Asus G73JW Freezes after Windows 8.1 Update - Network Related

Hi,

After many freeze/lock ups and plenty online searches, it was apparent to me that these ASUS G73JW Gaming laptops, such as mine, were notorious for having short thermal paste lifespan on the GPU and CPU. This has caused many issues for many owners. Being that I am capable of building tower PC's, I finally took the plunge and dismantled my G73JW all the way down to the CPU and GPU. I cleaned up the old thermal paste, which BTW, did not look good. After installing new thermal paste and resetting the CPU and GPU, and putting the laptop all back together, everything is running just great. I would not recommend this for the faint of heart, but if you have computer build knowledge, it is certainly doable. Just take your time and be extremely careful of the connections during the dismantle and reassemble process. I know we all like easy remedies when we have issues, but to properly fix these types of laptops, a full dismantle seems to be the only true cure. There are videos online that show the dismantle/reassemble process.

If any of the previous solutions in this thread continued to be a solution months after they were implemented, would you fine folks please post that information?  I'm still running Windows 8 on my Asus G73JW-A1 but would very much like to move to Windows 10.

Regarding thermal paste specifically:  I definitely need to replace my old thermal paste regardless, but will that resolve the Windows 8.1 freezing / blue screens?

I started this issue long, long ago.  I haven't tried everything in this thread because my solution worked for me: disabling wired ethernet in the BIOS.  I never have a problem while that is disabled and I always run wireless.  Last month, I needed wired for something and reenabled and.....freeze.  Within 60 seconds.  Disabled again and all good.  So, for me, that clinches it: hardware or driver related for wired ethernet.  I have not tried the suggested driver changes in this thread, but I suspect that is where the true solution lies.

Hi everyone,

I came across this thread a few weeks ago when my G73JW started freezing after upgrading to Windows 10. Here's my full experience:

• My laptop came with W7 and ran well.
• When W8.1 came out I upgraded and immediately started getting the freezes. I didn't know what it was and after many failed attempts including replacing the hard-drive (won't bore you with the details) I ended up downgrading back to W7.
• Computer ran well again after the downgrade.
• I upgraded to W10 when it came out. The computer ran well for about a week and then I started getting the freezes. An online search brought me to this thread, which I read in it's entirety.
• I chose to disable Ethernet LAN (I only use wifi), Bluetooth (I don't use it), and mousepad (I use a mouse) in the BIOS as my solution. I felt this was the fastest and less complicated route (it took me about 30 seconds to disable all three).
• Computer has been running Windows 10 Pro exceedingly well again for almost two weeks. No freezes.

Hope this helps someone. And, I cannot thank you guys enough for the incredibly valuable information in this thread! You all saved me from having to go buy a new laptop.

Jose

Thank you so much for posting this! I have two of these laptops and upgraded both to W10. Ironically, the laptop that gave me more headaches on W8/8.1 has had zero issues on W10 while the one that had only minor issues with W8/8.1 has been hard freezing constantly. During boot, at the login screen, within 5 seconds of getting to the desktop...Completely unusable!

I followed your method and disabled the same devices in BIOS as I wasn't using them either and while it has only been 30 minutes, that's already a new record for not freezing, by about 27 minutes. I was able to login, install the latest NVIDIA drivers, the latest cumulative update, reboot, login again...All flawlessly! Here's to hoping this has corrected things once and for all :)