So, my Aero15x died over weekend, first off the keyboard started intermittently working, and now it appears to be full blown dead. All I'm getting from it right now is the power button LED, and front power LED blinking at 6 second intervals... with no mention anywhere (after a quick 5-10m of searching) what the hell this means. I've had this laptop ~6 months, and this is pretty damn appalling, and to top it off, no word from Gigabyte's support in 3 days, ticket is still pending pickup.
Looks like I've got a lovely £1700 paperweight until they decide to get back to me and fix it.
@MasterPlan1 - you may have a hardware issue (perhaps a failed NVMe?) or you may have a corrupt Win10 build - my symptoms were different, long boot times, sometimes no boot and the Win10 v20.n wifi driver stopped wifi from detecting networks depsite normal operation reported by device manager.
regards holding the power button - I have experienced closer to twenty seconds before it finally shut down.
Also you may have seen my recent frustrated and slightly MS ranting posts - which now seem to be justified.
For anyone else who had the patience to read my long posts - I have FIXED my Aero 15X laptop by RE-INSTALLING Windows 10 - just like MS have been "recommending a Reset" to several hundreds of thousands in the last few months judging from many forum posts!
Why did I need to re-install and how did the corrupt OS happen?
I don't rightly know, despite keeping a detailed laptop build document and only using genuine software etc and a weekend of testing proved no hardware faults.
From my diary notes the symptoms started after a Win10 update and around the same time I installed Logitech software to enable a new Anywhere Mouse wireless dongle to be detected and I installed additional Logitech recommended software that I later un-installed and pretty much that is the only reason I can find for the corrupt Win10 build.
Actually the re-install task was made significantly easier by not having to start from scratch with a MS Win-10 iso, instead I used an Acronis True Image [ATI] image file that I made while the laptop was almost new and only had Norton Security Suite and ATI installed. This was the same image file I had used in January 2019 to restore a fresh image for re-purposing. Also useful that ATI Linux boot DVD works with Gigabyte uefi BIOS - for my ASUS desktop I had to create a WinPE boot disk but Acronis provided the scripts to achieve this without too much fuss, for when I upgraded/cloned the hdd to an ssd.
Ok, so I am in the fortunate position I had the resource and experience to have purchased and fitted replacement RAM and NVMe drives from new. This means I still retain the original 2x 8GB RAM modules and NVMe Toshiba drive with Win10 1703 build and only Norton Security Suite and ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE installed (worth shouting as ATI has saved me many times during the last 10 years and is a fabulously useful backup and image tool, although I preferred their older user interface than today's modern GUI version)
For anyone interested, the hardware testing included removing the base plate and (Always power down for any hardware actions)..
* replaced the original 2 x 8Gb RAM modules - no change to symptoms (boot failure or long boot times and wifi not working)
* DISCONNECTED home broadband router so NO Internet Connection available - important to stop Win10 auto-updating.
* removed 2x Samsung EVO960 NVMe drives and replaced original Toshiba NVMe with Win10 1703 build
* Laptop booted fine and everything working as normal - ALSO no device mgr errors for Sensors-Light Sensor nor Airplan HID minidriver Interface
* Swapped back 2x 16GB HyperX Kingston RAM modules - everything still working fine
* Inserted each Samsung NVMe drive one at time while booting from Toshiba NVME and in both cases normal file access to all drives
* Removed all NVMe drives and refitted one Samsung NVMe drive - used external DVD drive to load Acronis True Image - Boot Recovery Disk
* Restored a clean image from previous part build in Feb 2019 based on clean nearly new backup image from January 2018
** next day when I had turned home broadband back on **
* Boot from single Samsung NVMe drive with restored image Win10 1809 - Laptop booted in normal quick time with everything working and zero erros reported in device manager. Win10 auto updated in the background -kb4489899-kb4483452-kb4489907 (Win10 1809 cumulative, .net framework 3.5 & 4.7.2 & adobe flash). Also Win10 updated the wifi driver to v20.n.n and wifi is still working normally again.
* Installed second Samsung NVMe drive and restored ATI image for D: drive
* Installed Samsung Magician software and tested NVMe drives - both reported in good condition. Previous C: drive reported 4.8Tb written while previous D: drive reported 1Tb written - these drives are now role swapped.
I still had another day of installing software, making Win10 desktop setting changes and other conifguration but 3 days later and everything is still working like there was never anything wrong and I suffered 3 weeks of unecessary aggregvation, frustration, cursing and angst because... bl**dy MS Win10 update process decided to cr4p itself.
Acronis True Image saved me a LOT of time and even more aggrevation - especially as it kept all my user profile NTUSER.DAT settings including Internet bookmarks, File Manager favourites, local printer config and a lot of other previously installed programs/utilities that I did not need to labouriously repeat - hence I always recommend it. (I am also glad I did not re-sell the original RAM and NVMe drive
Apologies for another long drawn out post, hope it helps some - I'll try to keep quiet again...
oh - it really is a pleasure to have my Aero 15X working properly, I just hope it stays that way and MS don't screw it again.
(other than the Elan trackpad which has consistently driven me mad with it's over-sensitivity - maybe Gigabyte can send me a replacement - I'll even fit it myself)
