W3J keeps freezing up

I may be repeating someone else (I did several searches and couldnt find the same problem) but it randomly freezes up and locks up and gives me a black screen when I try to play a game. Am I overheating? Or do I really need to get ahold of Asus?

I've updated the bios and drivers.

 

Have you changed anything on this machine?
Added ram? Changed the video driver?
A single game or many games? Does it do it with just one game?
Have you ever played a games without problems before?

 

Added only a single gig of ram (ran memtest, and also removed it to see if it would fix it).

All games. But does not consistently happen at the same time.

Not on this laptop, no I haven't.

Every so often, I can get it to run right, but then next time I load it it freezes up.

 

Without wasting your time trying drivers and finding out if you installed drivers that do not work right i would say use the restore disks and return it to its original state. if you already ran memtest and it passed save your time and just reinstall windows. How many games have you tried. What drivers have you changed from the original state? w3j has no inherent issues with games from original state. Some games may no work right but you said you tried a few. Have you tried to run 3dmako5.? that should fail too given what you said. if so i would just do a clean install and watch the drivers you load

 

The only driver I've changed was the video card driver, but that was after I was already having problems.

I will try to restore it and see if that helps.

 

Restoring to original state is a quick and painless way to see if the problem was caused by user error or if the problem exists in the actual hardware. If i had to guess i would say it is probably not your notebook given the low defect rate of the w3. In otherwords i am saying it is probably some software you installed. Hope you prove me wrong.
Btw you still have not answered what games you were playing. i know that there are a few games that do what you described
1. battlefield of a free promo cd has inherent issue with direct x. Dont recall a solution but it was software related
2. wow also similar problem possibly.
I only recall this becuase i ran into it some time ago with a customers laptop. 2 games that behaved strangely. one was a freebie the other was old. both worked after the resident geek here found solutions on unrelated gaming forums. stuff like this happens. A surefire way to test the video performance of your w3j is to run 3dmark05. if it passes i would give up on the games you are attempting to play or visit the respective game manufacturers forums

 

I'm hoping its software, I just wish I knew what I had installed ;-)

I'll post back later with what happens.

 

I know it's probably too early for dust and lint build up, but if the system seems hotter than normal, you may want to look into heat as a cause of lower performance.

Also, you may want to look into the settings you're using..... if you are using the power4gear software, you'll want to make sure you're in one of the performance settings - no lower than "gaming" as the cpu speed scales down with every other setting.

Along with that, you'll want to look into your drivers. If you're using the stock drivers you'll want to check if you have power saving features on or anything else that may be causing an issue there.

Finally - I'd ask if you have this problem on both battery and on ac power..... it sort of goes with the above, but it'll help corroborate any inklings anyone could think of.

Now, you only have one stick of ram, which actually inhibits you in a case like this because you can't try another stick..... although the ram physically works for normal conditions, it doesn't mean it's not the problem... unfortunately..... and unfortunately memtest won't always pick it up either. The issue could be deeper, like in the graphics card itself, but I too would run 3dmark to see what that comes up with. If it can complete the tests, the number that's produced can tell us a lot... and if it can't complete the test, well it doesn't really help figure out the problem as much as it just gives us one more thing to prove what's going on.

 

I used the recovery disk and got it back to factory defaults, so I will be installing 3DMark05 again and see if it happens.

I'll check out the power4gear software as well.

I did try out a game, and it seems to work fine now, so I'm hoping that the problem is resolved. Again, I'll post back once I know.

 

Everything is working fine now, I don't know what happened, but everything runs fine. Thanks for the help!

 

Chalk another problem up to software conflicts/issues. In the months I've been visiting these forums, I don't think I've ever seen a true hardware failure on the W3J...

~ Brett