Asus warranty fail

I sent in my brand-new laptop for repair 3 times for the exact same problem, and none of the repairs have solved anything. In fact, the unit BSOD'ed on the first shut down each time I got it back... it's like they didn't even do anything to it. They didn't include the ADP warranty card with my box when i purchased it so I didn't know to register within 60 days, so now I only get manufacturer warranty, and am apparently not eligible for a replacement, even if their repairs have proven useless.

Each time I call their hotline and talk to one of their nasal-voiced minions, it's like I'm opening a brand new case and they ask me "have you tried reformatting the unit?" Yeah, 4 months and 3 RMAs ago, just read the 10 pages of notes under my service number

I try to get in touch with their supervisors who are never present. Finally I get to speak with someone called Andre, and he tells me to wait for a day while he explores options. I get a email from Rodel L. confirming "you are eligible for standard manufacturing warranty service". Gee thanks I didn't know that. I call back, and ask for Andre, the guy has no idea who he is.

 

what do you do ?

sell the asus, and get an HP

did you have to pay shipping 3x for rma ?


and what exactly is the problem with your laptop? just bsod ?

and you reformatted and clean installed with one of the windows 7 isos floating around on the web ?

 

It takes like 30 minutes until BSOD'ing every other time I try to shut down. Sometimes it goes through these phases where everything is extremely slow and lags for a minute in between mouse-clicks, and the graphics card keeps failing and restarting every now and then. I did the reboot/press f9 sequence for the reformat. Very cynical about web solutions for problems that practically came with the unit.

The shipping was free every time. They were really fast the first couple times, until I told them they actually need to fix the machine instead of pretending to do it, and test it before sending it back. I even bought a temporary laptop since the first one keeps coming back unusable and needing to be sent back... and the second laptop is plagued with the "windows explorer is shutting down" problem. But I need it constantly for schoolwork and can't risk sending it away for weeks for repair. Their promises of call-back within 24-48 hours are laughable. I could have sworn that the last "supervisor" I was forwarded to was the same guy trying to disguise his voice lol.

I can't think of a worse case scenario. I spent $1800 on two lemons and I can't even make lemonade with them. What are the odds of that happening? Is Asus a declining brand?

I need names and phone numbers.... of people from higher up, who aren't nasal-voiced robots.

 

you get free rma shipping?
damn. for all the less expensive laptops, we have to pay shipping one way.

bsod only when shutting down...... and windows explorer crashes.
yep. sounds like your problem is purely software and user error/input.

You don't need names of higher ups. They'll never respond.

do yourself a favor and download a windows7 sp1 isos and burn a disc-
Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River My Digital Life

clean install it. do not reformat using asus recovery partition. That will just reinstall all the asus crapware that came with the pc.. do not install asus bloatware. do not install power4gear.
Install only the minimum required software- e.g keyboard software, graphics drivers, touchpad driver. that's it. nothing else.

refrain from visiting pr0n sites and installing games for the first 15 restart cycles, and observe for a while.
if everything is ok, then start installing your programs.
if it starts to bsod again, then it's one of your programs that is causing it.

 

I just did a clean install using that link, and now there are no wireless or local area connection options shown under "network connections", only bluetooth? I'll need internet connection if I were to expect updates during the 15 restarts right?

 

Did you install the drivers for your network adapters?

 

try to take one stick of RAM out at a time and see if that works, i remember having a similar problem (not sure what it was though, been 2 years). i had a hunch that it was a RAM problem, turns out one of my RAM was fried

 

I tried, and it says "cannot install drivers. No Intel(R) adapters are present in this computer"


Since when????

 

Neither ethernet nor wifi are likely intel, you didn't mention which model you have, but you can get your drivers here:

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download

 

I downloaded the drivers... but they won't install if the machine isn't detecting the adapters in the first place! The unit is the N53-SN1 by the way.

 

There is a good chance it is an Atheros AR9xxx adapter in which case you could try those: http://www.station-drivers.com/tele...LAN_10.0.0.42-w7(www.station-drivers.com).exe

Otherwise you can get the Atheros drivers here: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download N53SN. Just select the right OS and they'll be under wireless. The LAN driver will be under LAN and you have a Realtek adapter.

 

Either that or AzureWave for wireless.

The ethernet driver is the only one under Ethernet, so you're good there.

 

It was the Atheros for local and Azurwave for wireless, indeed. Thanks!

I really should have done this reformat before sending the machine to RMA 3times and having those noobs do god-knows-what to it along the way. Fingers crossed it won't BSOD 2 weeks from now...

 

why 2 weeks... reboot more frequently and see if it crashes.

 

what other drivers should i download? There's a list of 55 files in that link for N53SN...

 

VGA, card reader, chipset, USB, touchpad, bluetooth, camera (check device manager for the USB ID)

You also need ATKACPI from 'Other', wireless console 3, keyboard filter, maybe power4gear hybrid if you like the asus power manager stuff, and everything else is pretty much optional. See the bloatware sticky.

 

I've been doing a lot of restarts but don't see any windows updates. Last time i reformatted, the first 20 restarts had dozens and dozens.

 

Type wuapp at the start menu if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

 

Note that you did the clean install with SP1 if i'm not mistaken so you need way less updates that way. After you install everything there will probably be a few other updates popping up.

 

ah yes, 64 "important" updates. Are they really? seems like things only get worse when i run windows updates. On my 6-year old toshiba, I didn't install updates for 4 years, and it ran perfectly fine until i needed an update to do something and it was never quite the same after...

 

A lot of those are probably security updates, but obviously it's your choice which to install.

More important is just having a working system with the right drivers installed and no bloatware.

 

Do I get to decide which ones to install? There is one button for "install updates" for all 64 of them

 

Yes there is an option for you to choose which ones you want to install. Click on the there are 64 updates available instead of install and you can choose which one ones you want.

 

nah. don't install power4gear.
you don't need it. you can make your own custom power profiles.

I tried to uninstall power4gear once, and it wouldn't uninstall cleanly.
that's garbage.

 

I personally never had problems with uninstalling P4G. The only times P4G gave me troubles, was when i tried to install a version meant for another version of CPU. Asus doesn't state this, but certain versions were coded with a particular series of CPUs in mind and might not work exactly as they should if installed on a previous gen laptop. This happened to me when i both tried to install the versions that came out with Clarksfield on a Penryn notebook and a SNB version on a Clarksfield notebook.

 

so i plugged in the mouse, but the machine isn't installing the driver automatically like it did before... is every driver going to need to be manually installed from now on because of this reformat??

edit: nevermind... it installed after the 5th time I plugged in the mouse...

 

That's strange, but unless you run in another situation like that, just assume it was a fluke. I've had that happen to me once or twice. For things like mice and other common peripherals, those drivers will install automatically. It's mostly for the internal components that Windows might not have specific drivers.

 

I copied all the files from my new old laptop to the old new one, and am now installing programs and it hasn't BSOD'ed in 9 hours (the longest I've left the laptop on without restarting). I'm trying to run a exe file, but it's telling me I need my own permission to do it. I check the ownership of the file and it is indeed me, so what gives. To test the file to see if it's been corrupted since its last successful run, I tried running it on my other laptop and it has the same problem. I'm almost sure it's because of the AVG that I subsequently installed (due to the false positive trojan warnings), but disabling the antivirus did the same thing and the warnings somehow didn't go away.

I frikin hate windows 7. I swear Microsoft has shares in big pharmaceutical for advil and xanax and are trying to drum up sales....

edit: fixed - it was avg's resident shield, which takes an extra step to disable.

 

yeah, see. Windows 7 itself is pretty user friendly.

it all goes to hell when you install extra crapware.

If i were you, I'd set a restore point while it's working flawlessly. that way you can always go back to this point without starting over from way in the beginning.

 

I just finished installing all my programs (Autocad/Adobe/Microsoft Office/Sketchup/Vray), and at some point I started having occasional lagtimes while doing stuff, but the mouse itself doesn't lag so I barely noticed when it started. Sometimes it's clicking an option in a drop-down menu and it taking several seconds for the switch to actually show. Or I'm exiting from fullscreen mode on a youtube video and it'll take a few sconds for the video to resume. Seems like a video card issue... I dunno?

i didn't create a restore point because at no point was the laptop functioning perfectly while everything i need is installed. i'm sure it's not the programs.

Another issue i forgot to mention is the adapter makes a quick chirping sound whenever I do anything, whether clicking from one folder window to the next, or whatever. It does it continuously if I try to render something or do anything memory intensive.

 

ALSO, the windows 7 iso is now asking me to activate... again, because my product key (the one from the back of my brand new laptop) is "invalid for activation".... what gives?

 

The .iso file is probably from a retail copy of windows 7 instead of OEM. You can activate it using the windows 7 OEM activation code under your laptop by calling microsoft to activate it via phone. The process won't even take 5 minutes.

 

ok, how bout this... i'm browsing my photo files and cycling through them in Windows Photo Viewer, and then a message pops up "COM Surrogate has stopped working", and closes the window. I don't know if it is because of the 14 updates in my last restart, or the 37 updates from the one before that, or the 75 from last week... i want to kill myself

 

I had to restart my machine this morning because apparently there were "important" updates that needed to finish installing. Now it's asking me to restart again for the same reason! When is it ever going to end??

 

haha. I think maybe you should have bought a macbook instead

 

I SHOULD HAVE. If it was a cranky old HP laptop, I would understand... but TWO BRAND NEW ASUS LAPTOPS, both have problems???

 

Yeah, these dudes really do suck major floppy disks when it comes to fixing RMA'ed units.

Sent mine in because it straight up wouldn't power on, got it back - it worked, but was overheating and freezing all of the time.

Only upside is that they gave me a complimentary 2GB extra RAM, giving me 8GB total.

That was pretty sweet.

 

they do that??? I've gotten nothing from those nasal-pitched minions other than 7 months of grief and anguish. They owe me.