I run the 290.53 BETA NVIDIA driver on my G74SX-A1 and I've observed some of the same effects in my clean Windows 7 instance. I have my lid configured to shut down the system when closed.

1) I've had the few icons on my laptop desktop shift sides from left to right and back again on alternate startups.

2) My external monitor, attached via VGA port and configured as an extended desktop, will sometimes not be detected on startup, leaving only the laptop display in Screen Resolution.

3) When power management turns the display off after the configured 10 minutes of no keyboard/touchpad activity, the right side of the external desktop shifts to the left about 2.5", leaving a vertical black band on the right side, reducing my display real estate by about 5%. A 3/8" thick red vertical stripe forms the right edge of the display.

With the exception of the desktop icon shift on the laptop display, the external monitor problems can be remedied by clicking on the "Detect" button in "Control Panel - Screen Resolution".

When I ran the 290.36 BETA NVIDIA driver on this instance, the resolution of the external monitor would sometimes be 1024x768 instead of the 1920x1080 native resolution I configured or would not be detected on startup. Resolution of this issue was the same - click the "Detect" button in Screen Resolution.

I believe these video issues and those you report are caused by the NVIDIA drivers and not an ASUS issue. My ASUS Factory Windows 7 instance with the stock NVIDIA 268.xx driver does not exhibit any of these behaviors.

I believe these more recent NVIDIA drivers have issues when interacting with Windows 7 power management, based on the issues I experience when my laptop display powers off, and your issue when you close the lid (which likely also powers off your laptop display).

Yes, I forgot to mention. Maybe, I think, maybe this is related to some external TV's, because only after connecting it via HDMI did I notice this problem, months ago. But still, not sure. I know it's not an ASUS-related problem, more of a NVidia driver issue, but I was hoping someone has a solution.

I recommend posting on the NVIDIA forum. They have Official threads to report problems with each BETA driver version.

@ManuelG of NVIDIA Technical Support over at the NVIDIA forum does a good job of answering posts on the "Official Driver Feedback" threads. He gets a lot of hostile posters too!

just when i thought im having this issue alone on my G74 sample using 290.53 BETA NVIDIA

Reverted back to old driver, issue gone.