Please someone help me with my weird p6860

I appreciate any advice or suggestions you may have.

So here is the story. Got the laptop a week ago and been crashing in games from day 1. On some days it crashes les frequently and it also depends on the game but so far it crashed at least once with the following games Painkiller, gears of war, devil may cry 4 demo and 3dmark 2006. Gears of war leads the pack by crashing almost every time I'm in the game. The screen just goes blank, gpu fan keeps spinning but it spins down shortly thereafter.
I refused to believe it was a hardware problem.
I tried reinstalling video card drivers installing vista patches running on battery or without nothing made much of a difference. Actually running on battery in power saving mode 3dmark hasnt crashed yet. When 3dmark 2006 finishes its a great score 7370.
I looked up problem reports and theres a bunch of video hardware errors in the Windows section besides the errors found for those games mentioned. They all have the same id 1033. LOL Vista solution center tells me to contact my manufacturer to find out which component is failing.

Thx for hearing me out. Im just a lil bit pissed at my luck and again thanks a lot if you can offer your help.

 

this happens to mine if i overclock even a little which is leading me to believe its the power supply . if i overclock alot the screen craps out lights stay on after about 2 minutes in game if i overlock a little i can play for hours and eventually it craps out . my power brick gets hot enough to cook a turkey forget an egg . so today i finally went online with gateway support and requested a new power supply and it should be here in a few days .

 

Check your video drivers in system (control panel) and see if you have an exclamation next to it. To tell you the truth it sounds a bit like a overheating problem either with you cpu or gpu, mainly because you don't have as much of a problem in power saving mode. Download a temp monitor program (of your choice, tons available) and run one of those mentioned games for 5 minutes of so and alt tab to the monitor program and see what your cpu/gpu temps are. If they are very high, then you have your answer. Returning the laptop is also a very good choice as well.

 

The FIRST thing I would do is run MSCONFIG and make sure you have ALL un-necessary programs unchecked. I have seen my fair share of crap set on startup cause all kinds of weird issues. If youre not sure what you can safely uncheck, screen print both the startup tab and the services tab(after checking hide microsoft services) and post here. I'll try to help you determine what to keep and what to get rid of. Its worth a shot.

 

Thank you all for your quick responses. Actually 5 mins ago I was here writing a response when the screen just turned gray and had to hold the power button to shut it off. Wow. Its like it goes into sleep but cant wake up.
To answer your replies I did turn off all stupid startup programs in msconfig even the virus scanner , and temps according to cpuid arent that bad cpu at idle is 42 and goes to around 50 on load. gpu is 50-60 idle and 70-80 load.

And quadzilla good luck with your new power supply. You're referring to the charger? I'm confused here. Yeah here I was googling if laptops have internal power supplies like desktops. Of course not mwahhaah

 

ya im hoping the new Powersupply ie the charger ive monitored all my temps hardcore and i know mine is not a heating issue but yours very well could be. the reason im led to believe its the power supply atleast in my case is because this problem is exactly like a thread started a while back where if you were gaming on battery the screen would crap out and you had to plug the ac adapter back in to get it to power back on . im having those same symptoms and i believe its a power issue also based on the fact of the higher i take my clocks the faster it craps out .

 

Since I'm here thinking what to do with my 6860 (Bestbuy is out of stock) cant exchange it now, I'm curious now about your issue. Maybe I'll also try a different power adapter but I doubt it since I'm experiencing crashes when running on battery as well.

You said gaming on battery causes crashes but when you plug the ac adapter the screen comes on. If that's the case wouldn't the battery possibly be faulty and not the ac adapter aka the power supply

 

i was thinking the same thing as you and tried it without the battery in and got the same results ie screen crapping out when overclocked . although im not having the same exact issue as you are you could try doing what ever it is you do on your laptop when it craps out but only on battery that way maybe you can see if your power supply is causing it . worth a shot

 

A quick update. Did a lot of testing. Basically it boils down to this I have no clue what's wrong.

But I know one thing. Don't judge your notebook's stability by looping 3dmark 2006. I don't think its the most stressful benchmark out there. That's just me. With battery or without or with battery in charge mode 3dmark doesn't crash. OK maybe once in a blue moon.

It's a whole different issue when I fire up a game. On battery power it crashes often. On AC power still crashes but takes longer for it to happen.

Was frustrated as it is so I also tried both battery and AC on working together for the common goal but again I was greeted with a couple of crashes

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=256716

thats the thread i started following when i first had the problem but if you havent ripped apart your notebook yet like a new processer AS5 etc i would just call gateway . ive been in and out of my machine more times then ... well i cant even use the term id like to on these forums but lets just say shes been around the block so i have to figure it out myself.

 

Wow thank you for the link quadzilla. Actually I've had that happen to me but only once. Gaming on battery shuts down the computer and cant power back on.

The difference for me is crashes galore even on ac power. I actually just got of live chat with Gateway and I'm surprised they haven't offered to replace anything. The solution is to reinstall windows. Yeah I'll try that 2 but I'll try installing the laptop2go drivers first.

At this point maybe I should just take it back to best buy and save myself the trouble?

 

just have them locate you one at another store if its within decent driving distance . either way just take it in there show the guys that work there whats up and maybe they will help you and atleast document it .

 

reinstalling windows is not a bad idea, especially because your temps seems to be fine, so how about create a driver dvd (gateway recovery center) use a vista dvd to clean install and then update to the 177.41 driver.

 

Just a quick update. Seanno was right. The laptop was overheating although my temps for the gpu weren't that high.

By turning up the A/C I managed to keep my gpu temperatures below 70C and it hasn't locked up yet.

I'm just a little bit disappointed that my gpu crashes around 75C. That's weak .

Is anybody else reaching those temperatures on the gpu resulting in crashes/ freeze ups?


Again thanks everybody for your help.