ASUS G53SW- Stuck fn key

[Unsheathed]

I've had a problem with my fn key for a few weeks now. I think it occurred while I was downloading a ton of programs to root my phone.

What happens: my keyboard acts as if my fn key is pressed. Examples: F11 turns down volume, spacebar changes the power profile, "c" changed color settings, etc.

When: randomly. Rebooting gets rid of the problem but it reoccurs after random time intervals.

What I've done:
1. (Attempt to) update drivers; generic responses like fn+numlk/scrlk, shift+numlk/scrlk,fn+F11.
2. Complete reformat of HDD and reinstall of Windows. Reverted back to old drivers on my driver and utilities disk. Problem still occurs now BUT I think it occurs only when I actually push the fn key. Example: If I want to change my volume, fn+F12. But now that "sticks" my fn key so now changing my volume is only F12.

Since wiping my HDD, I'm sure that it's a driver problem (most likely ATK, but can't figure out how to fix it).

Any ideas are welcome.

 

[kmkrreeves1]

I would think since you wiped the HDD, and it was still happening, that it wouldn't be a driver problem. It sounds to me like the button might actually be sticking, have you tried to remove it? there could be something under it. be careful when removing it, sometimes laptop keys can be tricky to remove.

 

[Unsheathed]

I would think since you wiped the HDD, and it was still happening, that it wouldn't be a driver problem. It sounds to me like the button might actually be sticking, have you tried to remove it? there could be something under it. be careful when removing it, sometimes laptop keys can be tricky to remove.

I just tried this. I can not see any visible obstructions and the key seems to depress and pop back just fine so I don't think this is the issue.

 

[Unsheathed]

New problem:
Video card driver is messed up as well as the ATK driver.
My laptop would freeze when the video card would be stressed (gaming) and I would have to hard reset it.
I deleted/reinstalled video card driver and now when I game, the screen goes black for 2-10 seconds and I get an error saying that the video card driver (or kernel) crashed but restarted successfully. The laptop sometimes freezes on a black screen and my audio reflects it (I'm assuming the driver did not restart successfully at this point).

What confuses me is I've tried various types of drivers for both the video card and the ATK but they all seem to act the EXACT SAME. Is it possible I'm not removing/installing them correctly?
What I do: Open Windows Control Panel, go to uninstall a program, click the driver and uninstall it. Restart laptop. Install new driver.
Why are all drivers (new ones off driver's website and old ones off driver disk) all acting the exact same, giving me the same problems discussed above?

 

[kmkrreeves1]

Have you tried the drivers from the ASUS website? sometimes they're a little different (but usually outdated). Have you looked at windows update to see what drivers (if any) it recommends? And is it overheating at all? If the fan runs constantly at full speed maybe you can try to clean it out.

 

[Unsheathed]

Have you tried the drivers from the ASUS website? sometimes they're a little different (but usually outdated). Have you looked at windows update to see what drivers (if any) it recommends? And is it overheating at all? If the fan runs constantly at full speed maybe you can try to clean it out.

Yes, I used the ones from the ASUS website, off the driver & utilities disk, and the newest NVIDIA driver off their website.
It is possible I may not be removing them fully? I use Windows control panel, go to uninstall a program, and uninstall the driver's from there, then reinstall with fresh ones previously downloaded.

 

[kmkrreeves1]

is it overheating at all, has it ever overheated that you can remember? I worked on three HP laptops with Nvidia cards and all of them died from the graphics overheating (there was a recall, but HP failed to tell anyone about it) one of them was from 2005 and the other two were from around 2009.

and sorry I haven't answered in a while, I'm working on three "dead" computers for someone. (they all have minor software problems, so they bought a new one and put the old one away every time)

 

[Unsheathed]

is it overheating at all, has it ever overheated that you can remember? I worked on three HP laptops with Nvidia cards and all of them died from the graphics overheating (there was a recall, but HP failed to tell anyone about it) one of them was from 2005 and the other two were from around 2009.

and sorry I haven't answered in a while, I'm working on three "dead" computers for someone. (they all have minor software problems, so they bought a new one and put the old one away every time)

No worries. Thanks for checking back.
My laptop normally runs pretty HOT under GPU stress. I cleaned out the fans and tried coolers but I would still experience temps of ~80C while gaming/furmark. I'm trying to stay positive and say it's not a hardware issue because I'm well past warranty (owned this laptop for 2+ years now) so RMA'ing is not a possibility.
Is there any possibility it is just a software/driver issue or are you certain it's hardware?

 

[Unsheathed]

Another symptom:

I just noticed a ~4in. vertical strip of my screen that contains flashing pixels.
I was on a primarily black screen and I noticed maybe a dozen or two pixels quickly flashing white from the black screen.
I'm not sure what this means, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

 

[kmkrreeves1]

its sounding like a hardware issue (sorry ) , You said earlier that when you are gaming it would go black and sometimes come back...

My laptop would freeze when the video card would be stressed (gaming) and I would have to hard reset it.
I deleted/reinstalled video card driver and now when I game, the screen goes black for 2-10 seconds and I get an error saying that the video card driver (or kernel) crashed but restarted successfully. The laptop sometimes freezes on a black screen and my audio reflects it (I'm assuming the driver did not restart successfully at this point).

When it said the driver restarted successfully, was everything normal, or was it in a low resolution and the colors messed up or like on 8 bit? I have a desktop that has an integrated card that does that, I installed a AGP card and bypassed the internal so it is fine, but obviously you can't do that on a laptop...
And the strip of your screen flashing, assuming this didn't immediately start After you installed one of the drivers, is probably just your problem slowly getting worse.

Just for fun you might try calling ASUS even though its out of warranty, Maybe there is some kind of known problem or something.

 

[kmkrreeves1]

I would also recommend running some of the tests on this CD http://www.hirensbootcd.org/files/Hirens.BootCD.15.2.zip The download link is at the bottom of the page, in a green box, right under the big ad that says download....

I really like this CD, it has a ton of free bootable programs that are really useful. you can also run all the programs under windows, so if you don't want to burn it, you can just extract it and run the tests.

Another thing about it, it has a thing called mini windows xp, and it is a stripped down version of xp that boots in ram, so it doesn't mess with HDD, you can use it to boot a dead pc and fix whatever is wrong with it without wiping the HDD.

Its always nice to have on hand, and comes in handy a lot.

 

[Unsheathed]

its sounding like a hardware issue (sorry ) , You said earlier that when you are gaming it would go black and sometimes come back... When it said the driver restarted successfully, was everything normal, or was it in a low resolution and the colors messed up or like on 8 bit? I have a desktop that has an integrated card that does that, I installed a AGP card and bypassed the internal so it is fine, but obviously you can't do that on a laptop...
And the strip of your screen flashing, assuming this didn't immediately start After you installed one of the drivers, is probably just your problem slowly getting worse.

Just for fun you might try calling ASUS even though its out of warranty, Maybe there is some kind of known problem or something.

When the driver crashes/restarts successfully, the resolution returns to normal 1920x1080.
The more I think about it, the video problems seems to be a hardware issue probably caused from overheating. But what confuses me is that my ATK package still messes up along with my video card driver. Since they started around the same time, maybe a few weeks between problems, I believe there may be some other, bigger, problem with my system and my ATK package and video card driver are just symptoms of this bigger problem.

And thanks for linking me to that download, I'll be sure to try it out soon.

 

[kmkrreeves1]

yeah, There was a problem with one chip on all three hp's that overheated (the chip that was overheating wasn't even on the heatsink) I think it was some kind of coprocessor or something, and it would kill the wifi card and slowly work its way to killing the whole thing...sorry for your loss...haha