Asus K55N Laptop Freezing

[cameroncr95]

I recently bought this laptop on craigslist last month. It was fine before with Windows 8. Now, after removing Windows 8 (I HATE Windows 8 so much), I installed 7. Windows 7 randomly freezes without warning. Full system freeze. Lights stay solid, DVD drive does not open, nothing.

This only happened with 7. Now, my problem is this:
I have NO money to send this in to get it fixed. I literally have 5 dollars. Also, I removed the recovery partitions to install 8 (The partition table was really set up weird, so I had no choice. 7 refused to install that way).
So, I need to either reinstall 7, or install something else (Free, like Ubuntu), but I am worried that if I install one of "Those" linux operating systems that I will not find drivers. All of my previous laptops I've installed Ubuntu on, it was ALWAYS the Wifi driver that was missing.

Anyways, can someone please help me? I want to stop this thing from freezing.

 

[TVeblen]

Hello cameroncr95. Welcome to the forum.

We can help, but it will cost you $5.00.

Ha Ha, just kidding.

First, how long ago did you install W7?
Does it freeze randomly, after a certain amount of time, or when you do something?

2 things you should do/try to start:

• Go into your BIOS settings, and look through the tabs to see if you can find settings for "Secure Boot" and "CSM". Let us know what the settings are.
• Start Windows in Safe Mode: Press the F8 key repeatedly when you first start the laptop and when the Windows Boot Menu comes up choose: "Start Safe Mode with Networking". Run it there for a while to see if the freezing stops.

Let's start there and see where it goes.

 

[cameroncr95]

I disabled both Secure Boot and CSM to install 7. Should I have kept them enabled?
This laptop only freezes with windows 7.

 

[TVeblen]

In general, you would disable Secure Boot (use "Other OS" setting).
But CSM you could leave at default value. If it is a pure UEFI system the module could be disabled, but a hybrid system might work better with it enabled.

These 2 settings usually only affect Windows installation. I'm not holding out hope that this is the cause of your problem, but it is easy to experiment with and has little chance of disruption.

I am more interested in what happens in Safe Mode. I am guessing it is a driver problem. Suspect #1.

 

[cameroncr95]

All of my drivers are installed except for an ethernet driver. But I didn't worry because I use wifi anyways.
I tried safemode and let it run for about an hour, and it froze.

 

[TVeblen]

Gotta run. I'll think about it.

 

[cameroncr95]

No freezes yet today, but curious as to if anyone has ideas.

 

[TVeblen]

Freezes are tough because unlike blue screens, they don't leave any log that you can use to track down the culprit.
Historically freezes are caused by a conflict between devices or drivers. They can also be power related. But since this laptop ran fine on Win8, then we can suspect it might be a driver.

Is this a fresh install of Windows 7? Within the last week or two?

Are you using all new Windows 7 drivers downloaded from the Asus website, or are you using the same drivers you got with the laptop for Win8?

If you got to Event Viewer (Start > search: Event Viewer) Do you see anything next to Critical listed?
You might also tell us what you see under Errors. Double click each entry and read what it says under the General Tab.

 

[cameroncr95]

Okay so I checked the event log. I have a few errors. One of them is this:

The other one simply says the power was lost unexpectedly.
However, the power isn't really lost. The system just completely freezes.

 

[TVeblen]

I assume that when Windows freezes you are recovering by holding down the power button till the system shuts down. This is OK, because there is not much else you can do, but that would explain the critical errors.

What we are interested in is the Critical and Error listings. You can isolate these by opening Event Viewer > then click the + sign next to Critical > then note what is listed below. You can ignore the Event 41, Kernal-Power errors as we know what causes those (you!).
Then click the + sign next to Error and note (or post) what you see there.

Maybe that will yield some clues.

 

[cameroncr95]

Im sorry but I do not know what you mean by a plus button. I only have the option to read the logs.

 

[TVeblen]

This is what you should see:

 

[cameroncr95]

All of the critical listings are of the same type, the forced shut down ones.
These are most of my non critical errors.

Which is more serious judging by the source?

BTW, The one that says Android is possibly BlueStacks.

 

[TVeblen]

A lot of those errors indicate that a service or driver is causing a problem.

It makes sense to start with the Android service.

• First, if there is Android software running - stop it
• Second - if it runs at startup, see if you can disable that.
• Third: go to Start > type: "services" > click on services > in the Services window that opens scroll down till you find "BstHdAndroidSvc" and right click on it and STOP the service.

The point is to turn all Android software and services OFF.

Then run the PC for a while and see if it still freezes.

 

[cameroncr95]

Okay I did that and still the same problem. Just freezed a bit ago while on Facebook. Nothing worked, had to force shut down by holding the power button.

 

[TVeblen]

You've got a lot of Event ID 3 and 6008. What do those errors point to?

 

[TVeblen]

Are you using all new Windows 7 drivers downloaded from the Asus website, or are you using the same drivers you got with the laptop for Win8?

 

[cameroncr95]

I am using the drivers Asus provided for Windows 7, not 8.

Also, here is an event that appeared right after it crashed:

I looked up "Oobe" and thats to do with activation right? Why would that be happening?

 

[essenbe]

Try this.
Either rename the file EppOobe.etl (in C > ProgramData > Microsoft > Microsoft Security Client > Support) as EppOobe.etl.old, or delete it, and reboot. I would suggest renaming it.
Check the Support folder. If there was no other problem, Windows would have created a new EppOobe.etl file.
Delete the file that had been renamed 'old'. If it causes problems and no new file was created, you can just name it back the way it was.

That is a file with MSE and can get corrupted. That should stop your OOBE error. (OOBE is Out of the box experience)

I know you probably don't have and dump files, but if you will run this http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html I will look and see if I can find anything.

 

[cameroncr95]

Sadly its not working. I might end up installing ubuntu, just to wait it out and see what happens. I highly doubt it, but hopefully its not a hardware issue.