[Experimental build] with a Manual Fan control not working after updating asus controller v3 to 3.1.41.0

[Retr0680]

Rules

• I made myself familiar with the Readme, FAQ and Troubleshooting.
• I understand that, if insufficient information or no app logs will be provided, my issue will be closed without an answer.

What's wrong?

Manual fan control stopped working on the experimental build after updating the asus controller to the latest version. even running ghelper as admin didn't work :(

How to reproduce the bug?

1. download the update from the asus website or from ghelper
2. install the update and restart
3. try to run the custom fan curve

Logs

log.txt

Device and Model

Asus TUF A15 FA506QM

Additional information.

No response

Armoury Crate

Uninstalled

Asus Services

0

Version

0.204

OS

Windows 11 24H2

[seerge]

@Retr0680 hello, can you run following in powershell as admin

 powershell Get-Service -Name "AsusSAIO"

What does it output to you ?

[Retr0680]

@seerge i got this

for the time being can i revert back to the previous version?

[seerge]

@Retr0680 ok,

Can you try to run

Start-Service -Name "AsusSAIO"

And then check service status again with

Get-Service -Name "AsusSAIO"

?

[Retr0680]

@seerge i got this when i ran the start service command

[seerge]

@Retr0680 ok, that's strange, can you try this instead ?

Set-Service -Name "AsusSAIO" -Status running -StartupType Automatic

And then try

Start-Service -Name "AsusSAIO"

again ?

[Retr0680]

@seerge same result :(

should i first start the asus services from ghelper?

[seerge]

@Retr0680 not yet,

try to do following:

Set-Service -Name "AsusSAIO" -StartupType Manual

Then run

Get-Service -Name "AsusSAIO" | Select-Object StartType

it should say it's set to Manual

Then reboot, and try to do again

 Start-Service -Name "AsusSAIO"

[seerge]

@Retr0680 if it doesn't work still, post what does this command outputs for you

Get-WmiObject Win32_SystemDriver | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "*AsusSAIO*" }

[Retr0680]

@seerge after rebooting it reverted to automatic, i didn't reboot but did this instead

[seerge]

@Retr0680 ok, it seem to be running now ... can you try if G-Helper manual control works now ?

[Retr0680]

@seerge it's still not working :(

[seerge]

@Retr0680 ok, i have some bad news :)

I had to dig deeper, and managed to reproduce it. It seems like asus has restricted access to the driver only to SYSTEM processes (i.e. running app as Admin won't help).

So it has to be either system service or be running with the highest possible SYSTEM privilege .

---

To confirm that try following

1. Download and unzip Sysinternals PsExec.
2. Open this folder in Powershell as admin and run following command

./psexec -s -i "<FULL PATH TO GHELPER>"

(so something like)

./psexec -s -i "C:\Users\Serge\Downloads\GHelper.exe"

G-Helper will run without remembering your old settings (cause it runs under different "user"), but try to apply a custom fan curve and see if it works)

[Retr0680]

no it's still not working :(, damn asus

[seerge]

@Retr0680 did you manage to launch it via psexec ? What does Fans + Power window show when you run it ? can you post a screenshot ?

[Retr0680]

@seerge after another reboot it started to work with psexec

[seerge]

@Retr0680 ok, so it confirms reason - is a new permissions.

I currently don't know how to tackle this besides running app as SYSTEM.

I might try to write a separate service purely for this purpose (i.e. communicating with the driver), but can be difficult to be honest.

[Retr0680]

so for now should roll back?

[seerge]

@Retr0680 for the sanity check, can you test if https://github.com/Karmel0x/AsusFanControl works for you with 41 ?

That app uses asus own DLL for setting fan speeds, but under the hood it still uses this AsusSAIO driver.

G-Helper does fan control in a bit different way (directly) without any libraries. But core approach is similar.

[Retr0680]

@seerge nope, not working with this as well :(

[seerge]

@Retr0680 ok, thanks for confirming. It's same for me.

Then looks like the only solution would be writing a separate service app (cause it runs with SYSTEM permissions) that would do the thing.

[Retr0680]

@seerge will be waiting for the fix, thanks for helping out :)

[injkgz]

Is it possible to have custom wattage limits without editing stock fan curves?

[Retr0680]

Is it possible to have custom wattage limits without editing stock fan curves?

yes you can in the experimental build

[seerge]

@injkgz it's not related to Experimental manual fan control :) But it depends on the model, G14 and G16 2024 firmware require both fan curves + power limits to be applied together as in AC you can't set only something one.

[LucasIsRed]

@injkgz it's not related to Experimental manual fan control :) But it depends on the model, G14 and G16 2024 firmware require both fan curves + power limits to be applied together as in AC you can't set only something one.

Big yikes, CPU temps stuck at 95C fan at 0% 😭

[orionflame]

will this be fixed for the experimental version? regular builds never worked for my laptop.

[seerge]

@orionflame you can just use previous version of Asus Control interface (3.0.1.40) for now :)

For the newer one, I need to find a way for (user friendly) access to a asus driver, that now requires SYSTEM permission.

[orionflame]

thanks a lot. how can i do that? i uninstalled v3 but then it automatically installed v3. is it possible to force it to use the version you mentioned?

[seerge]

@orionflame you can still download and install version 3.0.1.40 from Asus driver website.

But before you need to uninstall existing one

[orionflame]

ok i just did that but after restarting it goes back to the latest. i dont know if it will stick if i dont restart.

[seerge]

@orionflame may be windows update interferes, and installs it on it's own

[Retr0680]

ok i just did that but after restarting it goes back to the latest. i dont know if it will stick if i dont restart.

@orionflame you can try disabling the automatic driver update from windows update and then try to reinstall the previous version

[zackriso]

@seerge had the same issue as the OP. Besides reverting to 3.0.1.40, are there other solutions?

[seerge]

@zackriso you can run app with a SYSTEM permission with the help of psexec.

[zackriso]

How do we stop driver updates completely? I rolled back to 3.0.1.40, only for windows to force update me to 41. Or at least, can we disable version 41 from being installed?

[Retr0680]

How do we stop driver updates completely? I rolled back to 3.0.1.40, only for windows to force update me to 41. Or at least, can we disable version 41 from being installed?

@zackriso just go to device manager and look for the asus controller and right click on it and go to properties<driver<roll back and it won't update until you do it manually I think? Not sure about the last part. Hope it helps :)

[orionflame]

How do we stop driver updates completely? I rolled back to 3.0.1.40, only for windows to force update me to 41. Or at least, can we disable version 41 from being installed?

@zackriso just go to device manager and look for the asus controller and right click on it and go to properties<driver<roll back and it won't update until you do it manually I think? Not sure about the last part. Hope it helps :)

No it automatically updates back to the latest.

[orionflame]

ok i just did that but after restarting it goes back to the latest. i dont know if it will stick if i dont restart.

@orionflame you can try disabling the automatic driver update from windows update and then try to reinstall the previous version

Thanks I am checking this I don't know how to do it yet.

[Retr0680]

How do we stop driver updates completely? I rolled back to 3.0.1.40, only for windows to force update me to 41. Or at least, can we disable version 41 from being installed?

@zackriso just go to device manager and look for the asus controller and right click on it and go to properties<driver<roll back and it won't update until you do it manually I think? Not sure about the last part. Hope it helps :)

No it automatically updates back to the latest.

@orionflame worked for me, you have to do it like this

20250304-0619-23.8202805.mp4

[orionflame]

How do we stop driver updates completely? I rolled back to 3.0.1.40, only for windows to force update me to 41. Or at least, can we disable version 41 from being installed?

@zackriso just go to device manager and look for the asus controller and right click on it and go to properties<driver<roll back and it won't update until you do it manually I think? Not sure about the last part. Hope it helps :)

No it automatically updates back to the latest.

@orionflame worked for me, you have to do it like this

20250304-0619-23.8202805.mp4

Thanks but what did you do? I now see I have 3.1.40 version but using this version GHelper can't control the fans. Am I missing something? Basically when I uninstall it's automatically installed again. I am not sure which version is supposed to work.

[seerge]

@orionflame if you really want - you can use even 41, just run app with a SYSTEM permission as I explained in a comment above..

I know, that it's not convenient :) But you get latest driver and things still work after all. You can even create a windows startup task to run G-Helper via PSexec app.

<FULL PATH TO PSEXEC>/psexec.exe -s -i "<FULL PATH TO GHELPER>\GHelper.exe"

[zackriso]

@orionflame if you really want - you can use even 41, just run app with a SYSTEM permission as I explained in a comment above..

I know, that it's not convenient :) But you get latest driver and things still work after all. You can even create a windows startup task to run G-Helper via PSexec app.

<FULL PATH TO PSEXEC>/psexec.exe -s -i "<FULL PATH TO GHELPER>\GHelper.exe"

can we reload the previous settings to the config file of Ghelper after running psexec though?

[seerge]

@zackriso I don't think so :) G-Helper stores settings under %appdata%\GHelper folder, and apparently when you run app as SYSTEM user via psexec that changes system variables (pointing to where that folder is).

[Retr0680]

@zackriso you can try pasting your config file in the same directory where your ghelper is in my case it's in C:\GHelper, it might work. hope it helps :)

[seerge]

@Retr0680 @zackriso ah, right! That's a good thought.

I had completely forgotten about my own feature... G-Helper does indeed check for a config file in its own directory first (this is intended for "portable" usage).

You indeed can just place config.json into same folder as GHelper.exe and it will use that instead

[stasrobeiko]

How do we stop driver updates completely? I rolled back to 3.0.1.40, only for windows to force update me to 41. Or at least, can we disable version 41 from being installed?

I seem to have managed to disable the automatic update of this driver when I ended this asus service: