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    Screen goes dark during gaming

    Discussion in 'Asus' started by Yahrghrr, Jul 8, 2009.

  1. Yahrghrr

    Yahrghrr Newbie

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    I've an 2+ year old Asus A8Js running WinXP and Nforce 190.15 (latest driver, I believe) for the Geforce Go 7700 GPU. About a month ago the laptop was reformatted and I haven't had much time to do much gaming since then till today. So I decided to load up some Audiosurf and after playing for awhile, the screen would go black. Not off, but just very dark and hitting FN-F6 to turn up the brightness solves the problem....for a few seconds before the screen goes dark again. It happens only in games and nothing I can find in forums seem to help.

    Any suggestions? Is my card going bad or overheating? NHC doesn't show any sign of overheating so I doubt that might be the case. I've tried it with Demigod (only 3 games on my laptop right now, the third being WoW which I haven't logged on in awhile) and the same screen going dark problem happens again.

    I've read somewhere that Nvidia's smartdimmer might be the cause but I don't seem to have the option to toggle that in the Nvidia Control Panel.

    Thanks in advance for any help/advice. I do hope it's not a hardware issue, I'd hate to have to upgrade before SC2 or Diablo 3 comes out, heh :D
     
    Yahrghrr, Jul 8, 2009
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  2. E.B.E.

    E.B.E. NBR Procrastinator

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    If it is not due to GPU card overheating (and from your description it doesn't seem to be), then it could be either a GPU driver or other software issue, or else the LCD inverter may be going bad.

    I would suggest, in this sequence: GPU driver reinstall, together with reinstalling the entire ATK drivers and utilities suite; Windows reinstall or recovery from good image; and then inverter replacement.

    The inverter is not an expensive component, and you can buy it off ASUS eStore for instance. We have an A8 disassembly manual on the Info Booth.
     
    E.B.E., Jul 12, 2009
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