Few days ago I made this post describing my problem.

The problem

• If I shut down or restart the laptop, it will hang on the "shutting down" / "restarting" screen for 7+ minutes, then eventually BSOD with DRIVER_STATE_POWER_FAILURE. Clearly some device is failing to shut down and keeping the laptop awake.

• I cannot sleep the laptop either. I know it's always been fucky, but literally NOTHING will do it. Even all of the below combined:

  • Windows mode in armoury crate

  • Unplugging laptop

  • WiFi/Bluetooth/Location all forced off

  • Airplane mode

  • Pressing start menu or power button to sleep

  • Unplugging ALL external devices

This started literally overnight with:

• No physical changes (laptop wasn't moved, no new objects placed anywhere, etc)

• No windows, Armoury Crate, MyAsus or driver automatic updates (I checked hard, and I have them all force disabled on Windows 10 Enterprise - don't fix what isn't broken)

• No external devices plugged in / unplugged, no new devices

• No changes to anything around the house - WiFi networks remained the same, no bluetooth or smart devices in my home, no WPS, no auto discovering stuff, no bullshit...

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Diagnosing an issue like this

This is probably caused by a device driver - software that lets you use hardware on the laptop like WiFi, Fingerprint sensor, etc.

To eliminate stuff one by one, you can disable the devices in device manager.

I disabled:

• Fingerprint sensor
• Bluetooth
• WiFi (Intel & MediaTek)
• LAN (MediaTek)

I also closed every single one of my notification tray applications, apps, background processes to make sure there was no app wakelocking anything.

After it worked, I tested enabling a device, then rebooting. If it worked, this time I let all my background processes start, just in case. It paid off - re-enabling the WiFi device didn't cause an issue, but connecting to the internet and loading apps which used the internet made the issue return. Instantly isolated to WiFi.

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What I tried

• All of the points of "The Problem" section above

• Enabling ErP (ASUS Advanced Power Management) in BIOS

• Updating literally everything (Armoury Crate, everything in MyAsus, Windows Update, all drivers, BIOS, etc)

• Uninstalling device drivers in device manager, being sure to tick "Delete the device driver software", but the damn thing kept returning on reboot.

• Reinstalling the WiFi drivers - not really a reinstall since theres no fucking way to uninstall the existing garbage anyway, it just returns no matter what (even turning off the auto installation stuff)

• Using BlueScreenView to find the faulting driver - it just pointed to ntoskrnl.exe which doesn't help at all, that's a Windows process that could be working with many drivers at a time

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The solution

1. Right click on the start menu and click Device Manager to open it.

2. Find Network Adapters and expand it.

3. Double click on Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160Mhz.

4. Click on Power Management.

5. Untick all the turn off and wake up options. It should look like this.

6. Hit OK.

7. Repeat Steps 3-6 for Reaktek PCIe GbE Family Controller. This seems to be for LAN, but I'm not sure, and I did it anyway incase.

That's it. I'm using the latest drivers (version 22.40.0.7 incase an update breaks this, which wouldn't be a surprise at this point), so if it doesn't work for you, make sure to use those.

If its still fucked, it could be another driver - try it on other stuff like:

• Fingerprint sensor
• Bluetooth
• WiFi (Intel & MediaTek)
• LAN (MediaTek)

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Some thoughts on the sleep issues

Even after this, my laptop doesn't sleep. Nothing in powercfg /requests and powercfg /a reports that literally no sleep states are supported.

On BIOS 405 and 407 it would atleast sleep if I unplugged the charger and turned off my external mouse every time, sometimes the CPU light would come on while the power button blinked like it was asleep, but atleast it slept. On those BIOS it reported one of those S1/2/3 states supported.

On 409 it doesn't.

Even still, given that this has proven that the devices built into this laptop may have issues with power / shutting down properly etc, I feel like it could be contributing to the sleep issues.

The main factors seem to consider are:

• powercfg /requests (basically, is an app wakelocking - if it is, its still possible it wouldn't show up here)

• BIOS version

• Supported sleep states (powercfg /a)

• WiFi activity, external devices keeping awake

• Charger plugged in / unplugged

• Windows Power / Armoury Crate Profile (Windows/Silent/Performance/Turbo/Custom)

• New - the devices (WiFi, bluetooth)

So, if you're still suffering from sleep issues, I recommend trying to repeat the steps of the The solution section above on these devices:

• Fingerprint sensor
• Bluetooth
• WiFi (Intel & MediaTek)
• LAN (MediaTek)

It could help.

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Rant

The fact that I have to make this post is ABSYMAL and fucking unacceptable. I've been working with computers for 10+ years now, so I know what to try first, how to search on Google / Stack / anywhere else on what could cause an issue like this. Sure, there is always the obligatory useless microsoft technet posts, where this vetaran forum member has an essay about what his job is, then just recommends sfc /scannow, a reinstall or some other useless bullshit.

But what ASUS has done here is another level. Backtrack to the sleep issues - first I have to email 4 times - the 3rd time they sent me a shitty PDF with instructions on how to reinstall that looked like it came out of a fucking tech support scam center.

Then they said they escalated it. Since then there have been like 4 BIOS updates - all of them have done fuck all for the sleep issues.

The MyAsus app is terrible, heavy, full of ads and promotions, looks like a website and yet its the only way to switch the battery mode. I like being able to view my warranty status though, and having access to all driver packages downloadable and installable manually.

All the official offerings (Armoury Crate, MyAsus) are full of spelling mistakes. It doesn't set a great picture. The armoury crate is like 150MB of RAM, and is the ONLY way to control shit - NO notification tray thing, NO launch args, literally nothing you have to open this fat ugly UI that uses your GPU to change any setting. You cant even remap the ROG thing. all the profiles are locked down and encrypted, and you have no way of knowing if the Custom OC mode has the default values by default. Spoiler: the CPU is but the GPU isnt. Fucking retarded. I just set all of them to minimum except CPU base wattage which I left on what it was, seems normal

Now this is all fairly nitpicky. I am not expecting a perfect UI / interface experience. But what about basic fucking operation? This laptop is absolutely amazing and I love it so much - perfect choice for me. I've had a mostly stable experience other than this, but with crap like this happening, sleep still not working with no word from asus, random issues overnight and clean installs doing nothing for most people, i cant be 100% confident that this will be up and running when i need it to. I literally had a MacBook Pro 2017 bootcamped to Windows 10 previously. If i spammed the keys while waking it up from sleep it was ALWAYS BSOD with driver power state failure. I bought a powerful native windows machine because that thing wasnt holding up to my workloads at all, and i thought, its native windows, it shouldnt have stupid shit like this. and it has WORSE issues, it doesnt even sleep.

why the heck does ASUS make such a great device, then give it such shitty drivers? It's really dumb. The fact that the sleep issues haven't been fixed and this thing has been out for ALMOST HALF A YEAR is out of this world. Modern gaming laptops seem to always have issues like this. It's been years and nothing has improved. You can clean install this thing and risk MISSING DRIVERS - even though theres MyAsus, Armoury Crate and the website, some stuff in eSupport may be missing and a fucking folder in program files and you lose functionality in Armoury Crate. It's only shipped on the disks of laptops.

Everyone on the drivers team needs to be fired immediately. Everyone involved. How do you get this SO wrong. It's not even Windows Update or interfereing here and installing wrong drivers which is usually the case. The support, drivers and deployment of drivers are both absymal and it creates a heap of shit headache every time something goes wrong. It's all unstable, poorly written, unoptimised, ugly garbage, and idk why but its always filled with fucking spelling errors, thats just a given at this point. Theres ads and promotions in all the built in apps right next to where i control my fucking system. it makes no sense.

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Tags (since finding a solution for this is so hard on google) - ignore

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