Can a laptop freeze when gaming on battery?

I joined a game in call of duty 4 and the whole laptop froze up. I had to hold down the power button and then it was stuck on the first screen so i pressed F2 for BIOS and went to save and exit and it booted fine. I just want to know what caused this.

 

So... your asking:

Can gaming on battery be the cause of a freeze/lock up?

am i correct?

 

Yes I am because I dont know what else could have caused this and I noticed that playing games on battery is slow. If your laptop freezes and you had to press the button to turn it off, do you just ignore it because it worries me since I paid 1600$ for this machine.

 

Well you will notice that. When your on battery (depending on the power management of the notebook) your CPU and GPU may downlclock in an effort to preserve power. Its entirely possible that you reached a point at which your battery could no longer sustain your GPU and the screen froze as a result.

the long and short is to just game while plugged in

 

ok. Im just making sure it isnt a defect but Im guessing if it was I would have gotten a BSOD.

 

some info on your laptop might help i know my baby will burn through battery gaming unplugged but doesn't lock up...

Ur problem sounds mostly linked to power issues however and the capability of the notebook rather than an actual problem...

 

Call of Duty runs fine. I can play crysis on high. I have a gateway 7805u which is the same as the one in your sig.

 

ur op says call of duty was the problem i thought...

 

What video driver are you using?

 

guys is simply the fact that the GPU called for power to process certain shaders or something like that and it couldnt handle it and caused a lockup..

 

I've gamed on mine on battery (not very often) and drained it without a lock up. that makes me wonder...
It really doesn't take long to drain the battery gaming it can especially feel short if you really get into it, you sure you didn't just run out of juice? or did the screen freeze with everything ON still?

 

The battery was at full charge, the screen froze with everything still on and just a couple minutes ago my idiot friend turned the laptop on and hit a bunch of buttons on the external keyboard plugged in to the laptop and it reset during boot. Now Im REALLY getting worried. What should I do?

 

There's some buttons on the keyboard that can reset the PC during boot, one of those combinations is ctrl+alt+delete, which will force a reset at any time during boot, if it reset because he was pushing buttons that's probable why.

What Mormegil83 was saying could be the issue, if there's a battery calibrate option in the BIOS, or in windows, you should try that.

If it ONLY happens while playing on battery, then it's probable not an issue with the notebook's hardware. It could be that you need to update your notebook's drivers, check the power settings and set everything to maximum performance, etc.

 

drivers are up to date. Im gonna check in the windows errors thing to see if there was an error.

 

My laptop's 9650m GT downclocks when it's running on battery, making about 90% of new games unplayable. I think that the frame rates dropped so low, that you couldn't tell if it was doing anything or if it just froze.

To disable this downclock, download the latest 185.xx driver from LaptopVideo2Go.com,
Then download a program called Powermizer switch.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=273276

Open up the powermizer switch program and click the button labeled "PowerMizer off"

Try playing the game again.

 

that driver isnt as good as the one Im using. Im using the latest official driver from nvidia and I tried that one and Nvidias is significantly faster.

 

Honestly I think your laptop is a lemon, every time I see you post a thread some game or some program, or your computer itself is crashing, locking up, glitching, or otherwise romping in entropy.

 

Well you are right I just got a blue screen bc code 116... Im calling gateway.

EDIT:Ive been told by the guy at gateway that this blue screen error is a software problem most likely. It tells me that its dumping physical memory, is this true?

 

yeah if this sort of thing happens often, don't let gateway fool you! you got a lemon... my first 7811 bsod'ed a couple of times the first week i had it so i went back to bb got it replaced and this one runs flawlessly. by any chance is your power brick ribbed or smooth? my first was ribbed and had a flimsy dvd drive that opened if you pushed anywhere near it, my current has a smooth power brick and no issues with the dvd drive.

 

Im going to keep using it to see if it happens again and if it does I will re-install windows and if the problem comes back then Im going to ship it back. Also when I got the blue screen, I was playing crayon physics deluxe and I noticed the games audio sounded distorted at times, I think I have an issue with the sound driver I installed, is that possible?

EDIT: Im gonna uninstall the audio drivers and run some tests.

 

just curious does yours have the same described hardware my original came with?

 

Yes, entirely possible. Good advise from the posts above.

Gaming on battery power is not a very good idea though.

 

Doubt it if it happend, check if it overheated

 

There was thread about this a long time ago in the Gateway section. I never experienced this problem and I don't feel like reading the thread but it might help you out. Some said that with the gpu and cpu running at full speed the battery couldn't provide enough voltage and the comp would shut down.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=256716&highlight=gaming+on+battery

Edit: another similar post

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=275719&highlight=gaming+on+battery

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=291087&highlight=gaming+on+battery

 

While on battery I've had my notebook freeze up on me just while running a few heavy graphical application at once.

You'll need to find out the max draw of your system while under load, then find out the same for your battery. If the system draws more than the battery can give, there's your problem.

 

never happened to me but check if its over heating