M1330 CRASH after playing WOW for an hour or so......

I'm having problems with my m1330 crashing while playing wow. The screen goes blank and power indicator on front is still on, and I can't do anything except turn the computer off using the power button... Any suggestions as to why this is happening? I'm thinking it's either drivers, or heat but I'm not sure. This even happens when running WOW at low settings....

 

How hot is the notebook when this happens? And are you able to turn the notebook back on immediately after forcing the power off? If the notebook isn't much hotter than normal and you can turn it back on immediately, it's probably not heat, so I would try updating your drivers and running Memtest86.

 

thanks for the tip... to be honest, I'm not sure about the heat as I didn't think of it too important as nothing in my system is OC'ed.... but I'm going to check on that. And yes, I can turn it right back on when I force the power off... Anyone know a set of stable NVIDIA drivers for 8400M GS for WOW? That and original WC3 are really the only games I play...

 

Return the laptop and get a new one. That isn't supposed to happen. My very first m1330 used to do that. None of my other ones do that after playing games for hours and hours and hours.

 

Go to www.laptopvideo2go.com, and download one of their drivers. I am currently using 169.04 and overclocking it to 500/700 with ATItool. My comp is still very stable (no crashes/BSOD) and does not heat up too much. I used to have a problem with BF2 using older drivers where it would crash the computer after about 15 minutes of play, but now, with 169.04, it plays perfectly.

 

Hi everybody
I have the same problem of "acuraintegralove" with my xps M1330, but the curious thing is that this crash come only for some games as for example Call of duty 4, Sim City Societies... Even with Star Wars Battlefront 2 i have this problem while the game run perfectly on my old laptop Toshiba M70-166. Title like World in Conflict run without any problem. I thought to any kind of problem: hardware, directx, driver... Operating system too, but when i've tried to run these games on XP SP2 the crash was the same.
What kind of problem can generate such a crash? I don't think this is a hardware problem of the GPU because the crash doesn't append every time with every games. I don't think it's also a directx or driver problem: i almost try every possible configuration with directx driver and operating system and so?
What do you think it could be?
By the way i'm intentioned to bring the laptop to techical assistance in few days and listen what they'll say...
thanks for all the answer.

 

Check your temps, probably video card is over heating

 

I've had this occur too.
It's not a crash. It's the system's way of not overheating.
The system actually goes into hibernation. I've noticed how it behaves exactly the same as when I put the m1330 into hibernate mode. (The led lights, keyboard no response, etc.)

It happened to me after playing quake 4 and ut2004 for a few hours.
So yeah, Don't worry

It's just system heat protection thing

 

See if you can find a utility to monitor the temperature of the laptop.

I had the same problem and it was driving me crazy. I installed different drivers, even reinstalled Vista. It turned out to be a bad motherboard...

 

Or it could be a poor application on thermal paste.

 

I had something like that on my last notebook. The pc was working ok and suddenly crashed and a blank screen showed up with no goin back but restarting. I talked to a tech and he said it was driver conflict. Then i reinstalled drivers and it went ok.

At first stance i thought it was overheating or any worse issue, but luckily it went all ok. Good luck!

Oh and please dont write on giant letters, that doesnt help a little...

 

Well... I don't think it's a system overheating problem.
Of the games that I wrote in the last post Star wars battlefront 2, for example, run perfectly for hours on my toshiba m70-166 and now on the xps it crash after few seconds... I don't think that a game like this can overheat the system in this way in few seconds. I can play for hours World in conflict for example that requires a powerful hardware...
When it crash the system doesn't go into hibernation because the power led on the front is still on (only in the suspension mode the led blinks) and I can only turn off the pc with "brute force" manually. When the pc reboot it show's me the error screen of Vista (Run Vista in safety mode, normal mode, etc...); it seems that the system knows that it didn't turn off correctly.
This problem is driving me crazy, really...

 

Hi, maybe we could revive this thread, as I have got exactly the same problem. After playing War Craft 3 for maybe 30 minutes the whole system crahses. I, too, doubt it is a heatproblem but I don't have a clue what else it could be? Any suggestions on what to do?
Thanks in advance.

 

that happened to me twice, first when im watching movie then i shipped it back to dell after 4 days they sent me the "repaired" one saying that the problem is in videocard.. 2 weeks after it happened again while im playing warcraft, and after i called their Techsupport, they want me to shipped the unit back.. again... im wondring if i asked them to replace my unit with brand new one, is that possible?? considering that i purchased it 2 months ago.

 

They may send you a refurbished one. But if it doesn't crash, it's better than what you have.

 

I presume you've updated to SP1, or at least downloaded the Vista gaming hotfix (940105). ?

 

SP1 is loaded as well as the latest dell drivers for the m1330; it is definitely not the temperature with GPU temperature not even reaching 70 degree (celsius). Frankly, I haven't a clue

 

I am facing the same problem with my XPS M1330 purchased around 6 months back. Mid way through most sessions- the system just blanks out- none of the buttons work not even the power button! The fan remains on. I have to hold down the power button for around 5 seconds to shut down the system and then restart. This happens only during gaming and the system runs fine otherwise. The games where this has happened are- 'Americas Army', 'Counter- Strike', Command & Conquer- Tiberian Wars'. I have been updating all drivers and the OS regularly and even installed the SP1 and the latest nVidia drivers from the Dell website. Called up the Dell guys and they suggested upgrading the bios- did that but the crashes still happen. They say that the graphics card may be at fault or maybe there is a software problem- in which case I will have to format the hard drive and reload Vista (which they will not do for some reason!!)

It is so frustrating!!

My system specs:
CPU- Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz
2GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS 128 RAM. Driver Version 7.15.11.7431
Operating System Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium Service Pack 1

 

before that thing happened, i've downloaded SP1, is that the cause of the breakdown?

 

i have the same problem with world of warcraft only... i can play any other games for hours and not have a single crash but as soon as i start WoW i have less then 15mins before i get the blankscreen and non responsive buttons. its strange how only the front power indicator and fan stays on. im gonna call dell and try to get a new mobo i wasnt aware that this was a common problem.

UPDATE: one thing i did notice is that the crashing happend less when i was on highpreformance mode

 

How did you manage to find out?