver install -> Restart -> Intel Graphics driver install -> Restart -> Nvidia WHQL driver install -> Restart -> afterwards i kinda forgot the exact order of install.

what i do remember during these windows10 drivers installs: the system seemed to restart slowly (if compared to the original win8.1 that came with the laptop), but afterwards i think i installed a driver (i couldn't remember the driver name, but it's from the UX303LB download page) during the final few install steps and the system restarted very quickly. that should be the SSD caching driver which made reboots a snap. proceeded to make a system image backup and regarded it as clean slate windows10 backup.


Any third Party temp/voltage software installed: If you mean any overclocking software, then No. If you mean monitoring software, yes, HWinfo64.

System Overclocked (provide details)? No. the system is too new and too precious to be attempting any overclock on it. as far as i know, i don't even overclock on my own main gaming desktop PC.

Any hardware upgraded? No. i didn't even know how to even if i wanted.


Issue (In addition to the problem description please let us know if the problems started recently and if you remember changing anything around the same time, etc.)
most of the problems is as outlined as the first post.

the problem started on the 17th December 2015m around 3-4 p.m. GMT +8. i was using the laptop to un-pair and re-pair the Logitech Unifying Receiver (using logitech unifying software) using the laptop. after i was done pairing, i plugged out the receiver and plugged it to my main desktop. restarted the laptop, and that's when the problem started happening.

one thing particularly concerns me though, the laptop is my daily driver (when outside). it contains my Credit Card information, saved forms and passwords. is there a way to flush the personal out before i send it back to the shop tomorrow (or when i decide to RMA) ? i don't mind losing the data inside the HDD, but i'd love to make sure my passwords and CC doesn't get stolen away.



It may be too late to return or exchange the unit through your store, but you may want to double-check.

yeah, i'll go and ask the shop first thing in the morning tomorrow.


Otherwise, contact your local ASUS support about setting up an RMA if necessary, but hoping you will be able to find a way to solve it on your end without sending it back.

Thank you.

please don't think i'm being condescending, but rather just speaking my mind here: i started thinking, it's a laptop. i have a suspicion that something (hardware wise) got borked inside. i could DIY fix my desktop pc via method of elimination, i can't do the same for this laptop. common sense told me to not try anything funny to it or risk voiding the warranty i have.



Doesn't sound good to me if the reset did not go through successfully, but have you tried going into safe mode, or using system restore to try to set the system back to an earlier date if you're not too worried about losing data?


Good luck!

i would if i could, but i could only go into BIOS (Which still seem to work, thankfully).
after i chose to reset the PC, and it failed, then after a restart, it's as if the entire windows is gone.

losing the data is fine for me, password theft is not though.
thanks. Youtube video coming up soon. it's still uploading.

would you rather i post it here or send the youtube link to you via PM?
no siggy, saw stuff that made me sad.

cl-Albert
US Customer Loyalty Agent
Hi,

Thanks for filling out the feedback form and providing the video although if you want to share the video with others, you may actually want to hide your serial number in case someone else tries to claim it as their own (I may worry too much, but doesn't hurt to be safe?).

Yes, don't know if there is too much more that you can do although it's kind of a good sign that you can still get into the bios and see the hard drives listed.
Assume you did not create a USB back-up of your Win8.1 recovery partition, but if you get Win8.1 working again later on it, it's something you may want to try as below although it would not help this time if there is a hardware problem.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?40548-ASUS-Backtracker-and-Backing-up-your-ASUS-factory-Wi...

Not sure how much you want to trust the repair office, but expect they will tell you that your data will be kept secure if you want to discuss with them.
If you have a utility to wipe the hard drive that you can run from USB though, it's something to consider which you might also want to discuss with the repair office if you are talking with them already just to make sure they don't have any concerns about it.

Yes, although there are more things you can try (which may not help?), thought you may just want to look into getting it taken care of under warranty instead to save you the trouble and also avoiding getting into any problems with warranty.

If anybody else has any good ideas, hopefully they will let us know.