Please sanity-check my laptop fix plan

I have an Asus G73 bought from Best Buy in June last year (can’t remember precise model number as I am at work). It has been bloody awesome and eaten up every task and game I have thrown at it.

…but last week I had a catalyst driver update suggested to me (perhaps thanks to Steam). I tried to apply it but it failed (uninstalling a MS C++ revision resolves the cancelled install, go figure) although I think it did install either new drivers or the CCC before giving up.

Anyway, a week later and I am getting either a BSOD, a GSOD, vertical or horizontal lines or a plain monitor shutdown 30 seconds to five minutes into games. The BSOD has mentioned video driver crashing and failing to restart and the issue being with an ATI dll.

So I went and uninstalled all the ATI vid card stuff, scrubbed the drive of drivers, reinstalled (after the C++ fix) and still no luck.

I have found advice below suggesting updating the vid card bios.

Even though that thread was started last year it is still being posted to and I suspect that the package in the first post is current?

Before I try that I think I will grab an old CCC and drivers off guru3d and try a clean scrub of drivers and install of old ones (which worked perfectly).

I am posting all this in case I am missing something or about to do something stupid.

Thoughts? :/

Flashing the BIOS should be your last resort. Try older drivers first, and be sure you completely wipe the broken ones away using Driver Sweeper.

Thanks, yup, I really don’t want to flash anything, I have never done it before. Glad my first stop sounds like a sensible one.

FYI that’s not the latest driver sweeper, though, that’s here:

http://phyxion.net/item/driver-sweeper.html

Ahh they moved it. Good call.

Yup, got the latest. Now to go home and find some old catalyst control center and old drivers off Guru3d… Wish me luck!

Installed drivers from 08/11 and while I’m getting longer periods of play I’m still getting these vertical lines of death, first after an hour and then a couple of times more frequently. I almost wonder if the graphics card is over heating. I stripped the laptop down a little bit and cleared out some dust and fluff, but didn’t strip it down so I could get proper access to fans. Perhaps I should, or perhaps I should install some kind of monitoring software?

I tried installing older Catalyst drivers but they kept failing and not installing, it would never tell me why, it just said ‘completed with errors’… gah. I’ll try some old, older ones and see if they work. Sigh.

Phew - I think installing the original, as-new ASUS drivers has fixed the issue without needing to flash anything, hurrah!

Hm…Do you have the latest .NET drivers installed?

Probably?

Hit up windows update and make sure :) The CCC (catalyst control centre) install can sometimes fail if you’ve got the wrong version. Also maybe try doing a plain-driver install without the CCC.

Might also be worth giving it a shot with some third party ATI drivers, Omega Drivers perhaps.

Ta. It’s all working now and I’m not touching a thing!