p150m(np8150) suddenly shut down during game

I was playing mass effect 3 multiplayer, and then suddenly for about 4-5 seconds my keyboard was unresponsive (mouse worked though), and the laptop shut off itself.

what could be the cause?? kind of unnerving because ive had bsods and crashes before but this is the first time it physically shut off itself..
it wasnt overclocked at the time, though from time to time i like to set the 6990m to 800/1000. but gpu overheating doesnt shut off the whole computer.. or does it? and mass effect 3 wasnt that heat intensive last time i checked.

 

It could be due to overheating. Have you checked the temperatures lately? If it's never happened before and doesn't happen again, it may just be a one-off fluke. I've had it happen once in the past on my own machine, but never since. It'd guess that it's possibly power related in that case.

 

I'm hoping thats the case such a bad precedent to set though. now i'll be on edge about this while I game.

 

Same exact scenario happened to me while playing battlefield 3 mp.

I turn the laptop back on and everything was normal.

I think the 6990m has some issues on all laptops not yours alone.

 

I've had mine do that a couple of times in the 6 months I've had my P150HM/6990M. Always boots back up fine.

Make sure the vents under the laptop are clear and can suck in clean air. It is amazing how hot the GPU gets when it can't suck in sufficient air to cool it.

 

for the bsod download who crashed in my sig below.
have you ever cleaned your fans and vents out with compressed air?
this is one of the most common problems with getting too hot and then shutting the computer down to protect the hardware.

 

I've been having issues with this too, and at least for me, it seems thermally-related. My temps are always well within safe limits (never goes above low 80s and low 70s for the GPU and CPU respectively). Still, it only happens on days when my ambient temperature is warmer than normal. I can almost predict what days it'll occur on. Go figure.

In my case, most of the time the computer freezes while the sound loops, only to go away upon a hard restart. Occasionally though, I do get the complete shut-downs that you're talking about. Similarly, 80% of the time, neither dumps nor BSODs are generated. When they are, they are ambigious hardware-related 124s.

I don't know how often yours happens, but mine are hardly infrequent so they have me on a perpetual quest to find a solution.

 

Do you always notice them happening at the same time? What are the ambient temperatures like when it happens (is it humid?)? It's definitely not normal if they happen on a regular basis.

 

Whenever the room temperature goes into the upper 70F range (minimal humidity), it will usually freeze within 45-60 minutes into a gaming session. Then, subsequent freezes and/or shutdowns will usually occur much faster than the first freeze. All this is while the GPU and CPU readings, at most, peak in the low-80C and low-70C ranges respectively.

The change of 4-8F in ambient temperature towards what classifies a "very warm" room seems to push the machine over some arbitrary edge far below safe limits. Similarly, removing my laptop cooler that props it up and/or turning its fans off will also cause the same bouts of freezing. Driver-wise, I've tried the three most recent Catalyst drivers and have all the latest chipset drivers.

The strange thing is that both FurMark and Prime95 do not freeze at all even though they push the temps higher than anything else I throw at it. It seems that the system only freezes when both the GPU and CPU are under some degree of load simultaneously.

 

In that case, I'd lean more towards a power issue than a heating one. It's potentially due to having both the CPU and GPU running at load and then ramping up the cooling system. In that case it suggests a motherboard that can't handle the needed power, or the power brick itself having issues.

Do you by chance have a kill-a-watt or a UPS that will record the power draw in watts from the wall jack?

 

Good point! I had stopped thinking about the power issue when I noticed the temperature correlation. I figured the power consumption of the fans were extremely low compared to that of the main components. But, that would help explain the temperature correlation as well as the very gradual and odd way it decides to irk me.

Sadly, I don't have a Kill-a-watt, but I suppose I can get one if it would help shed light on this problem.

 

Before you go out and purchase anything, open a ticket on our site and we'll see what can be done about it. (Granted, I'd still get a kill-a-watt just for the fun. I have one and enjoy seeing how much power my devices pull down, even when turned off).

 

Would monitoring the voltages of the CPU and GPU in MSI After Burner indicate anything?

 

They might give you an idea, but they wouldn't represent the "whole puzzle" as it were. Now, you could find out if your voltage readings were anomalous thus leading to increased power draw followed by shutdown. However, full system load would be the most interesting value because it would prove/disprove whether the brick/motherboard is being overloaded. In general, it's not uncommon to see a 120w brick pulling 130-140 watts from the wall due to inefficiencies.

 

try cleaning out your fans if they're dusty. sounds like an overheat to me

 

I would also suggest that you download and run FurMark 3D for about 10 minutes. It should push your GPU hard enough to try to get it to trip.

To me, it definitely sounds like thermal shutdown on your laptop. What GPU are you running?

Has your issue been resolved?

 

Mine suddenly shutdown and here in the forum I was advised to run MemTest. I did and it turned out it was dodgy RAM......

 

Do you have the latest network and sound drivers? Don't underestimate a sound cards ability to crash a system.

 

- Check your temperatures, shutdown protection is set at 110degrees and everyone knows that AMD 6900M's were overheating in Clevos barebones (especially in the p150hm though)
- I do not think it is a power issue since your laptop wouldnt shut down if it draws too much power, the PSU itself would (happened to me with my 580m o/c). Besides a 6990m stock is harmless power wise.
- If you have had BSOD's and crashes before, that's a bad sign and Memory SODIMM are likely to be the faulty parts rather than the GPU. Running MemTest is definitely a good way to check it.

I don't really advise you to run Furemark as it overheats the GPU too much (and has killed some 580m's)
If you're running hot temps, only way to sort that out is to plan for a re-pasting/re-pading your GPU/Heatsink.

 

Actually, we run FurMark on our machines before they get sent out. Runs for about 10 minutes, and we have been able to weed out some GPUs that will cause thermal shutdown early (95C and 87C) on a few laptops and we make sure those don't get sent and get them serviced asap.
This MIGHT help in diagnostics if end user make sure to monitor his laptop for the whole 10 minutes and watch those temps. If he can get it to consistently trip at a specific temperature, it may point to a defective GPU then.

 

Thanks for the piece of advice Heihachi_1337 Running Furemark @ stock voltage and clocks is fine I think, only for 10min that's fair enough, however it's never really good for the GPU itself as it stresses too much the card imo.

That's a good way to figure out the thermal shutdown though.

 

Good points all! I hope the OP has figured out his particular ailment.

Sadly, my case is still as confusing to me as ever. I'm going to post a more details of my own case, as I'm going crazy with this. In short, my laptop either completely freezes (requiring a hard reset) or randomly shuts down during gaming. It'll always freeze during gaming, but it has also freezed a handful of times (maybe 5 in total) in the same exact manner when I'm doing other tasks. Usually, these "other" times are when I'm running a second display and typing away in a programming IDE.

To be more specific, it'll lock up with the sound looping and stay that way till I reset the laptop. That's 75% of the time. Another 20% of the time, it randomly shuts down. The last 5% of the time, it manages to generate a BSOD and dump files. Every time, nothing shows up in Window's event logs. This all happens ~1 hour into a gaming session. Then, it'll usually recur much faster after that first time (every 20-30 min). If I restart within 10-20 seconds of the freeze, it'll often either freeze for a second time at the Windows boot screen or make it to the log-in screen before putting the system to sleep.

I've monitored temperature readings like a hawk, but neither the GPU nor CPU has reached over 80C in the any of the recent bouts of freezes/shutdowns/BSODs. This is accounting for all the thermal sensors available for both.

For the minority of times it has generated a BSOD, the following account for the different flavors that WhoCrashed reports:

--MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION caused by hal.dll
--CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT caused by ntoskrnl.exe
--WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE ERROR caused by hal.dll​

Things I've tried:

--Replacement CPU (RMA)
--MemTest
--FurMark
--Prime95
--Three versions of Catalyst drivers
--Three versions of Realtek audio drivers
--Reinstall of OS, total of three individual installs
--Swapping drives (HDD only, SSD only, and SSD+HDD)
--System file scan​

I've run FurMark burn-in tests a few times and my laptop has passed it without issue. For that matter, Prime95 does nothing to the CPU either after an overnight run. Heck, even a brief run of BOTH together (with close attention to temperature readings) did not trigger any freezing.

I've had troubles in the past (on other machines) with Realtek audio drivers, so this was one of the first things I checked. I've tried 3-4 different iterations of Realtek drivers with no fixes. My network drivers are also updated.

I've run MemTest a few times on my two sticks of RAM and, for the most part, this has shown nothing wrong either. That is to say, one stick generated two errors after ten or so passes ONCE, but another two more lengthy runs elicited no further errors. The other stick never elicited any errors after two runs. I've tried swapping the positions of the two sticks too. When this problem first arose, I also tried running with only a single stick of RAM, but that didn't fix anything either.

I'm probably going to grab the Kill-A-Watt next unless someone has other ideas worth trying before that. This has dragged on for months and is driving me bonkers. I'd really appreciate any further input from the hive mind here! Rep points will be doled out accordingly.

 

Latest chipset drivers, latest bios?

 

Yep, definitely the latest chipset drivers and the bio does look to be the latest version.

 

@gwilled
You did mention BSOD issues popping up occasionally correct? If you need help finding those files, they should be located under C:\Windows\minidump.
If that folder doesn't exist, you will have to change your computer by doing the following:
Click Start orb, Right-Click Computer, select Properties.
Once there, in the left blue pane select Advanced system settings.
Under the Advanced tab, you should see Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button under that.
At the bottom, you should see the drop down menu that may read Kernel Memory Dump. Switch that to Small Memory Dump (256 KB). and then click OK.
Download and run this utility to determine your BSOD errors
WhoCrashed 3.03 - Download.com
Let us know if this or kill-a-watt helps.

 

BSOD-wise, the ones that have popped up have matched one of the below, which seem to indicate hardware issues:

--MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION caused by hal.dll
--CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT caused by ntoskrnl.exe
--WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE ERROR caused by hal.dll

Do you think or have you heard of a laptop freezing, and requiring hard reset, because of a faulty power supply or power issue in general? I know desktops with PSU issues can cause this, but what about laptops? I haven't jumped the Kill-a-watt route quite yet due to ongoing correspondences with Malibal's support department, but I'm still at a loss for finding the culprit so here I am.

 

Well, it seems you have covered all of your bases from what I have reviewed. At this point I would have to say something hardware related has failed.
Stop 0x124 - what it means and what to try - Windows 7 Forums
I pulled up the above article from some digging to find out what your errors are.
Malibal should be able to take care of you though, but from what I have seen you post I can say it seems you have exhausted all other options and will need to get it RMA'd.

 

Same thing happened to me yesterday while playing Tribes Ascend for ~25 minutes. It behaves like you're lagging out for a few seconds, then the machine shuts off. Upgrading 6990m drivers to 12.3 and will see if it happens again.

 

Just though I would post an update on my problems. So I just got my laptop back from its second RMA, which resulted in a replaced GPU. However, my freezing/BSOD/shutdown problems have actually gotten worse. Now, it seems to freeze without fail in FurMark while still at manageable temperatures.

Basically, I'm looking at a THIRD RMA to fix this. In the four months I've had my hands on this laptop, I think I've only had at most two weeks of totally freeze-less usage. The rest of the time I'v been attempting to troubleshoot non-stop and sending it for RMAs. Such a nightmare.

 

So it must be the motherboard? Can you try disabling everything that it doesn't absolutely need in device manager (sound, network, usb, etc) see if that sorts it. Then run msconfig and again disable everything all services and you don't need. If either of these things make it run how it should, start enabling things one by one until it crashes again and you've found the culprit.

Tbh it's a long, drawn out process with many, many reboots so you might just want to rma again.. Talk to your reseller, I'd do the work for you if you were closer.

Good luck.