Asus G73SW Crashes during games after install of windows 8.1

rdizz81

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Well he was having all sorts of software problems so he was advised to format and reinstall windows. Went and bought a copy of win 8 everything seems to work fine until he plays a game. The game will crash go to a blank screen all lights stay on just a black screen when he reboots he gets windows is repairing disk this may take over an hour runs that boots fine works fine then he games again and same problem over and over. Is this a windows 8 problem? my thought was drivers since on the asus website last time drivers were updated looks like 2010. but the games launch and after about 10+ mins of playing this happens. any ideas?
 
Solution
It seems the problem is likely to be that ASUS hasn't supported drivers for Windows 8 and something about the Windows 7 64bit drivers isn't well tolerated in Windows 8. Some version of the windows 8 driver from the Nvidia website is almost certainly going to be the solution unless it's simply an issue with the graphics card itself getting too hot while gaming. You might have decreased fan function since it's got some miles on it. Might be worth it to take some compressed air and blow the dust out of the fan and internals. Also might want to verify the fan is functioning at full speed while gaming.
It's likely a drivers issue. It could work fine for two days and then encounter a specific instruction request that has some form of conflict with whatever driver is loaded and then BAM! Looks like that has the GeForce GTX 460M graphics adapter (Correct me if I'm wrong) but regardless there are newer drivers that should work. You can try the driver located here which works for many GeForce cards and adapters but you need to keep in mind that laptop is a windows 7 machine and sometimes there's just going to be driver issues when you upgrade to an unintended operating system. They can usually be worked around but they are not uncommon. http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/59645/en-us
 

rdizz81

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Ok i will ask my Brother if he can do that. We live pretty far away. in other words i do not have access to the laptop. And thanks Dark! really appreciate your help.

Looks like you cannot downgrade unless you have windows pro.. he has home edition 64 8.1
 
Just a thought, but there are a bunch of different driver versions that will work on that card and on the actual page for that card it lists one driver while the driver I sent you is a different and older driver. My question is, have you gone to the Nvidia driver page and done the automatic detect and update process? Here is the absolute most recent driver that is supposed to be stable for the GeForce 400M series notebook graphics: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/75992 and here is the oldest one that is supposedly windows 8.1 compatible: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/66702 . And here is the most recent Asus driver but they don't show any Windows 8 support on their website and I doubt any is forthcoming. http://dlm3cdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/Drivers/VGA/nVidia/VGA_nVidia_Win7_64_Z817129616.zip .
You might have to go back to windows 7 but in order to do this you'll need to do a clean install using installation media. There is no reverse installation process that I'm aware of. Another option is to try running the games that have problems in windows 7 compatibility mode and you can find info on that here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/older-programs-compatible-version-windows
 

rdizz81

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So we tried what you suggested, it seemed to be working well. Then his screen flickered. And he thought to reboot just to be sure went into installing updates **/34 and what not. ANd upon reboot it now says windows failed to load.

A new problem so we are getting somewhere lol... but now he cannot boot into windows. starting to wonder if the HD is bad at this point. sounds to me like corrupted files.

But then again... this all has happened since windows 8
 
This happened to me as well, just last night. I had the drivers installed that I wanted installed for my Radeon R7 200 series card and windows took it upon itself to install an optional driver without asking me if I wanted it. It then caused Catalyst control center to crash. I know you don't have an AMD based card, you have an Nvidia, but it might have done the same thing. I went into windows update and changed it from update automatically to download updates but ask me if I want to install them so I can control what it does. I reinstalled the driver I was using prior to this happening and now it's ok. This might be your issue as well. Try either reinstalling the last driver you installed that was working well or go into device manager click on your display adapter and go in and do a driver rollback to the last driver. Make sure to change the windows update settings so it doesn't do it again if that's the problem and then don't forget to periodically check and install necessary updates since it won't be doing it automatically anymore.
 

random1986

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Unsure if this helps you however I've been trying to find a solution for the same issue and I have windows 7. I daresay downgrading his system won't help.
 

rdizz81

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We have tried everything, at this point I just sent him a bunch of parts to build a new computer... lol
 
It seems the problem is likely to be that ASUS hasn't supported drivers for Windows 8 and something about the Windows 7 64bit drivers isn't well tolerated in Windows 8. Some version of the windows 8 driver from the Nvidia website is almost certainly going to be the solution unless it's simply an issue with the graphics card itself getting too hot while gaming. You might have decreased fan function since it's got some miles on it. Might be worth it to take some compressed air and blow the dust out of the fan and internals. Also might want to verify the fan is functioning at full speed while gaming.
 
Solution