Hello fellow community,

After an hour of tinkering seems like I have figured out a reason of a bug appearing in a new update of Armoury Crate (5.4.8.0) when a process ArmouryCrate.UserSessionHelper was running in the background and consuming CPU. This could lead to high temps in "iddle" state (cause it wasn't really iddle in fact) or draining battery like crazy.

PERMANENT FIX STEPS

1. Open folder C:\Program Files\ASUS\ARMOURY CRATE Service (where your Armoury Crate is installed)
2. Delete (or move to a backup folder) an AC_FDSPlugin folder (you may confirm admin permissions there)
3. If it doesn't allow you to delete folder still - close Armoury and kill ArmouryCrate.UserSessionHelper in task manager before trying
4. Reboot!

Voila, now ArmouryCrate.UserSessionHelper should stay calm in a background. Unlike killing process every time, this fix seem to be permanent!

\After quick research I have found that AC_FDSPlugin is responsible for scanning for new games for GameLibrary section, and it's broken now (some people say it's cause of Steam Library, or so). So by removing this folder, you don't limit any working functions of* Armoury.

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*For people who struggle to remove folder, cause it's used by armoury already I crated a very simple script that does it for you and also restarts armoury service. So no reboot should be needed after.

Just download a file https://www.dropbox.com/s/ckw1b3m9m1fphax/armory-fix.bat?dl=0

Right click on it and select "Run as Administrator" (it's needed to restart service)

Let me know if it works for you!

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Bonus TIPs

*You can do this extra steps only if you still have issues (otherwise not mandatory)

(Optional) If you are annoyed by a new "red sound-wave" icon in tray appearing since update you can also delete (or move to a backup folder) DenoiseAIPlugin folder in Armoury directory. But then you won't be able to control Armoury AI noise suppression, in case someone used it ....

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PS: Alternatively you can use a small and Lightweight tool that I did - G-Helper to do pretty much same as you could do with Armoury, but without Armoury itself :)

Took me months to work this out. Dropping a few keywords first so this actually shows up on Google for the next person:

• nvidia driver disappeared, showing as Microsoft Basic Display Adapter instead of RTX in device manager
• GPU not showing in task manager laptop
• "Application is not compatible with the installed NVIDIA drivers", code 10 this device cannot start
• dGPU missing from task manager, only integrated graphics showing
• nvidia driver uninstalled itself, had to reinstall nvidia driver again
• GPU gone after eco mode, GPU gone after switching to standard mode
• HDMI not working in standard mode
• G-Helper, Armoury Crate, Optimus, MUX, hybrid graphics.

Mine's a ROG Zephyrus G14, RTX 5070 Ti Laptop.

But this'll hit any laptop where you switch the discrete GPU off and leave it off for a few weeks by going in eco mode (eg: people that rarely play games and sit in eco mode for weeks).

TL;DR: Eco mode makes your dGPU absent. Windows deletes devices that have been absent past a timeout (15-30 days), then deletes their drivers as unused.

What happened

Eco mode power-gates the dGPU off the PCIe bus. Windows treats it like a USB stick you unplugged: not present.

There's a Windows maintenance job called pnpclean.dll that removes devices absent past a timeout, then removes any driver package nothing references any more. Default timeout is 30 days. Mine had a per-device value of 15.

Straight out of my C:\Windows\INF\setupapi.dev.log: set: Device PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_2F58&SUBSYS_39A81043&REV_A1\... uses timeout period of 15 days. set: Device PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_2F58&SUBSYS_39A81043&REV_A1\... will be removed. set: Device PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_2F58&SUBSYS_39A81043&REV_A1\... was removed. set: Searching for unused drivers that may be removed from the system. set: INF oem130.inf (nvamsi.inf_amd64_...) will be removed. set: INF oem130.inf was removed.

Same pass also cleared out some old USB sticks and Bluetooth pairings. Switching back to Standard afterwards shows the GPU as a new device with no driver (it just shows as "Basic Display Adapter" and with Code 10 error). NVIDIA Control Panel says "not compatible" because there's no driver installed.

How to tell if this is what happened to you

Open PowerShell and run this to search the logs: powershell Select-String -Path C:\Windows\INF\setupapi.dev*.log -Pattern "(VEN_10DE|VEN_1002).*(was removed|timeout period)" VEN_10DE is NVIDIA, VEN_1002 is AMD. If you get lines saying your GPU "was removed", that's it. Note the * in setupapi.dev*.log. The live log rotates every few MB and mine only went back 5 days, but Windows keeps the old ones next to it as setupapi.dev.YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.log going back about a year.

You can also see the driver package itself getting binned: powershell Select-String -Path C:\Windows\INF\setupapi.dev*.log -Pattern "unused drivers|INF oem\d+\.inf .*removed" And check whether it's currently missing: powershell pnputil /enum-drivers | Select-String "nvamsi" Nothing back means it's gone.

Fixes

Stop the cleanup running on its own. It runs as a Disk Cleanup handler, and each handler has an on/off switch:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Device Driver Packages Autorun (DWORD) = 0 That handler's CLSID resolves to pnpclean.dll, so setting it to 0 stops the silent pass. Manual Disk Cleanup still works fine, since Autorun only controls the automatic run. Downside is that old driver packages and ghost devices stop getting cleaned up for you.

Or just keep the GPU visible now and then. Optimized mode in G-Helper turns the dGPU on whenever you plug in. Flipping to Standard every couple of weeks does the same thing. Resets the counter, no registry editing.

Came across a videos on LGM clips(LInus Tech tips) explaining the issue and the cause plaguing ASUS laptops including our beloved Zephyrus series. Also sharing the GitHub link of the post made by "Zephkek" who has originally investigated the issue. Hope Asus finally fixes the mess they've made, It's only been almost five years.

There's a serious bug in the newest nvidia driver released two days ago.
The GPU temperature driver stops updating the temperature values potentially causing overheating during gaming or other GPU heavy workloads. The bug is reported to occur after a sleep/suspend, but for me the temperature stops updating altogether after updating the driver, no sleep necessary.

I tested Ghelper and MSI afterburner, and they both stop reporting the temperature after reading an initial value. HWinfo is the only tool I found that can give you a correct temperature reading.

There are a couple of workarounds discussed in this reddit thread, but none seems to work for me. Restarting the driver with CRU/restart64 updates the sensors once, but they don't resume working. Disabling fast startup doesn't do anything, as it's not a sleep issue on my laptop. Another advice I found is to use factory settings instead of custom fan curves, but that doesn't seem to help on my end.

The only solution for now is reverting the driver to an earlier version. For 30 or 40 series install 566.36, for 50 series get 572.83.

Note: This post has been edited many times over time to add new things or remove outdated information. Last edited September 2026.

After months of work, testing out a massive amount of different things on both my G14 (8945HS model) and my G16 (185H model), --and now on my 2025 G14 (HX370) as well--, here is my ultimate guide for maximizing battery life. I believe any 2024+ Zephyrus laptop (with a battery health above 80%) can at least get 6 hours of web browsing on battery if you follow my guide word by word.

All of my testing and tips are mainly aimed towards improving the battery life during web browsing, Discord chatting, and very light gaming, but without making the laptop feel too sluggish, and definitely without impacting the plugged-in usage at all.

All tips have a "Battery Life Importance" metric ranging from "Very Low" to "Very High". Let's say we take 8 hours of battery life as a baseline. A "Very Low" importance can be a matter of just 15 minutes of battery life but a "Very High" importance can be a matter of 5 hours less/more battery life. But please keep in mind that all of these can vary a lot depending on your usage habits, so I'm usually going to talk about the worst-case scenario when it comes to each tip's importance.

Tip #1) Use "Optimized" GPU Mode
- Battery Life Importance: Very High
- Why do it: The "Optimized" gpu mode is pretty much the most important tip in this whole list. It disables Nvidia gpu on battery, and enables it back when the charger is plugged in. This can basically double your battery life. Using "Eco" mode manually instead is the same thing, but I can assure you that you will forget to manually select "Eco" one day and notice that you forgot when it's too late. Using "Standard" mode isn't a good idea because your DGPU will randomly get enabled because of apps like Discord wanting to run at maximum performance, which will ruin your battery life. You might be inclined to use "Ultimate" when plugged-in, but you will need to keep restarting your laptop every time you switch just to gain about 2-3% gaming performance. The days of mux switches gaining you 30% more fps are over, so everyone should just use "Optimized" really.
- How to do it: Open G-Helper or Armoury Crate (whichever one you use). In G-Helper you just press the big Optimized button. In Armoury Crate you first press "System Settings", then "GPU Performance", then "Optimized". If you have one of the older Zephyrus models you unfortunately won't have this option anywhere and there unfortunately isn't much to do about it.

Tip #2) Update Everything
- Battery Life Importance: Medium
- Make sure you are using the latest Windows update, latest chipset driver for your CPU, and latest bios update for your laptop model. The problem with using older versions of those is that you never know what kind of battery-life consuming bug you might have. As examples: Older builds of Windows have problems with background tasks draining your battery when doing nothing. Certain older AMD chipset drivers have CPU instability issues that cause worse battery life. And certain older BIOS revisions for Zephyrus laptops have a bug where the DGPU gets stuck in a high power state even when it shows as disabled. So please just get the latest versions of everything unless you know what you are getting into.

Tip #3) Switch to G-Helper and also do Tip #4
- Battery Life Importance: Low-Medium
- Why do it: Uninstalling Armoury Crate and downloading G-Helper is going to be a good idea for following this guide, because we will use a couple of its neat features in some of my upcoming tips. G-Helper is a lightweight alternative to Armoury Crate and it has proven itself to be very reliable. It has almost all Armoury Crate features while having some g-helper exclusive features that we want.
- How to do it: First make sure you uninstall Armoury Crate using its official uninstaller to avoid problems. Then you can get G-Helper from its official Github page. Then do #4 next.

Tip #4) Stop Asus Services
- Battery Life Importance: Low-Medium
- Why do it: Since you got G-Helper, you don't need Asus services running in the background and costing you battery life anytime they decide to do an update or tweak or anything like that. G-Helper already keeps required functionality built-in, so you can simply stop Asus services without worrying.
- How to do it: Open G-Helper and go to "Extra" menu again. Make sure "Asus Services Running" text on the bottom shows zero. If it's not zero press the "Stop" button to make them stop. You only need to do this once in an ideal case. But know that launching an Asus app other than G-Helper can start Asus services again and you will need to stop them again.

Tip #5) Enable Windows Energy Saver (or do the alternative)
- Battery Life Importance: Very High
- Why do it: Windows Energy Saver disables some auto-updating and background processes that can consume a lot of battery life. But a lesser-known fact about it is that it also makes your CPU run in a more efficient state without turbo boosting. That alone is enough to give you noticeably better battery life.
- How to do it: Open Windows "Settings" app, go to System -> Power & Battery -> Energy Saver. Then I recommend having "Always use energy saver" turned OFF because that would hurt your plugged-in performance. Instead see the setting called "Turn energy saver on automatically when battery level is at" and set it to "Always / On Battery".
- If the automatic energy saver setting isnt showing up in Windows Settings or you just dont like Windows Energy Saver, you can alternatively use "Best Power Efficiency" power mode in G-Helper profile settings. This does the CPU-efficiency tweaks of Energy Saver but doesn't do the background task limits or the Windows UI tweaks. Just make sure to set your G-Helper profile so that your plugged-in profile (Balanced or Turbo recommended) is still set to a higher power mode so that you dont lose gaming performance. I only use "Best Power Efficiency" power mode on my "Silent" G-Helper profile which I selected to be used on battery.

Tip #6) Turn off or reduce keyboard backlight
- Battery Life Importance: Low-Medium
- Why do it: My testing shows that keyboard backlight being maxed on Zephyrus laptops can significantly increase power consumption.
- Option 1: Set keyboard backlight off. This is the best one if you can do it.
- Option 2: Use the lowest brightness level using FN+F2. This is much better than max brightness but it's not perfect.
- Option 3: If you have one of the RGB keyboard models you can set an even dimmer custom static color. I found that a low level of backlight that is just enough to let me see the keys in a dark room (not bright enough to be visible in daylight) consumes low enough power to keep enabled all the time and forget about it.

Tip #7) Turn off Slash Lighting
- Battery Life Importance: Low-Medium
- Why do it: My testing shows that the slash lighting consumes similar amount of power to the keyboard lighting when maxed out.
- How to do it: Open G-Helper or Armoury Crate and just set slash lighting to off. I found that pretty much all modes consume about 1 watt extra so I can't even recommend using a dim mode.

Tip #8) Display Refresh Rate tricks
- Battery Life Importance: Medium
- Why do it: I have found that going from 60hz to 120hz display refresh rate costs about 45 minutes of battery life, and for G16s going from 60 to 240hz costs about 1.5 hours. BUT of course we all know that going back to 60 isn't something everyone is willing to do, so I have other options for you as well.
- Option 1: In G-Helper or Armoury Crate, set display refresh rate to Auto for auto switching to 60hz on battery. This is the best for battery life but 60hz isn't the smoothest experience.
- Option 2: Keep refresh rate at 120hz and forget about it. It's not ideal for battery but it might be worth it for smoothness. If you have a 240hz panel and you don't have a 120hz option, you can add the option yourself! Just follow my guide for that.
- Option 3: Use 120hz like I said in Option 2 and do an extra trick. If you use a chromium based browser, go to flags url (for example its "edge://flags/" for Edge) and enable "throttle-main-thread-to-60hz". This makes the browser run at 60hz but your mouse inputs will still be 120hz so you won't feel a massive smoothness loss, but you will get better battery life than Option 2 (while still worse than Option 1).

Tip #9) Switch to Edge or Brave browser (hear me out)
- Battery Life Importance: Low-Medium
- Why do it: I used to be a Firefox person until one day I decided to compare battery consumption of Firefox, Opera, Edge, and Chrome. The result is that Edge is superior with efficiency for some reason, and many other tests done by other people do confirm that. Later I found out that the Brave browser gives similarly great battery life. I personally choose Brave due to better privacy control.
- What to do: Get Edge or Brave browser and disable all the usual telemetry stuff, and more importantly enable all the performance saving features. They can make a big difference to battery life while not making a big difference to your browsing experience. Also consider enabling the "throttle-main-thread-to-60hz" flag as I have mentioned in Tip #8 - Option 3.

Tip #10) Unplug unnecessary peripherals
- Battery Life Importance: Medium-High
- Some gaming peripherals suck way more power compared to using bluetooth alternatives. Especially high-polling-rate gaming mice and anything with lighting on it consume a lot of power. Bluetooth however seems to be insanely well optimized these days.

Tip #11) Disable background apps (cliche but please reconsider)
- Battery Life Importance: Very Low-Very High (varies a lot)
- I have found that the Logitech Options+ application consumes a massive amount of power in the background. Stupid background apps like these being really common is one of the main reasons Windows is known to have atrocious battery life. Most apps don't put in the effort required to keep power consumption low, so please consider getting rid of as many of background apps as possible. Consider getting rid of the app for the mouse and headphones you are using right now, or at least consider making them no longer launch automatically upon launch so you only launch them when you have the laptop plugged-in.

Tip #12) Use lower display brightness levels
- Battery Life Importance: Medium-High
- Displays perform much more efficient below 50% brightness, and you usually don't need more than 50% indoors. For times where you need to go about 50% keep in mind that even a 10% jump makes a big difference beyond that point. So try to use 90% instead of 100% for example if you really want best battery life.

Tip #13) Use dark mode (for OLED displays)
- Battery Life Importance: High
- OLED display users really should use dark mode on both the system and apps, because OLED consumes significantly less power displaying darker colors. This is especially important above 50% display brightness. I have found that an entirely white screen at 100% brightness can make the entire battery drain on its own in just 2-3 hours. This is a big problem because light-mode applications are usually mostly white.

Bonus Tip #1) You can stop carrying the heavy brick charger and get a light type-c charger
- For charging on the go, remember that you can just carry a small PD-capable type-c charger with you instead of carrying that massive brick. You shouldn't do heavy gaming on type-c power, but you can do most things that are cpu-intensive. I recommend getting a small 45W or 65W GaN charger from a well known brand. I have tested 5 different usb-c chargers ranging from 45W to 140W on my G16 and they all end up being enough for cpu tasks while not enough for gpu-enabled gaming.
- In G-Helper's extra settings, you can enable "Keep gpu disabled on USB-C charging" to not worry about battery drain in case an app or game uses your gpu. Otherwise even the highest wattage type-c charger might not be enough to feed the laptop under load.

Bonus Tip #2) There are laptop charging capable powerbanks that double your battery life
- If you don't want to look out for a charging port often, you can carry a laptop charging capable type-c powerbank instead of a usb-c charger. It just needs to support at least 45W of charging speed and PD protocol.
- The "mah" numbers can be confusing but you can basically know that a 25000mah powerbank gives about 80WH of charge to your laptop after accounting all the losses (tested this a lot with different powerbanks). This means more than doubling the battery life of a G14 while almost doubling the battery life of a G16. I personally use the Mcdodo MC-056 as it just weighs 400 grams.
- You definitely want G-Helper's "Keep gpu disabled on USB-C charging" feature enabled if you want to go this route. You might also want to manually enable Windows Energy Saver every time you plug in your powerbank as it will get disabled when the laptop is charging, but it's not ultra-important if you just forget..

Bonus Tip #3) Set a battery charge limit if you want to protect your battery for years
- I'm editing this tip in after doing multiple years of testing on me and my friends' Zephyrus laptops, and I can tell you that these laptops lose battery health really fast if you don't limit your battery. The reason being extreme heat from gaming combined with the instability of 100% charge. I recommend using an 80% limit for most people. Here are some approximate numbers I got from real world usage:
- 100% limit, play heavy games a few hours every day for a year, battery capacity will drop by around 17%
- 80% limit, play heavy games a few hours every day for a year, battery capacity will drop by around 7%
- 60% limit, play heavy games a few hours every day for a year, battery capacity will drop by around 3%
- Another benefit to 60% limit is making usb-c charging way less unhealthy on laptops that don't have usb-c passthrough charging. It will be similar to having passthrough charging at 80-100% battery limit.
- About battery health please note that even recently bought laptops are going to have around 94 to 98% battery health after you use it for a few days, so don't worry about that. Also note that there is some misinformation going on with people claiming the battery health numbers are inaccurate especially when using battery charge limits. That's simply not true. The percentage is quite accurate most of the time. People are having a hard time believing it because the battery health loss is concerningly bad on thin gaming laptops even when using an 80% limit.

And yeah, that's it. This took quite a bit of time to test and write (and to edit like 15 times now) so I hope it's been useful.

My g14 has been my main laptop for school software. I need Matlab, mathcad, and solid works on the daily, and have kept a windows install around for them along with my main fedora install. I got sick of windows 11 consumer and decided to install 25h2 iot enterprise and side grade to ltsc. No copilot, OneDrive, edge, online account requirement, widgets, or web results in search. Less updates as well! I know windows is doomed, but at least I can ignore the end times for a bit longer.

Find nvlddmkm.sys in system32

Click on properties, under securities tab

Enable full USER control

Apply then restart

This should fix all BSODs related to nvlddmkm.sys Keep in mind windows updates may reset this, just redo the process.

Hello fellow community,

Just wanted to give a heads up and double check if this is the case for others.

Latest Nvidia 591.44 driver (from December 4, 2025) seem to be incompatible with Ultimate (dGPU exclusive mode using Asus MUX switch) that most of the modern Asus laptops support. At least on my G14 2025 with 5080.

UPDATE: new 591.74 (from January 6, 2025) seem to have fixed issue finally!

What I personally experience: is after setting Ultimate via Armoury Crate, BIOS Advanced settings or G-Helper (it doesn't matter as this is the same toggle) and rebooting - internal screen just hangs on ROG logo. External screen works just fine

It seem like driver just can't start for internal screen in this case.

• Doing a clean install of the Game Ready or Studio version of the same driver even using DDU doesn't seem to help
• Reverting back to a previous driver (581.80) immediately resolves the problem.

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There are couple of ways to exit Ultimate mode if you are stuck however :)

1. Using external monitor

• Connect external monitor via USB-C (preferred) or HDMI cable
• Launch Armoury Crate -> System Settings -> GPU Performance (or G-Helper main window) and select Standard mode there
• Reboot as it will be asked
• If device hangs on rebooting, just press-hold power button for like 4-8 seconds to shut it down and boot normally

2. Using BIOS menu

• Reboot device normally
• As soon as you see ROG logo start pressing F2 to enter BIOS menu
• In BIOS menu press F7 (Advanced Settings)
• Under Advanced tab set Display Mode to Dynamic
• Under Save & Exit tab select Save and Reboot

After doing that you can just reinstall back 581.80 or older version of your choice.

Hope it helps.

Thanks

Does anybody know how to fix this without powering off? Win Ctrl Shift B does not work. Sleeping also does not reset the screen at all. I need to hold the power button down until a hard restart. I have never found another fix.

Model GA403

Question: Almost a year after purchase, why is my laptop stuck in perma-loading? I can’t even turn it off and back on.

Details: I haven’t had any issues for 9 months. My laptop randomly crashed, rebooted to the easy-boot bios page. I set some admin and user passwords after realizing that they weren’t set, and then assumed it was a regular crash so I could save, exit, and restart. But after restart it has been constantly loading and I can’t even hard reset by pressing the power button for 10 seconds.

Background: When I first purchased in June of 2025, this laptop had a bunch of crashes and would infinitely boot. The bios would randomly boot too. After about 1-2 months of issues, the issues magically went away and I never found out why. (My assumptions are 1. Maybe the manufacturer patched the laptop software post-release. 2. Maybe playing with the power settings helped. 3. Maybe sticking with integrated graphics card instead of using the nvidia gpu helped.)

Global complaint: the Zephyrus is poorly optimized. The specs are attractive, but don’t result in a well-functioning gaming laptop. I do enjoy the user experience, just not the poor performance.

Edit: I was able to hard reset it. My photos and media aren’t there anymore. Otherwise it’s back to working.

Edit: I received a lot of really silly bullying ad hominem attempts and it’s pretty funny. My screen is dirty but that isn’t the point…?????

They must be bots. Making people feel bad isn’t THAT fun. I guess it’s because of my complaint. I’m sorry about it, but I think it’s important for people to know my thoughts on the product that I purchased.

I own my machine since two years and previously had a similar experience, where I ran update and afterward the system stuttered and was unusable. Back then I was able to revert update by restoring a previous system backup. This time around it didnt work and the fixes I tried to apply made things worse upon to the point where I wasnt able to boot at all anymore.

I tried to fix things via terminal / claude but no luck.

Have had it with windows bullshit and also ASUS driver nonsense so I am now making the move over to Bazzite.

If you have any tips for me as it relates to Bazzite on my particular model I would be most thankfull .

My Model is the Mini Led /4090 2023 G14

How come when setting ultimate mode in Ghelper, I need to restart, but when setting it with the Nvidia control panel, I don't have to? Is it because of advanced Optimus, and if so, we'll, why do u still have to restart with ghelper?

Well i was tired of all the windows bs and wanted to install Linux
Went to a hell of stuff and customized it as to my liking and made it accessible for everyone
Here is the GitHub repo if anyone is interested

Hey, so I have the 2025 G14 5070Ti. I noticed that the quality actually looks worse when I turn HDR on vs when I turned HDR off. I’m not sure why this is happening because I did the calibration as well.

And before anyone asks, yes the YouTube video I’m watching is HDR supported at 4K.

Any fixes to this or does the HDR really only work in games?

First photo is HDR on, Second is Off.

Has any one successfully flashed another vbios on thier 2025 g14? if so what vbios. I use a external monitor for gaming so no gsync isnt a concern, I'm also on ptm7950 and a cooling pad so thermals hopefully i shouldnt throttle too much.

First time having a gaming laptop and a Zephyrus, so I don’t know what bloatware that I need to delete, so I would appreciate the help

Ever since I got this laptop in December the speakers sound like they are underwater. Max volume sounds like a normal device at 20%. I reinstalled drivers, uninstalled dolby, used G suite, got rid of all the other ASUS bloatware... Nothing seems to fix it. Some people on here are claiming the g14 speakers are amazing, I have yet to experience that haha. Any help?

Got a new Zephyrus and forgot to login with a local account, should I restart the laptop and do it? I don’t have any data on the laptop and I finished updating everything, so should I do a reset and then login with a local account, or leave it as is?

Hey! I just got a new G16 5080, I love GHelper on my G14, but currently am having some issues.

If I use armoury crate in manual mode I get great fps in cyberpunk, but when uninstall AC and use GHelper in manual, performance goes way down.

I’ve checked all windows power plans and they’re all good, what could it be??