5720 Lockups

Alright, I have a sager 5720. Worked fine for the past 10? months. I could play games like CS and WoW for hours at a time and worked great.

Recently, however, I was playing WoW. LITERALLY 1 more mob until i dinged 60. I pull aggro, and my computer freezes. I tried pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete a few times, but nothing happened. I hold the power button to turn it off. I try dusting it off a bit in the vents, then turn it back on. The bootup screen has some odd artifacts, almost like a glitching sega genesis, but you could see everything fine. I let it boot up and the loadup screen freezes.

I turn it off again, and take the bottom off and dust it off. I turn it on later, and didnt seem to freeze up at all the rest of the night.

Next day, I am playing WoW. It locks up again, just like it did the previous day. I turn it back on again, but decide to use the fans on full blast. No problems.

At another time, i tried it again with the fans on low. It runs WoW (just casual desktop works fine) and freezes up after about 5-10 minutes, but laptop feels cool as ever, the bottom is slightly warm. I open my window for a cold breeze and turn fans on max. Works fine.

I am wondering what is causing the lockups? I am thinking heating, but its worked fine for the past 10 months. It had 1 other lockup a few months ago but had no other side effects. My friend recommends reinstalling Windows, which I will try soon.

Anyone have anyway of fixing this without having to send it in? If my CPU or something is overheating, can i apply arctic silver 5 without voiding the warranty? Or is there a way to unscrew all the components so i can do a better dusting job.

I want to fix the problem, and sending it in will be the last resort. Fans on max get noisy and it bugs me knowing my laptop isnt working like it should be.

 

Also, I had rivatuner open and MobileMeter.

I would alt tab occassionally with the fans on high, GPU didnt get higher than 63 celcius and the CPU got in the high 40's.

Not sure if this would help, but the one time i was playing music in the backround while playing WoW. The music stopped in the middle of a song, then about a second or two later my pc locked up.

 

My PC does the same thing from time to time on BF2, Black and White 2, and a couple other games. Runs Half Life 2 and Doom 3 fine. I think it is an issue with the Nvidia chips. It never used to do that, but I have 2 PCs running the same chipsets, and both have similar problems. Will play games for a little while than freeze. No stuttering frams or anything to alert you to the freeze- they just freeze. I have never had graphical artifacts on the startup screen though.

 

If it worked fine for ten months and you just start having these problems now, it sounds like a hardware-related problem.

Since you are still in warranty, call Sager and have them fix it. It is a last resort, yes, but probably the only permanent solution.

The only thing I can think of is to re-seat the video card and RAM.

 

Well, I did a reinstall of windows on Thursday?, the repair option, not a full reformat. So far, it hasn't locked up at all. I had a few several-hour WoW Sessions and didnt lock up/slow down/artifacts or anything. Even with the fans on normal speed (which would cause a lockup in 5 minutes).

All the signs pointed to hardware, but it seems to be fixed after a simple reinstall.