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ASUS G75VW - No POST, black screen, motherboard replacement didn't fix

Sil3nt611
Level 7
I work at a local computer repair shop. A guy brought in a G75VW because it wouldn't POST. Just a black screen. After doing some searching with finding a lot of issues similar to this one and based on my own testing I deemed it a bad motherboard. The customer decided to go ahead and buy a new one and abandoned this one at the shop to get recycled. I figured it'd be worth throwing $200 into a working motherboard replacement to get a pretty awesome laptop for myself rather than just recycling it so I took it home and ordered a motherboard with the exact same numbers as what was on the original from eBay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/331518205602?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT I got it today and swapped them out but I get the exact same set of problems I had with the original mobo...

What it does is when I have the battery in I can push the power button and the power light on the button and front will light up as well as the numlock light. If I have the battery out and plug in the power cable it will turn on the computer without me pressing the power button. Screen and screen backlight stay off. I have shined a light into the screen to see if the blacklight might have gone out. When the customer's hard drive was still in it it showed no signs that Windows was booting up. If I hold the power button after it turns on, no matter how long I hold the button the power will not shut off. External monitor shows nothing. I have reset the BIOS on both boards by pulling all power sources and pulling the BIOS battery for 30 mins. I have tried one stick of ram at a time in multiple slots, tested every single stick one at a time on my working laptop, pulled all ram to see if it would do any kind of beep code. I even went so far as to test if the LCD screen on my current 15" ASUS laptop might just work with it. The cable did plug in, but it did the same thing, no POST, black screen, just lights. Tried the 17" screen on the 15" laptop and the laptop would power on for a second and shut off. Seems like they just aren't compatible rather than that being the problem, but it was a test I figured wouldn't hurt to try.

I have also tried running it without the video card installed. An Alienware laptop we had in the shop last year had an issue with the video card and it had integrated graphics and a modular card so I kinda figured this one would as well. When the modular card was removed, the video would go over the integrated graphics so you'd still at least get video. Maybe that's not the case here and you need a video card installed to get video. But if the video card is the issue then until I buy a video card to test out that theory I'm not really sure.

So that's my set of circumstances and tests I've done to try and revive this laptop. I was saying if the motherboard doesn't fix the issue I'd try buying a video card next to test it, but I don't want to keep throwing money into a dead laptop. So anyone that has seen these set of circumstances and has a definite answer on what fixed it, let me know. I know it's a possibility I got another bad motherboard, although a seller with decent reputation tends to make sure their products work. Aside from the video card, only 2 other things it could be are the LCD screen and the CPU. LCD screen doesn't seem likely, I'd think it would work with an external screen and the unresponsiveness of the whole thing certainly doesn't point me to say the screen is the issue. If it's the CPU I'll likely just scrap this project as the CPU cost used is around $500 on eBay. Unfortunately laptop parts are a little less standardized and available for quick swap testing like desktop parts are so I can't just go and grab a working video card and test it out, and I'm not gonna have a $500 mobile i7 collecting dust on a shelf...
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11 REPLIES 11

Nahrga
Level 10
Before buying a new motherboard you should have tried out this method below, however, you could still try it out on both motherboards to be sure:

1. Download the G75VW BIOS from here: http://www.asus.com/ROG_ROG/G75VW/HelpDesk_Download/ (Doesn't have to be the newest version).
2. Rename the G75VW BIOS file to G75VW.BIN and copy it to your C:/ drive. (You may have to use another PC to do this).
3. Hold down CTRL+HOME keys as you press the power button (release power button after it powers on) and keep holding CTRL+HOME until you see the BIOS flash proceeding on the screen. (Flash process shouldn't take more than 5 minutes).

This should fix a potential BIOS issue. I found this solution from this thread: http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?31410-No-video-g75-vw-bios-restore-to-default


If this still doesn't help I would guess it could be the GPU, but since you can't force it to shut down by holding the power button it sure sounds like a motherboard/BIOS problem. I hope you find a solution 🙂

EDIT: Fixed second link

Sil3nt611
Level 7
That second link in your post is broken.

I tried the ctrl+home buttons on power on. Held them for a good 30 seconds or more and nothing came up. Doesn't seem like the hard drive spins up when it's in the hard drive bay. It does spin up when I have it plugged into a USB adapter. It's just a standard 2.5" laptop hard drive. I had the file on the drive, but it doesn't do much good if it never goes into the flash utility. I only tried this on the refurb mobo for now. I'll try it probably tonight on the original.

I did find one instance where the GPU caused the mobo to not POST and a new GPU fixed it. Not a whole lot of detail on that one as to what the exact circumstances were though.

If I leave the computer on for awhile the GPU chip gets warm (from touching the heatsink on it), but no fans ever come on that I ever saw.

I went ahead and purchased a new video card. Gonna have to do a little waiting on receiving it though since it's coming from China. I didn't really feel to pay the extra cost to get one from the US... Once I get it I'll test it on both motherboards. Hopefully that solves the issue. I will post back here with results. Until then let me know of any other suggestions.

Sil3nt611 wrote:
I went ahead and purchased a new video card. Gonna have to do a little waiting on receiving it though since it's coming from China. I didn't really feel to pay the extra cost to get one from the US... Once I get it I'll test it on both motherboards. Hopefully that solves the issue. I will post back here with results. Until then let me know of any other suggestions.


Hello,
I work for a local computer repair services shop, as well. A customer brought in a G73S gaming laptop with the same issue, black screen. We ordered a new video card and installed it, it did not work. We just ordered the motherboard from China and received it yesterday, I installed it and now it is not even turning on. Needless to say, its a frustrating situation. I am sitting here thinking about what is next, I am going to open it up, again, and make sure all is connected and make sure I did not miss anything but I doubt it, I have taken apart and put back this computer so many times, I could do it in my sleep. I just wanted to give you my experience with this and see if we can try to find the solution together.
Thanks
Shari

sydn2u wrote:
Hello,
I work for a local computer repair services shop, as well. A customer brought in a G73S gaming laptop with the same issue, black screen. We ordered a new video card and installed it, it did not work. We just ordered the motherboard from China and received it yesterday, I installed it and now it is not even turning on. Needless to say, its a frustrating situation. I am sitting here thinking about what is next, I am going to open it up, again, and make sure all is connected and make sure I did not miss anything but I doubt it, I have taken apart and put back this computer so many times, I could do it in my sleep. I just wanted to give you my experience with this and see if we can try to find the solution together.
Thanks
Shari


This is kinda why we recommend not fixing the computer if it's suspected a motherboard issue at my shop. Sometimes it's not a sure thing and then we have to spend more money figuring it out. Granted, most of the time we get el-cheapo laptops in where spending $200+ on the motherboard plus labor is pretty much what they spent on it new so that rules that option out most of the time anyway. But the guy that had this one didn't bat an eye to buying a new laptop so that made it easy for us.

That being said, I thought for sure this was a motherboard issue with nothing indicating at all that it was doing anything. I did test my current working ASUS laptop without the RAM in it just to see if it would do some sort of indication that it had no RAM, but it had no beep or blink codes of any kind... So that kinda makes it incredibly difficult to actually definitively see what the problem is. At least with desktops they usually have a light, beep, or LCD screen code on it and the parts are easily swappable with parts we have lying around the shop to do some troubleshooting, but with laptops that don't tell you what's wrong you have to order a part, wait for it to ship from China, figure out it's not the problem...

For you, have you tried testing the RAM in a different computer? Have you tried different RAM in that ASUS? There's really not much else to these... The parts that would really be causing it not to POST would be the mobo, RAM, video card, or CPU. My RAM checks out. Tried 1 stick in all 4 slots with the same results on both mobos. Tried it with the bare minimum attached. Basically just the screen, one stick of ram, graphics card, cpu, and power button board. Any other boards, hardware, and non essential stuff for it to POST was left unattached. Still the same symptoms. I don't bother putting it all back together BTW, that takes up a lot of time put put everything together just to test if it will POST. I just get it in there good enough to where it should POST with everything essential connected. Saves a lot of time from having to take it apart and put it together again.

What lights are on when you turn yours on? Is it the same set of symptoms? Mine is that it turns on with the power button when on battery. It turns on automatically when plugged in to the AC power without pressing the power button. Power lights on the button and front turn on as well as the num lock light on front. With the keyboard attached it will not turn off the numlock and caps lock does nothing. Trying to turn off the laptop by holding the power button does nothing. I think I've held it for 30-45 seconds once and it never turned off. No fans turn on that I ever noticed. If I leave it on long enough the outside of the video card heatsink is warm to touch but I don't believe the CPU is. I found nothing specific on my set of symptoms, specifically about the numlock light (which could be the key to a code but there's no documentation I have been able to find...)

If it's not my graphics card it's gotta be the cpu...which is honestly probably more than I'm willing to spend on a hunch for a dead laptop even if it is the last link in the chain. I'm already in this nearly $400 of my own money. If the graphics card works I'm hoping I can resell the refurb motherboard fast-ish for most of what I bought it for to recoup some of that cost, but I don't think I want to put anymore money into it than what I got now.

For now I've got it in a box waiting for the graphics card to ship from China which I probably shouldn't expect to get here until at least the week of the 27th... But since it's sitting around waiting I could do some more testing just to make myself crazier and absolutely make sure nothing I do will make it POST. 😛

I will update this thread when I do get the graphics card on whether or not it worked but it just won't be until I get it.

Update: The motherboard we received from China was damaged or was worked on. We tried it and it did not work. We put the old motherboard in and the new video card again, we tried this twice before with no success but this time, it worked! However, we could only get an image on an external monitor, not the laptop screen. So we have now a new LCD screen and I am getting ready to finish installing it. I will let you know if this works. Ill update post later today.

I installed the new screen and it boots into windows but the image is very faint. It feels like we will never get this thing operating right, HA. Any ideas on why it is doing this with the faint screen? I can see the Windows login screen. Let me know if you have any ideas. This is a customers laptop and he has been patient while we try out this different stuff on it.

Sil3nt611
Level 7
Another update...

I got bored and tried to retest it without the graphics card installed. I don't remember exactly what happened when I tested this the first time around but I believe it was the same as always. Now it powers on with the fans on full blast and I can hold the power button to shut it off. Only the power light is lit. So without the graphics card installed I do get a different set of circumstances. I pulled the CPU again just to check for any signs of damage to it (burns, bent/broken pins) and it looked fine so I repasted it and put it back on.

I should be getting my new graphics card in the next 2 days hopefully. According to the tracking info it's made it to my city finally. So once I get that and install it I will update again.

Sil3nt611
Level 7
Well I got it working.

I got the graphics card the other day and installed it to the refurb motherboard. It did act differently. Basically just fans running and no video on screen or external monitor. Switched to the original motherboard with the new graphics card and suddenly I get a blue screen. So I try an external monitor and it boots to the BIOS. Try everything I can to get it working on the screen, but it's just blue. I remember we had a 17.3" screen of the same make at work we were trying to resell and it's gotta be the screen or video cable. So I grabbed that from work yesterday and plugged it in. It booted right to the BIOS on the screen.

So the basic problem on mine was the graphics card and the screen either died while testing it or when the video card died. The refurb motherboard wasn't working. I tried it again later to make sure it wasn't working with all the same hardware and then initiated a return on that one so I could make my money back on it.

Is your new screen really new? Maybe the screen still has issues. Either that or maybe the video cable has issues.