Mysterious Crashes

[Ekolite]

I'm not much into computer games, but once in a while I do quite like to play a bit of age of empires, or sometimes even some Civ. I use an acer lap top, which in the past has always been fine.

It had been a couple of months since I last booted up a game, but a few days ago I found my AoE 3 disk quite by chance and thought I'd have a quick game. However, about 10-20 minutes in my computer suddenly crashes, but instead of crashing to desktop it just turned itself off. When I tried to turn it back on again, it wouldn't, so I left it abo-ut ten minutes and when I came back it would come back on.

Since then I''ve tried un/reinstalling the game but still the problem continues, and I've now found that when playing Civ4 (well actually a mod of the game) I get the exact same problem.

This has happened in a range of locations, and before I've never had a problem like this.

Does anyone know what might be causing this, and how it could be fixed?

(in lay man's terms please)

 

[tokala]

Could be overheating of processor and/or video chip or worse, a defective video chip that just took a few years to reach its point of failure.

Overheating could be due to accumulated dust in the cooling system, and there is a series of nVidia video chips (some of the 8000s AFAIK) that is known to be defective and fail prematurely.

 

[Ekolite]

How can I tell what kind of video card I have? And I have noticed that the computer seems unusually warm when the crashes occur, is there any way I can clear out the dust?

 

[tokala]

You can download and run GPU-Z and post the "graphics card" tab.

As for the dust, that involves opening the laptop to get at the fan and heatsink. How to do that depends on the specific model, you might be able to find a service manual on the web, or posts of other people with a model similiar to yours.
In any case, you will probably void the warranty.

 

[innonimatu]

Overheating could be due to accumulated dust in the cooling system, and there is a series of nVidia video chips (some of the 8000s AFAIK) that is known to be defective and fail prematurely.

Not just some, for the space of one year or so (2007-2008) those nVidia chips with bad solder became a blight almost as bad as the capacitors a few years earlier. Almost all the laptops with nVidia chips from that series will fail there. And it seems that the solder starts detaching when the laptop goes through larger temperature differences - the dirtier the cooling system, the higher the temperature gets, the more likely the damage.

 

[Ekolite]

Okay I have an ATI Radeon video card, so I guess it's probably just dust or something?

 

[tokala]

Most likely.

 

[Serutan]

Another possiblity is that your power supply is either 1) marginal normally, but games push it
over the edge due to the graphics, or 2) it is starting to die

 

[tokala]

Rather unlikely for a laptop.

 

[Ekolite]

Thanks for your help everyone.

I asked a friend what I should do about dust and he suggested I used a vacuum cleaner to clean the vents (from the outside, without taking anything apart). I think it might have helped because I managed to play at least 40 minutes of Civ4 last night and when I got bored and shut down it seemed much less hot then usual.

 

[Turner]

Then it was probably overheating. Some laptops you can remove the keyboard without voiding the warranty and that might give you access to the fan/heatsink and blow it out that way. I don't know about Acers, but Toshibas are like that.

 

[Oishi]

Then it was probably overheating. Some laptops you can remove the keyboard without voiding the warranty and that might give you access to the fan/heatsink and blow it out that way. I don't know about Acers, but Toshibas are like that.

I have two Toshiba laptops, but I never knew about this little wonder. Thanks.