Freeze / Studder / Shutdown (been done, but I think this is dif.)

Hello! I have a Gateway p7811 fx, and it freezes.. a lot. What im going to do is, give a list of what happens, When it happens, what I do to get back to the desktop, and then, what ive done so far to correct the problem.

What happens:
Ive noticed that, whenever I play a game, 95% of the time, its in fullscreen, the laptop freezes, and it USED to studder. Games I recently started to play are a)Borderlands (freeze) b)Requiem (freeze) c)Street Fighter IV (nothing yet) d) Ninja Blade (freezes) e)Diablo2:LoD (nothing) f)GrandChase (nothing) g)Final Fantasy XI (occasionally freezes) h)WoW (occasionally freezes). When the games freeze, I get a 'loop' of the last .25second and the screen just locks up. Meaning, picture is still there.

What I do:
I have come across two things as the freezing happens. 1) CPU just compleatly freezes and I have NO choice but to turn off the computer via the powerbutton and 2) The laptop just goes compleatly slow, ive done a CTRL+ALT+DELETE and found that the game I was playing (borderlands) went from its regular process memory of 100,000k to 1,000,000k and just lags the death and again, have NO choice to hard-shutdown.

When it happens: It usually happens between 20mins to 2hrs. As of now, I speak with my wife via Yahoo! msg'er and I use CALLS. So, as im talking to her, the laptop usually shutdown in about 20mins, but if no call is open, and if im NOT downloading anything on uTorrent, I usually get about 2hrs of gameplay before it freezes.

What ive done:
So far, I have updated my bios (brother did for me, if someone could give me the link so I can make sure I got the right ones, that would be great), I just recently updated the graphics card, I disabled the ethernet port as one of the other posts said, and nothing, and lastly, Ive tryed to update my windows to most current and there are 3 for whatever reason I cannot download, which are 643 646 (unknown error). I also did the overclock/underclock thing to no avail.

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Lastly, just to give a little more info about my current issue.. Ive noticed that the laptop only really seems to freeze when playing FULLSCREEN games. Games such as diablo2:lod and GrandChase havent froze on me yet (that I know of).

Another thing that Ive had, was that the laptop suddently SHUT OFF, and when I rebooted, I lost funtion of 90% of my keys, but I fixed it by taking the battery out of the laptop, and rebooted to fix the issue.

Last thing before I end this post, and perhaps most important, is there ANYWAY to adjust the fan speed/fan times to go on, and STAY on. Im guessing its just an overheating/poor circulation of the laptop which is the cause of the freezing, so if I can control the fan, I could MAYBE eliminate that intire issue. (ive tryed doing so via bios and a program (speedfan) but have had no luck in isolating the fan itself.

Thank you all for any help, sorry for a long post, and SUPER sorry, if this has all been asked before. Ive read thu the topics, and my issue seems to be a little differnt form other peoples. Again, thanks in advance. ~ Thor

 

These may be stupid questions, but I didn't see mentions of them in your post. Did you change your power settings to "performance" when "plugged in"? Are you playing these games plugged in or on battery power?

 

I wish your post had mentioned something about the temp. The root cause of this cud be overheating. So please monitor the temps and post it. Also check for dust build up. Try getting the fans cleaned and the vents clear if you haven't done so.

 

@Evil Claw:
The computer is ALWAYS on Performance rather its pluged in or not. I noticed tho which is odd, but the computer seems to run better when the battery is unpluged, and power cord is in. Ive done both, and they crash reguardless.

@Maverick79:
No, I never really kept a check on the temp, but it does get hot, and I pretty much assumed that it was normal for a cpu of this caliber to run really hot. I do live in a very dusty apt. and quite frankly, I don't want to open the laptop to clean it 100% without the proper tools (which I don't have). I will however use a can-of-air and see what I can do. I'll post back with reports of whats going on. Thanks, ~Thor

 

** sorry for double post **
But, as of now, I have no just blew out whatever dust may have been there from all the vents that I saw. Also, as of now, I have the battery OUT of the laptop, on High Performance. I can feel the wrist rest already starting to get warm, and the two fans that I saw, none of them were on at the time of blowing the dust out, nor are they on now. Going back to my first post, is there anyway to adjust my fans to always be on or, to go on earlyer? Computer temp is now at 104-109F. And that is with just this window up, along with yahoo Call. (I just read on another forum that this guy proped the back of his laptop up and made it cooler, im going to try the same thing.

 

I'd open up the laptop just to see if any lump of dust that was blowed off would be blocking the fan from rotating at full speed. Bad idea to clean the fans by blowing it into the laptop.

 

I have the same problem for about less than an year. i figured out that it cames out from the USBs. try testing it without anything plugged into your USB ports and see what happens. mine doesn't freeze when i have nothing plugged into my USBs (not even a mouse).

 

... As much as I would LOVE to try that, I quite frankly hate the touch pad. Only reason why I got the laptop is because my desktop was old, and im moving soon so, I needed portibility. Ill try it tho. Thanks for the info.

Anyone else with any ideas?

 

I too am having this problem. It didn't start until I added a 500gb harddrive in the second slot.

it pauses/freezes for about 1-2seconds. Quite annoying.



on another note, there was nothing plugged in (no usb)..
and settings were on High Performance.

and all my Powersettings are set to NEVER so it's not falling asleep.
I don't think.

 

Tried taking the hard disk off and checking if it persists?

 

I resolved the problem. Turns out my disk was sleeping after 5mins. Set it to never. Infact I set everything to never.

 

Mine finaly got fixed. My motherboard was changed, and now it works fine. Now playing Crysis Warhead on a 37" LCD, 1280x760 resolution, never under 25fps. But untill that happened, i figured out that some series of this laptop can have a couple of hardware problems. So, if u're out of luck, you'll have to take ti for a repair or change it with a new one. So, the possible issues:

1. My other post here in this thread, the USB power drain problem
2. GPU malfunction, bad series of nVidia GeForce M 9800 GTS
3. GPU overheat, graphic card exceeding the allowed temperature
4. BIOS problems

These are the most common problems with this kind of computers. I hope this will be helpfull for someone