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    Need just a bit more life from my p7801u...

    Discussion in 'Gateway and eMachines' started by Norsemanu, Nov 11, 2015.

  1. Norsemanu

    Norsemanu Newbie

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    Hi all,

    It's been a while since I've came to the forum, but I intend to buy a new laptop a few months from now after reading everyone's recommendations. In the meantime, I have a Gateway FX (p7801u) that has started to really give me fits.

    At first, the screen would go black after firing up a video game, then it started doing it more often, and now its doing it within the first 10 mins or so of turning it on. It is not the monitor because hooking up a second monitor doesn't solve it (that screen goes black as well). Since it stays on after the screen has gone black, I checked to see if the computer was still accessible by network, but it goes off line once this happens, so I have a feeling that its not video card related.

    The main idea I keep thinking of is that I never have redone the thermal paste on the cpu, and I've heard that you should do this every year or two. Since this is a 7 year old laptop, do you think it could possibly fix the problem if I applied new thermal paste under the cpu? I realize I should do this anyway if I intend to keep it much longer, but my time is extremely limited right now (starting a new job soon) and I just need to come up with the quickest, most likely solution.

    Thank you in advance!

    Jack
     
    Norsemanu, Nov 11, 2015
    #1
  2. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    The P78xx series used the 9800m series GPU. This most likely is the cause. I have seen where the GPU overheated will lock the machine up. Now a redo of TIM on both the CPU and GPU may help a bit. Be sure to run 9c.17.00 or earlier in the bios verswion as above that will run the system a bit hot.

    Also stay away from 2D clock timing on the GPU memory. You can do this with MSI afterburner and select max memory timings.
     
    TANWare, Nov 11, 2015
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  3. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    Has any of this helped?
     
    TANWare, Nov 22, 2015
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