Author: techmuddler

Razer Failure

While enjoying the Asus computer and well before the worst of its problems began I made an investment in a new mouse.

After visiting and gaming with grandsons, I decided to buy a gaming mouse that one of them had. It is a Razer DeathAdder Elite. It is a really sophisticated mouse, but so far I have not really used any of its gaming features, because I am not sure I could get used to all the extra buttons, remembering which is for which action in a particular game. Also, the games I play for the most part do not require quick reactions or special functions, so a standard mouse works just fine.

Less than a year after purchase I started having problems with the left click button. Most of the time it would perform a double click after only a single click, and the click and drag function did not work. These problems made gaming very difficult.

After looking online for solutions, I engaged in an online chat three times with Razer tech support. Finally, after explaining I had tried everything they suggested (cleaning the mouse, reinstalling the device and software, updating driver, etc.) I eventually ended up having to request authorization for return of merchandise (an RMA as they called it – Return Merchandise Authorization). Because the one-year warranty was still in effect, a return was possible.

Once the RMA was approved, they sent me a prepaid shipping label, and I sent the mouse back using its original packaging. (I always keep the packaging just in case…)

The RMA process went smoothly. Once they received the old mouse, they sent me a new one. I have installed it and it works well, so far. I will take great care with this one, especially while traveling, so no pressure or bumping of the mouse buttons occurs, as I suspect that may have been a contributing factor in the failure of the first one.

I will very likely never buy another gaming mouse, unless I someday am playing games that require more functions than a standard mouse has.

End of Asus ROG Story

I was quite disappointed to lose the Asus to motherboard problems. It was the first time I had a motherboard fail and it was just less than three years old. I must have been very hard on it with the long hours of continuous gaming.

After reconciling myself to the fact it was not repairable, I decided to salvage the two hard drives (one 120 Gig, the other 1 terabyte) as well as the memory cards (two 8 Gig) for potential future use.

With nothing to lose by making a mistake that would harm a motherboard component, I took it apart (removing 7 or 8 small screws from the back) which allowed me to turn it over and take off the keyboard from the top (unsnapping all the way around the edges) and was able to quite easily take out those components. It was while doing this that I realized the battery was in its own separate compartment and it would not have taken this whole procedure to remove it on my own. That knowledge might come in handy sometime in the future.

Because I was not sure I had all the data backed up when the computer died, I bought a USB to SATA adapter and plugged each drive in to copy and save all the data. It was a relatively small investment to buy that adapter, but well worth it.

Having gutted it, I took the computer to the shop for them to recycle, something they do without charge for basically all kinds of hardware.

So ends the story of the Asus ROG laptop (referred to by Asus as a “notebook”).

 

Battery Charging Problems

About six months ago, I started noticing some problems with the battery on the Asus ROG G751JY. At first, it manifested in the battery discharging even while being plugged in. I thought that was quite odd because it only happened while playing Civ VI. After doing some research online, I learned that was a common occurrence with laptops and high-end graphics gaming. Simply put, the power going through the power cord and brick cannot produce enough power fast enough to run games like Civ VI, so the laptop had to use both the connected power cord and the battery to power the game. I never noticed that with Civ V or even the earliest versions of Civ VI, but with the Rise and Fall update, the power demand appeared to increase. After learning this was common for gamers, for a while I did not do any more trouble shooting, but learned to monitor the battery level so as not to be shut down suddenly in mid-game.

Then sometime a few months ago, the battery would not recharge upon closing the game and going back to regular power usage. When all else fails, reboot or shut down and restart is one of my mottos. So that became my go to solution, because after shutting down the computer and waiting a few minutes, it would begin to recharge. Sometimes I had to unplug the power cord from the computer, wait a few minutes, then plug it in again for the recharging to start. That led me to more trouble shooting research online and I found one particular site very useful. It identified eight possible causes for this problem. Some really obvious “operator error” possibilities like checking to see that the power cord is really plugged in to both computer and functioning A/C outlet and checking to see that all connections, such as power cord to power brick, were secure. Others were more ominous.

When the problem became noticeably worse, such as the issue occurring with Minecraft as well as Civ VI, I decided I was going to need to check out the more serious potential problems. From previous laptop experience, I knew sometimes taking out the battery to shut down any battery power connection and booting computer without battery would help determine if the battery was bad and needed to be replaced. So, I set out to do that. The only problem was with the Asus ROG, the battery was not easily accessible and the back of the computer had to be dismantled to get to it. That turned out to be too daunting a task for me, so I opted for taking it in to the shop.

I asked them to check the three options I suspected: 1) bad battery, 2) bad power connector on the computer (where cord connects to computer), 3) failing or bad power cord/power brick. They did not find any of the three to be the problem, so I took it home again, still hoping for it not to be the worst – a motherboard problem, although the most likely possibility was in fact the battery sensors on the motherboard.

I muddled along for maybe a couple of more weeks before eventually the battery would not recharge at all no matter what I did. Back to the shop. They rechecked everything and eventually settled on probability that the power connector was the likely culprit, so ordered a replacement. The first one they got was the wrong one, so another had to be ordered. After installation, the problem still persisted and so the test of a boot up without the battery in the computer was the final straw. Even then it would not boot up at all, confirming it was a problem with the motherboard. Needless to say, replacing a motherboard was too costly to consider.

So, RIP Asus ROG G751JY.

Asus ROG G751JY

About three years ago my laptop was not functioning well with the gaming I was doing and I decided if I was going to keep up with my grandsons – gaming with them online – I was going to have to invest in a better computer. After doing fairly extensive research on the options available, I selected the highly recommended Asus ROG model G751JY. I had intended to buy it from Asus directly, but found a much better price on Amazon and so bought it there.

I was very pleased with it and enjoyed using it, especially for gaming. It served me well in Minecraft, Civ V, World of Tanks, World of Warships, along with some other Steam games.

There was just one nagging issue – the internal Intel Wi-Fi adapter. It would just out of the blue drop connection. Through experimentation, I found two things that helped. One was to use the 2.4 instead of 5.0 connection to my network. Apparently my normal location of use of the laptop was just far enough away from the router that it did not always get a full-power signal. That was a minor adjustment, though I wished I had the faster connection. The second thing was it seemed to require nearly continuous driver updates, so I regularly checked and updated. Even so, it was very inconsistent. It was frustrating enough that I finally bought a USB Wi-Fi adapter (Linksys WUSB6300) and that worked very well, although sometimes the 5.0 connection still did not have full power.

Overall, for the time I had it, I liked it. The saga of its demise will be detailed in future posts.

 

Odd Coincidence

The day I brought home the desktop with the new Windows key, when setting the computer up again, I had some trouble with the keyboard connector, but eventually got it connected. Unfortunately, everything else worked fine, but the keyboard was unresponsive. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting. I tried rebooting, all to no avail. Result: a trip to the local Staples store to buy a new, cheapest they had, keyboard.

Over all the years of using computers (since the early 1980s) this is the first time a keyboard has failed. Weird coincidence of it malfunctioning then, but I’m glad to now have a USB connected keyboard and it works fine for our purposes.

Most Recent Challenge

The most recent problem had to do with the Windows 10 license. The desktop suddenly started to report the license was about to expire. Interestingly, this is the second time this message showed up on this computer. The first time was several years ago, not long after I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 taking advantage of the free upgrade Microsoft offered when it was first released. I won’t go into detail right now about the disaster I created soon after upgrading that totally crashed the operating system, but I had to have the shop do a complete reinstall because the reset option did not work for me. A few months later, the license message started to appear so I ended up having to take it in again to get that fixed. I do not know what they did to fix it, but presume they had communication with the Microsoft license folks to get it corrected.

Just a few weeks ago now, when the message appeared again, I called the shop and took it in again. The odd part about it this time was I noticed that it now showed I had Windows 10 Pro when I only had the Home version before. It also said the Pro was installed in early May and I know I did not do that. The guys at the shop were baffled by how that could happen also. After they did what they could to find the original license or product key unsuccessfully, they told me it was actually the Enterprise Pro version. How that got installed is a complete mystery to me. The only solution this time was to buy a completely new key, so I had them do that and activate it. Since then it is now functioning normally again.

What I have learned through this process is there is a difference between a product key and digital license. I asked the shop to give me the new key so I would have it if needed. They did so and they called it the Windows 10 Key. In the Windows 10 Settings it says the product was activated with a digital license. I am hoping never to have to use the key again, but given the strange happenings of late, I’m not betting on that.

Unusual Number of Problems

The last six months or so have been more eventful with regard to computers than the previous couple of years – or any similar time span in the past I can remember, for that matter.

(Just as general background for context, in the past ten years or so I’ve generally had two computers active in the household – a desktop and a laptop.)

Earlier this year the problems started with a motherboard fan problem on the desktop. On boot up, it kept showing an error message reporting a malfunctioning motherboard fan. Not ever having encountered this problem before, I was not sure what to do about it, so I went online to see what that error might mean and possible solutions. There were several options for solutions, but because of the age of the computer I jumped to a conclusion (listed as one of the solutions) and suspected the fan had burned out and needed to be replaced, so called the local computer repair shop I have come to trust (and rely on) and they said to bring it in. Later that same day I checked in with them to see if the fan had been replaced and, to my embarrassment, they said the only problem was dust had accumulated on the fan. It was working fine after they simply cleaned out all the dust inside the computer box. Had I just opened up the box and cleaned out the dust I would easily have solved the problem myself, but I didn’t even think to do that first (even though it was one of the solutions suggested online!). The good news in this case – the shop has a policy of not charging anything for cleaning out computers, so it cost me nothing but my time and some inconvenience of not having the primary computer available for a day or two.

Lesson learned: failure to do the obvious can cost time and anxiety, if not money.

Unrelated lesson learned: While talking with shop guys about the fan issues, I also complained that I was not able to get my relatively new LCD monitor to work with a MIDI connection, it only worked with the standard connection. They said that it should work because there was nothing incompatible. Later when reconnecting the computer to get it up and running again at home, I discovered I had been plugging the MIDI monitor connector to the sound card instead of the video card! I had previously not noticed there were two MIDI slots on the back of the computer. Anyway, the monitor now works fine with the best resolution via MIDI connection. Once again lesson learned was haste means missing obvious things.

In the next few posts, I intend to talk about the other recent problems I alluded to above.