Extremely Negative Experience with MSI

To those of you thinking about getting an msi. I bought a GT-72 Dominator with Gsync 4 or 5 months ago. The machine is great, but I've had an extremely terrible time dealing with their tech support (which is lacking to say the least)/customer service (which is ALSO lacking to say the least). If you'd like to see some of the issues I've gone through with MSI thus far please feel free to check out the reply I made on page 17 of the official msi rep thread. Here's the link.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...or-the-msi-rep-2.795226/page-17#post-10349353

 

I always strongly recommend getting a reseller for better support! LPC Digital or HID Evolution never pull crap like that. It gives you a layer of protection between you and a giant company.

 

Wish I thought of that because that's a really good idea!! I mean I bought it on Amazon, can I go to them with this?

 

As long as the HARDWARE itself is problem free, you can avoid all of this hassle by paying more attention. I thought you had a broken hardware. like @Galm17 said, buying from a reseller is always a good idea. They will deal with your issue much more easily as they have direct connections with MSI.

 

And there it is. Thank you for that. I will keep that in mind. My question still stands though...is Amazon considered a reseller?

 

No, not the same kind.

 

Resellers will gift you their own warranty and all you'll have to do is return the machine and they will take care of the rest. And no, Amazon isn't considered a reseller if we look at things this way.

 

You can have these learning experiences with any laptop, desktop, etc, it's all part of the process of coming up to speed on the peculiarities of any complex technology.

It does help to work it out like this, good work

Maybe tone down the MSI hate a bit in the title... change it to "Extremely Painful and Time Consuming Learning Experience, Patiently Administered by MSI".

Spin it into the cautionary tale that it truly is, and imagine if every owner put MSI through all of this with every laptop sold, MSI wouldn't make any money. Yet MSI didn't give up, they kept working with you

That's what we do here, caution others to be careful in specific ways, and to pass on our learning experiences so others can have a softer landing than we experienced.

Welcome to NBR.

 

Ouch.

I'm not sure how msi has or hasn't given up on me in particular. I sent them my machine, it wasn't fixed and was also returned damaged. Yes, it is a cautionary post, but the problem (the actual reason the machine was sent to them in the first place for) hasn't even been resolved. I'd LOVE to tone down the negativity towards MSI...like I've mentioned already...I think this is one of the best notebooks I've ever owned, but their support isn't anywhere even remotely close to the quality of the product they've produced in their Dominator line, in my opinion.

 

After reading your long post on the 3 RMA's, I gotta think there is something obvious going on with the restart problem when switching GPU's, like the 1st time it boots it either fixes or installs a driver update for the Intel driver (assuming it doesn't reboot twice under dGPU booting), because I had that happen to me.

I fixed it by uninstalling the Intel video driver while under iGPU mode, and I think I did a cleanup with DDU in Safe Mode, then when it booted under normal mode I installed the latest Intel HD video driver at the time.

Problem fixed.

The dent is a badge of honor, just like a House Move, "Two moves is as good as a Fire", damage happens - it's just the fallout from shipping stuff all over the place 3x.

Use it as a reminder to do the thing the maker recommends when you first power on the laptop - MSI Reminder - Backup the Recovery Partition onto a USB Flash drive.

You did uninstall / disable the MSI Reminder stuff without doing the backup of the recovery partition?

How is any of this MSI's fault?

Actually I used to pester Asus and MSI to ship a backup recovery USB drive with every laptop - made *non-writable* so the owner can't cannibalize it, then I found out that Microsoft won't let them ship recovery media any more. Blame MS.

The take away from all of this:

The first thing you do when first powering on a new laptop is *always* backup the recovery partition onto a bootable USB 3.0 flash drive.

MSI not only took the trouble to create a program to create the bootable USB 3.0 Recovery Flash drive, MSI made a program to nag you until you did the backup.

 

OK...I THOUGHT I mentioned in my long post about how I made THREE recovery drives via burn recovery...within minutes of turning the thing on...well at least the first one was but then after I updated it I thought I should probably make another and the third one was actually a clone of one of the first two....so no, I didn't just click the x to tell the remind manager to leave me alone....As for the damage, it wasn't that way when I shipped it, so I know it wasn't me since I have photographic proof. I've tried DDU before, but I think I'm going to try it the way you mentioned because I'm not sure I did it exactly how you mentioned. I'm blaming MSI for not fixing what they issued the RMA for. I specifically said in that "long" post, that even if MSI didn't want to play the friendly customer service comes first role, the responsibility still rests on my shoulders for deleting the recovery partition in the first place but when I call and agree that I need to send it in as I think this reboot issue is out of my league, the representative specifically said he was adding that particular issue to the RMA and they will fix once they receive the notebook. So I'm not blaming MS or even MSI for my OWN mistake, but I AM blaming MSI for not fixing the issue they filed the RMA for and possibly the dent since it wasn't that way when I shipped it. I don't think it's too much to ask for the $2k notebook you ship in for RMA to be returned to you in the same condition you sent it out in. If you disagree, then that's fine. Thanks for your advice.

 

Yeah, that's a feature of both the Asus and MSI backup software, it's sensitive to working with some USB 3.0 drives... sucks, but it's a well known issue.

Here are the one's I use that work fine on Asus and MSI laptops, and are still around and getting cheaper.

I get the 32GB for Backup's, as 18GB is used - which is why the 16GB isn't quite large enough since the transition from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

Patriot Stellar Series 32GB OTG USB 3.0 External Storage For Android Smartphones/ Tablets- PSF32GSTROTG
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=patriot_stellar-_-20-220-821-_-Product

Patriot also has a 16GB and 64GB version of the Stellar drive that are also nice and fast.

Here's another gem. Don't test your new backup flash drive by restoring to your *only* boot drive, with your only vendor image install and recovery drive.

The failure mode of the USB 3.0 recovery flash drive is that it will boot, and start the recovery program, then it will ask which recovery method, and if you pick the complete install / restore it will erase all drives it finds connected (oh yeah, disconnect all USB drives, and remove the 1TB HDD before restoring), after it erases all the partitions and reformats the drives, it looks for the recovery data and does a sanity check - which fails.

Now you have blank drives and a non-usable recovery flash drive... now that's frustrating!!

Only test restore against another drive - pull your boot drive and recovery partition drive before testing your freshly created USB 3.0 flash recovery drive.

So the RMA problem was the double boot going into iGPU mode? Or did I miss the RMA problem among the long post?

If the MSI image - the recovery partition or installed image - has the double boot problem the tech's probably think it's normal, but they shouldn't have kept sending it back to you without comment.

If you blew away the install / recovery partition that might have muddled things a bit too.

Hey, I know this stuff is frustrating, we've all been there at one time or another, but it's all part of the great road trip of life... dent's and all

 

Ok...I made multiple thumbs because I have a few extra that I don't need and it's just better to play it safe by making a second set of recovery media because negative things happen sometimes and if you have more thumb drives than you need, you have no excuse if something happens to your ONE copy. The RMA was issued for reinstalling the hidden recovery partition AND fixing the issue with the graphics switching. No more, no less. I mentioned it to the tech when I called to let them know I would be sending it in AND when they emailed me to ask for my permission to reinstall Windows...so it's even in writing. Finally, I've only sent it to them once. They issued multiple RMA's because at first I couldn't get either copy of my recovery media made with Burn Recovery to work. I then ended up cloning one of the copies of recovery media onto a different thumb and I got it to work. The third and final RMA, according to the rep I talked to the day I sent it out, was going to include that the recovery partition needed to be reinstalled and the gfx switch issue needed to be fixed. And yes, it is frustrating...especially when people are passively trying to turn your post onto it's head by making it look like you're overreacting or unnecessarily placing blame where it doesn't belong. I aim to be as friendly as I can be in this forum and in life in general, but if you're as aware of how frustrating these things can be, then I have no idea why you're picking my post apart and suggesting things like I must've just clicked the x button on the remind manager instead of making recovery media like anyone SHOULD be doing when they first turn their new computer on or saying things like you fail to see how any of this is MSI's fault. If you don't agree with me then I'm sorry we can't see this in the same way, but I don't think I'm asking for too much by expecting my computer to be returned to me only after the necessary repairs have been made and without any major damage that wasn't there when I sent it out, especially when I'm paying for shipping both ways!

 

Nah, just trying to help, sorry if it comes off cold, but I am trying to be fair to both sides.

Testing the bootable drives is the key, and if that wasn't done then the recovery drives weren't completed. You can't move forward without knowing they work.

Good job figuring out how to get the non-working drive image onto a compatible USB flash drive, most people can't accomplish that.

If they didn't put a restore image, onto your drive, it sounds like that last RMA was a bust - maybe someone went off shift and saw your machine with the notes already made like it was done and shipped it.

That's happened to me in my early days, optimizing my work flow too far and getting a shift change mess up - shipping out stuff not completed - fortunately I caught it the next day

Just to be clear that was not service work on laptops or PC's

I don't think the MUX switch is broken, it's working, the reboot sounds like a Windows thing - something needs fixing in the config / driver install - does it happen 2x again if after the first successful reboot (2nd pass) you reboot again while staying in iGPU mode?

Maybe also update the SCM software - uninstall while under dGPU mode then reboot and re-install the latest for your model, then reboot and try the switch from dGPU to iGPU.

It's possible the tech's are thinking that switch over double boot in iGPU mode is normal.

It's mildly annoying, but not fatal, at this point I'd try these debugging ideas, but maybe take a break and let it go if they don't work.

 

I want to be fair...but w/e I'm literally too tired to keep venting about it...it's just disappointing.

I messed around with uninstalling and reinstalling SCM...it slowly gets to like 10% then jumps to 90% and then quickly to 100%....not sure if that's normal....SOMETIMES, when I switch, I check event viewer and it mentions something about boot metrics and that there are 0x1 boot options or something similar...I have screens of it on the laptop but I'm currently in safemode doing an sfc /scannow because before I sent it back, when I got my recovery media to work, there were all kinds of corrupted files in the version it spits out...I had to make the admin account visible, disk checked, then safe mode sfc /scannow...that finally allowed me to upgrade to W10 anniversary...but thats also around the same time I noticed this gfx switch issue....I've even tried combing over the registry and have found a few things that might have something to do with it but I'm really not sure and no matter how much searching I do, there's just not many people talking about how dual graphics or hybrid graphics are coded or what the files that control the boot process for each graphics card contain.

 

Does the "radio switch" have to do with switching between the graphics because I just saw a warning saying it failed to load and I remember seeing it before I sent it in...I've tried uninstalling, reinstalling it before I sent it out and it eventually stopped but I can't remember if it was after I fixed all the corrupt files since it was almost a month ago....

 

Are you back to the restored MSI image? Or did you do a from MS media Windows install?

As long as SCM recognizes your GPU button press and switches GPU's it's installed and working. If SCM isn't installed the GPU button won't work.

It really sounds like a problem not worth wasting any more time on right now, as long as on the 2nd boot it ends up where you want it then don't worry about it right now, you are hitting the exhaustion / diminishing returns point.

If you power down after you are done with the iGPU session, without switching back to dGPU, will it boot right into Windows again, or does it reboot 2x again?

Also, try disabling hibernation, as that does a soft shutdown and a hybrid boot, see if that's getting in the way.

Open a cmd window As Administrator:

powercfg /h off

Then reboot.

Then try the GPU switch from dGPU to iGPU

 

No, I uninstall that, but it enables/disables Wifi/BT function keys.

 

Yeah if I knew it wasn't going to turn into something bigger I wouldn't even care because it ultimately does what I want it to but I don't want 6 months from now for them to say you should've mentioned this because you could've avoided X from happening...I am going to try what you're suggesting right now and then I'm not sure....I'm going off the version of Windows that the notebook first came with from factory...I upgraded and installed all drivers and applications in the suggested order...I'm on the OEM version of Windows...I THINK that answers your question...oh and yeah every time I click the gfx button it does the startup, shutdown, startup thing but always in the correct mode...I'm focusing on it because I'm concerned it might be something more serious that I'm not capable of seeing since I don't know enough about it.

Edit: and if I reboot in the same mode, it stays in the correct mode and goes right back into Windows again.

 

I wouldn't worry about it then, it's working, it's mildly annoying that it double boots the first time switching, but it's not fatal.

You can spend a lot of time and frustration trying to get it to do a single boot, but as I said I had the same thing and it went away after uninstalling iGPU Intel HD driver, DDU, install again, and booted into dGPU without double booting.

I had single boot into both iGPU and dGPU after that.

I don't think you need to worry about any more sinister problems hiding, other than it's freaking Windows 10

 

I hope you're right but thank you for your help.

 

Don't forget to disable hibernation, which will also disable fast start up (not same as in BIOS), and soft shutdown, that will also save you 1x RAM sized hiberfil.sys file on C drive.

Have fun

 

How did you get intel driver to stay uninstalled? I tell windows not to install drivers and I end up having to cut wifi off because it does it anyway.

 

Oh yeah, turn off the internet (disable the devices in Network Control Panel, right click and Disable) while doing uninstalls of such critical drivers, as MS will immediately try to download replacements of their own choosing.

That's why you use DDU, it removes *all* the drivers for Intel / Nvidia / ATI (AMD) including those not currently active / selected / current.

You may need to find the current way of doing this, but check this out first and see if it still works on the current version of Windows 10

Take Back Control Over Driver Updates in Windows 10
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/take-back-control-driver-updates-windows-10/



No, I don't run Windows 10, of course not - *why* would I??