Computer Troubles - Am I Alone?

[Hidi]

So I just got my laptop back for the SECOND time it's been serviced. It seems that Asus is only capable of replacing hardware parts. Enough to the point that they've essentially replaced the entire computer minus its shell. Customer service is telling me they aren't positive I will be able to replace my laptop with them and may have to consider doing it through my place of purchase.

The problems are primarily system and driver-based. There were only a couple hardware problems and those were fixed the service-go-round. (I think when a Wifi adapter gives you a ping of over 9000, you should replace it...I wish I still had that screenshot.)

 

Current problems;

 

Steam will crash in the background without an error message and cause other open programs such as Google Chrome and Opera (Photoshop in one case) to crash.

 

Fault modules are

apphelp.dll

KERNELBASE.dll

 

Sometimes Steam will run as short as a few seconds before doing that error, and often after updating Windows and Steam will take anything from a few hours to a day to pop up again.

 

Certain hotkeys do not work, or open the wrong programs.

 

Fn + F3 opens Windows Live Essentials when it should turn down the brightness of the backlit keyboard (It's a great feature when it works)

Fn + F4 does nothing when it should turn the keyboard brightness up

 

Fn + down arrow opens Windows Media Centre (Ew) when it should play/pause in Windows Media Player  Managed to solve this one.

 

I had been looking for ways I could re-configure my hotkeys and possibly re-bind them.

 

I will say though, before it gets all glitchy (Like when I first got it), it is a good all-around laptop. It is powerful and easy to carry around. Backlit keyboard was a good bonus for playing games with (Since it was my main computer).

 

Not sure if any of you know fixes to that, but I also wanted to ask, have any of you run into frustrating computer problems that servicing doesn't seem to fix? Am I not alone in having software problems that aren't dealt with?

[DZComposer]

Delete everything in your steam folder except steam.exe and your steamapps folder. (DO NOT DELETE STEAMAPPS OR YOU WILL HAVE TO REDOWNLOAD GAMES!)

Next, run steam.exe. It will re-install itself.

As far as the hotkeys, you'll need to find the driver that controls them and change it there. What model laptop is this? Re-installing the drivers may help too, provided those settings aren't stored somewhere in the registry.

[sroberson]

If you are lucky there may be a system update tool from the manufacturer for locating and installing all of the drivers and special software for running the hardware.

As far as Steam goes, I fear trying to find registry entries and removing them yo try and resolve the problem...may not be the case..but just a thought

[Hidi]

Windows update fixes the problem for a few hours at best. I generally have to run a Windows update since the factory defaults from recovery are over a year old - The UI on the Google Chrome it comes with pre-installed with is a dead giveaway.

 

As for Steam, I've reinstalled it and done all that but it hasn't helped. Since recently running a recovery, I'm waiting for Steam to crash again. I might restore some backups I have and see what that does.

 

Asus has an updater of its own which updates the drivers. I'll try checking that for updates.

[DZComposer]

It is possible your Windows installation could be hosed. Are you sure your HDD partition is healthy? Was the HDD one of the components you had replaced? What version of Windows are you running?

It may be worth running chkdsk -r in your command prompt. You will have to reboot at let it scan on boot.

[Hidi]

They replaced the HDD recently, as were the RAM chips.

It runs Windows 7 Home 64-bit and OS has been reinstalled both times.

 

chkdsk? It doesn't seem to think I have "sufficient privilages" and wants to be run in "elevated mode". Any ideas how to invoke that?

 

Ultimately, I may consider taking it back to have my hotkeys bound. I'm still waiting for some crashes to happen, since I haven't had as much time to run it since school has started.

[DZComposer]

Right-click, run as administrator

[sroberson]

Right-click, run as administrator

Or alternatively, turn off User Account Control to avoid this issue in the future (I believe there are some anti-cheating applications that have an issue with it being turned on/Steam not being run as Administrator)

 

Windows 7

Start -> type 'UAC' and wait for Windows to locate the User Account Control Settings option -> Hit Enter -> then lower the sliding bar all the way down and click 'Ok' (You may have to reboot)

 

Windows 8 is a bit trickier, you have to go into the control panel and then your user settings to locate it.  I don't have the steps memorized exactly.  

[Hidi]

I also recently tried Microsoft's solution to checking discs (Their recommended command was >sfc /scannow). It helped for a day, then Windows Explorer started crashing on me. At this point I've given up any hope that sending it in is going to get it fixed and there's no point having a laptop that has to be shipped to a repair centre every few weeks to get a few days of use. (And it always starts to break when I've started installing files and everything!)

 

*runs chkdsk*

 

Ahahaha Windows believes there is nothing wrong......That's not funny....

[DZComposer]

Rereading your symptoms, it could potentially be bad RAM.

Run this -> http://www.memtest86.com/ (You will need to burn it to a CD or put it on a bootable flash drive) If it finds ANY errors, replace the memory module. If you have more than one, run the test with only 1 module in and replace it if any errors are returned. Repeat for each module.

CD would be easier. Extract the ISO from the zip and use Win7's built-in ISO burner (Right click on the ISO, select "burn image"). I recommend doing this from another computer.

Bad RAM is a tricky S.O.B. because its symptoms are similar to other issues and it is easy to overlook. If the system has enough good RAM, it can be intermittent until something tries to use the bad addresses. It can throw techs for a loop, and when you finally figure out it was bad RAM you slap yourself for spending hours on a fix that literally take five minutes.

[Hidi]

They tried they bad RAM idea and replaced my RAM too....Just keeping things up to date seems to keep stuff at bay.