GT72 2QE stuck at black screen on boot

Hello.

I just got my laptop back from RMA under warranty for a faulty charging circuit. They replaced the motherboard.

It came back a few days ago and it's been working fine and charging properly.

However, today I faced a brand new problem... I was using the laptop all day at work with no problem, but ever since I got home and I tried to boot it up, it just gets stuck at a black screen (monitor off) after power on, without even showing anything. I don't even see the MSI logo.

Power and GPU LEDs are on and if I wait for like a minute or two, the fans kick in at full speed.

There's nothing I can do other than force shutdown with the button.

I tried the EC reset thing and it doesn't help.

I need the laptop for work as a really important deadline is approaching and it was already gone for 10 days for the last repair. It sucks sending it in again.

Does anyone have any clue what could be wrong or what to try?

 

I know this may seem similar to the EC reset that you tried already, but you should try this because it worked for me with the same issue. Take out the battery pack and unplug charger. Then press and hold the power button of the laptop for 10 seconds. Press the button 3 times for 10 seconds. Then plug back in everything and try starting up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

My battery is non-removable. It's built in. That's why I tried EC resetting...

 

You just have to remove the back cover and unplug the battery cord from the motherboard while you do it. Not much disassembly required


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Just tried that. Unfortunately did not make any difference. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Any other ideas? I think the GPU might have blown this time...

 

How long had it been since you got the NB back? Call MSI asap if it's still within a month so they can issue a 2nd RMA for you.
Request to speak to a sup (nicely) if the agent refuses to issue you a return shipping label.

 

Hello Kevin. Thanks for jumping in and trying to help.

I got my laptop back on 19th. So not so long ago. And it's been fine during these few days.

I'm planning to call the service center itself in Coventry first thing tomorrow and ask them what can be done. If they say I need to go through MSI first, I'll do that but unfortunately they have ridiculous waiting times on their phone center...

I can't believe I will end up being without a laptop again for a considerable amount of time...

 

Hey I just tried that hold down power button for 4 seconds (while turning it on) then pressing it again. I don't know exactly what happened but it looks like turning the laptop on/off from the button in quick succession it forced it to start properly!!!

I then shut down the laptop properly from the start menu and it now it looks like it's booting fine.

UPDATE:

After a lot of fiddling I found out that removing the SSD tray (with 4 ssds on raid0) and booting up, loads the BIOS screen just fine. If I then put the tray back and reboot, windows loads just fine, until I shutdown from the start menu again. Then the next time I start it, it goes all weird again.

I have no idea what's going on?! Should I still send this in for RMA?

 

So the root cause seemed like a hang at shutdown/sleep/hibernation.
Are your SSD stock ones? Did MSI reset the OS for you? If not, perhaps save your data then do a system reset later on when time permits?

 

go to Control Panel > Power Options > then disable fast start up from the advanced menu I the left lane. Problem solved

 

How do you have configured your BIOS? In Legacy or UEFI? If you have it in UEFI, try to put it in UEFI-CSM mode.

 

Hopefully that does it. If this was the problem all along, the EC reset should have cleared it previously.

 

I hope so to. I've had many instances where Fast Startup doesn't work, when you shut down, it's not a full shutdown but rather a hybrid shutdown/hibernation which saves the current system state for a faster startup *if that ever works*

disabling Fast Startup has solved startup issues for 100s of people here that I've helped

After doing that, I also delete the hiberfile.sys by entering this command in an elevated command prompt to save space:

powercfg -h off

 

@Phoenix - Sure, I think most people can do without it. It's a knee-jerk reaction for me to roll my eyes - kind of like this: - when a system comes in for RMA and I can't get into the BIOS upon first boot because of it.

 

Thank you guys for every suggestion.

MSI did not reset my raid array as per my request. I fail to see why that would be needed as they just swapped motherboards (hardware). I would hate to get my environment set up aaaaall over again. I'm dual booting linux and that was a pain to get running on a raid0 array.

The laptop has already been picked up for RMA because even though it looks like the issue was temporarily resolved, I don't want to risk it as my warranty runs out soon. I figured I might as well have them take a look at it rather than just have it happen again out of warranty, 2 months down the line.

I will check that fast boot thing when it comes back but I never had this problem before the motherboard swap so I'm not sure how that would be different since the same drives were put on. I noticed the problem while shutting down from windows or linux. It has got stuck after shutting down from either OS. Wouldn't that invalidate the fastboot problem? There is a fast boot setting in the BIOS which I've always had on with both motherboards. Is that something else?

I should also mention that this issue appeared to happen also when I switched GPUs using the button.

The only thing I fear at this point is them finding nothing wrong with it (Since it magically started working) and then charging me for the shipping... That would suck

 

Fast Boot is a feature of UEFI based systems that skips some of the POST and CSM routines. It does what it sounds like -- runs less stuff at system power on to boot faster. Though it may introduce weird quirks, and prevent you from accessing certain functions like booting from legacy devices, USB, or even getting into the CMOS setup without using special tricks. It can lead to some really weird behavior when you start adding things that have their own option ROMs such as RAID cards. It is OS-independent since it's part of the BIOS/UEFI stack.

 

The laptop is already at the service center and they were doing some tests on it when I spoke to them this afternoon. I guess I'll know next week.

I just wanted to ask those with more experience, does this issue sound like something that could come back even if it doesn't happen during their tests?

 

From what I read it looks like you determined it's a problem with cold booting, which means it could be a problem anywhere between the hardware initialization and settings stored in CMOS, so it's going to be a tricky problem to pin down. It could also be one of your SSDs not playing nice with the controller or just failing in general. Time will tell. Toggling fastboot when you had the problem consistently could have at least eliminated that possibility.

 

MSI most likely will get you on that dual boot and will ask you whether they can reset the OS or not.
They can load their own drive set to perform testing but if they don't see problems with their own setup then it will be returned to you.
If it's already prepaid you will not be charged for the return shipping, but it is possible that they may not see the root cause of failure.

 

Thank you both for your replies.

I understand what you're saying about the dual booting, however that's how everything worked for 2 years and I never had this issue.

Can an SSD really "be failing"? Considering it's digital nature, I'd think that it either works or it doesn't. Moreover, the fact that it does manage to boot into the RAID some of the time, makes me believe the problem lies somewhere else.

Before I sent the laptop off, I checked the Intel storage utility and it reported that all my drives were working normally.

I guess it's just a waiting game now... Who knows, maybe it IS the GPU crapping out slowly, as the first time I saw this problem was during switching from onboard back to dedicated graphics.

 

SSDs have controllers which can fail or have some kind of hard to trigger bug in the firmware etc. The memory cells fail but are managed by the controller so unless you have a seriously faulty drive that isn't usually what would cause your type of boot quirk.

All electronics have tolerances and sometimes things don't flat out die, they start acting weird because something is outside of its usual ranges. Just because something is digital doesn't mean it is exempt from quantum weirdness.

 

Update from the service center:

They have ordered a new motherboard (2nd one) and this time they're also replacing the GPU!!!

Wow!!! Not sure what's going on but it sounds like I've bought the last friday-afternoon production unit!!!!

No idea how long this is going to take but I hope it sorts things out...

 

Hope everything turns out alright this time, you probably can't suffer another few weeks without the PC because it is the only one you have.

 

Thanks Kevin.

It's painful... I have to use a 11 year old laptop at home (Intel Centrino 2, 4gb ram) for basic browsing, which barely handles youtube at 720p and a 6 year old desktop at work, which I can hear moan every time I run Eclipse or Visual Studio...

Hopefully this time they will get everything right. The good thing out of all of this is that they indeed found something wrong with it, so I was not going crazy.

As a side benefit, who knows, maybe the new card will not have the coil whine that the original had!

 

UPDATE: The laptop has been fitted with a new motherboard and GPU and will be getting delivered tomorrow... Fingers crossed that this time it will just run just like it should....

 

I just received the laptop. Seems to be working fine, did a couple of restarts and everything's fine. Also GPU switching. I'll test more when I get home.

The bad thing is it's now missing one of the rubber feet on the bottom! As a result it's rocking back and forth.

Thankfully, I have a picture of the laptop that the service center took when they received it, showing 4 rubber feet all in place. Therefore, I've asked them to find the missing foot and send it to me so I can glue it back on...

 

Found the rubber foot. It was unstuck within the packaging that the put the laptop in to.... I put that back on...... Unfortunately I noticed another problem now.... I am really starting to get super pissed off about all of this



As you can see the front light on the left side is not lighting up.

I am so annoyed about this and there is no way I am sending this back for an RMA a 3rd time. I have shown them the picture and I have requested manual instructions on how to check if this is an assembly issue myself... I am eagerly waiting to see what they say.

Does anyone have any knowledge on what to check internally to see why this light might not be working?

UPDATE:

I couldn't keep myself anymore, and I opened up the back of the laptop. Thankfully, the ribbon cable for the left LED strip was not attached... They either forgot to attach it or the fixture was not done properly and it fell out...

Everything seems to be fine now... Let's hope this is the end of this story....