W3J and WoW: Burning Crusade

I've been playing WoW: Burning Crusade with my W3J and I've noticed that it has been crashing a lot lately. The W3J meets all of the recommended settings for the game and, in some cases, exceeds them. I've set all the eye-candy for the game to the maximum because I am assuming the laptop can handle it. I've narrowed down three reasons for the crashes.

1. My laptop can't handle the high settings
2. I need to upgrade my video driver (I've tried this a million times, doesnt do anything) Any stable versions for the x1600? Im currently using the stock driver after experimenting with different ones
3. My laptop is getting too hot.

Please I need help! I am considering getting a laptop cooler to solve reason number three but Im not sure if thats the main issue here. Also, is a laptop cooler a good investment or just a fancy pad with fans? Thanks for the input!

 

try omega drivers

 

if you computer were overheating, it would just turn off, not cause the game to crash. have you installed all the latest patches for your game? also, some program you are running in the background may be causing problems.

 

If the GPU is overheating it may artifact/crash. If you'd log your temperatures we'd be better able to diagnose the problem. A cooling pad is a good idea if you do a lot of gaming; there are a couple of reviews in the cooling guide.

 

yeah, i have the latest patches for the game. Hmmm.. I've never considered the background programs Im running.. I usually run Itunes/Internet Explorer while playing. That might be it. Ill try running just the game and see.

I'll also try installing Omega drivers

 

When the game crashes, I sometimes get a blue screen with the error message "physical memory dump" and a whole lot of information that I dont understand. Other times, my screen would just turn off (just the LCD) but everything would still be on (I can still hear the game sounds and the CPU would still be on). How can I the temperatures for my laptop?

 

Sounds like an overheating problem of the GPU. Notebook hardware control can monitor the cpu temperature, not sure what can monitor the gpu or if it even has a temp. sensor.

 

Catalyst 7.4 is stable with X1600.

Im running that right now.

I have found that the stock drivers for the X1600 in W3Js are terrible for games. Updating should help.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910

 

one thing you can do is check your event logs to see what may be causing the error.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427

for me it was actually in administrative tools, not performance blah blah blah...

if you go to computer management and event viewer, take a look at the system event logs. usually crashes from programs are usually shown as an error with a red circle/white x next to it.

 

ok.. i checked out the event log.. there are numerous "system error" logs Event 1003. Also, win32 seems to be creating a lot of errors too. Can someone tell me what these messages mean?

 

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic26439.html

google is your friend. according to that page, it either means you have bad ram or your page file is too small.

use memtest86 to check out your ram.

and check out these:

http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/10374-event-id-1003-a.html

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1003&eventno=1274&source=System&phase=1