Screen Freezes During Games

Hello everybody,

I have a Sager NP9150 with Nvidia 675MX graphics card on Windows 8.
I have a very frustrating problem: I run Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012 and while playing, at some unknown point, the screen freezes. The game has not stopped and in fact, when I try to accelerate etc. I hear the noise, but the screen is locked!!! I use Alt+Tab to go to desktop and then go back to the game, and the game screen goes black (again, the game is continuing to run, and I can hear the noise).
I have a similar problem with FIFA 2013, but in its pause screen: in the middle of the game, whenever I pause the game and wait for somehow a long time (I don't know how much), the screen freezes, but this time when I switch to desktop and go back to the game, the problem is solved...
Do you have any idea what's happening??? It's very annoying not being able to play a game with a "gaming" laptop....

NB. I updated my display drivers, but no luck

Thanks

 

Looks like a hardware failure possibly the screen.
Can you plz post your temps whilst gaming just want to rule that out.

Also, run a malware bytes scan.

Thnx

 

Install temperature monitoring software like HWinfo and make sure you log the temperatures. You don't want to see anything over 90C for either the GPU or the CPU

 

I agree it could be temps. Have you ever opened up the bottom of the computer to clean out any dust that has built up on the vents and fans.

 

I don't think the temperature is a problem. I've attached HWMonitor's screenshot.
What do you mean by "malware bytes scan"? Any particular program I can use?

Thank you

 

Actually, my laptop is only a few months old, and I don't think dust should be an issue here...

 

I used the portable version of HWMonitor, and it showed 80C degrees for the GPU and approximately 75C for the CPU.

 

Those values all look ok.

I am suspecting something else.
Here is the link to malwarebytes:
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware - CNET Download.com

Tell me if it picks up anything. If negative, then I am gonna go with the screen being faulty, that is, assuming as you said you can hear the game working normally but screen continues to show blank screen.

 

You know it's not a "blank screen"; the screen freezes during play. When I go to desktop and go back to the game, the game window is black (the game changes from full screen to a window covering the desktop), not the whole screen.
Anyway, I'll install Malwarebytes and let you know

Thank you

 

Hi,
I don't know if it's of any importance, but right now I saw a message in my task bar for Microsoft Security Center saying something about finding solutions to "unreported" problems, and when I opened the message, there were 10 errors titled "video hardware error" and some descriptions and related temporary files (I think for every time I had the screen freeze problem during game play). Is this information somehow useful?!

Thank you...

 

Other thing would be to try running something like GPUz and let it log GPU usage. Would be interesting to see if maybe it's down-clocking or throttling which could cause frame to freeze. It could happen without a temp issue if something else on the card is failing.

If all else fails a re-install of windows might be in order maybe some other software is messing with.

 

You know, my biggest concern is that it may be a hardware issue; as long as it's not the case, I don't have a problem with Windows re-installation. Can you please explain how to use "GPUz" to see if something is failing?

Thank you