Laptop screen turning off in Win 8.1 when power is unplugged

[Red Hawk]

Not sure where to put this, but it seems like a Windows issue so I'm putting it here.

I've started to have a weird issue with the laptop in my sig. I installed the Windows 8.1 Preview, along with AMD's preview drivers, over a month ago, and didn't have any problems initially. But now, whenever the laptop is running Windows, if the power cord is unplugged the screen turns off. It doesn't simply turn black, it shuts off altogether. I don't think this is a hardware issue; if I boot the laptop while unplugged the screen shows the ASUS BIOS screen and then the Windows preview betta fish, only to shut off the screen when it's supposed to show me the Windows login screen. Windows is apparently still running, as I hear the Windows startup tune and the screen comes back on if I plug in the power cord. I updated to the latest Win 8.1 preview driver from AMD and it still does all this.

Anyone have any idea what's causing this and how to fix it? It basically renders my laptop unusable when away from a wall outlet. I would try reverting to a System Restore point but wouldn't you know it, my laptop has not made any System Restore points since updating to Win 8.1 for whatever reason.

 

[emp1re]

Not sure since I don't run Win8.

Have you looked at the power options? That would be the first place I check.

 

[ViRGE]

Not sure since I don't run Win8.

Have you looked at the power options? That would be the first place I check.

Ditto. Power options, turn off adaptive brightness, etc.

 

[corkyg]

Could also be a laptop battery issue. Have you checked your battery's condition lately?

 

[GraveDigger27]

Not sure where to put this, but it seems like a Windows issue so I'm putting it here.

I've started to have a weird issue with the laptop in my sig. I installed the Windows 8.1 Preview, along with AMD's preview drivers, over a month ago, and didn't have any problems initially. But now, whenever the laptop is running Windows, if the power cord is unplugged the screen turns off. It doesn't simply turn black, it shuts off altogether. I don't think this is a hardware issue; if I boot the laptop while unplugged the screen shows the ASUS BIOS screen and then the Windows preview betta fish, only to shut off the screen when it's supposed to show me the Windows login screen. Windows is apparently still running, as I hear the Windows startup tune and the screen comes back on if I plug in the power cord. I updated to the latest Win 8.1 preview driver from AMD and it still does all this.

Anyone have any idea what's causing this and how to fix it? It basically renders my laptop unusable when away from a wall outlet. I would try reverting to a System Restore point but wouldn't you know it, my laptop has not made any System Restore points since updating to Win 8.1 for whatever reason.

Unfortunately you might not get much help regarding this issue from ASUS - I have a 2-year old ASUS X52JT (based on the K52 series) laptop that originally came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and I upgraded to Windows 8 Pro last year when that OS came out. I've "upgraded" to Windows 8.1 last month and have the exact same issue with the screen going black on battery power. When I plug the laptop back in, the screen comes to life.

I didn't have this issue with Windows 7 or 8 and I've installed various Linux distros (Ubuntu 13.10, Linux Mint 16, elementary OS, Linux Deepin and openSUSE 13.1) that are able to run on battery power without issue. The battery in the laptop is brand-new (just bought it earlier this month from Batteries Plus) and is fully charged.

I've posted this issue on ASUS' customer support site, but during a live chat with one of their support reps I was repeatedly told that my model "wasn't designed for Windows 8/8.1 and ASUS doesn't provide Win 8/8.1 drivers/utilities for this laptop". Which is fine, since I really don't want most of their utility programs on the system anyway. But I think a 2-year old product should be able to run an operating system that designed to work on hardware running older versions of the os like Windows XP, Vista and 7. They weren't ANY help and had NO suggestions regarding this matter so I'm just as stuck as ever.D:

My recommendation is to do the following (depending on what you still have available to you...) - if you have a disk image of your system PRIOR to the installation of Windows 8.1, restore it and wait to update to Win 8.1 after you've checked to see if this problem has been resolved. That's what I'm going to do. Otherwise you might need to restore your system to the state it was when you bought it with the restore DVDs you made when you first booted your system (you did make those right?) Or if you have another backup of your system you might want to see if you can restore that.

Best of luck.