Notebook seems to crash randomly

Sometimes my Sager notebook will just crash randomly. I think it happens more often when I'm playing a game, rather than just idling. Is there a way I can diagnose the problem and see why it crashes?

It will crash and shut itself off, and then i'll be unable to boot it up again. It'll just keep crashing before it can load up all the start up apps, and sometimes it even crashes before it gets to the Windows screen. I have to revert back to previous settings in order for it to boot up again.

Any help is greatly appreciated

 

is it crashing or just shutting down itself ? do you see a bluescreen when it shuts down ?

if not, it could be that your notebook is simply overheating and shutting itself down to prevent damage to the hardware.

-check if your cpu cooler sits correct ?

-graphics card cooler ?

-or maybe it is just some dust that covers the ventilation exhaust - in that case cleaning the notebook will do the job.

 

^^ add chkdsk & defrag to the above

cheers ...

 

if it crashes, does it create a memory.dmp in the windows directory or at least a minidump file? if so, zip it and upload it here, so that someone can look inside. try booting to safe mode instead of normal windows start, so that you can get to the file, in case that there would be no other way.

here's a description of how to get into the safe mode:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222

 

it crashes. no blue screen, no error. it crashes as if i just held down the power button

i use a notebook cooler which is pretty effective. the bottom of the laptop is very cool

i'll defrag tonight. what is chkdsk?

to my knowledge, none was created. i'll keep a lookout for it next time i crash though

 

If you can get it up and running (perhaps via safe mode), check the event logs to see what got logged regarding each crash. It sounds like it might be a misbehaving driver.

 

+1to the driver issue. This is a quite common problem with notebooks, sometimes reinstall the driver will solve the problems.

 

chkdsk,scandisk ... utilties to check your hard drive for hard errors and try to repair them

cheers ...

 

you mean the event viewer? i checked the event viewer -> system and it doesn't seem like anything went wrong.

So i should just download a new video card driver? It has been working for me for a while though

 

Make sure to wipe any remnants of the old driver with a program like Driver Sweeper before installing a new one, linky .
Mark the checkbox for nVidia Display only, NOT nVidia chipset (check the linked page for a screenshot of the program).
Cheers.