Windows 7 Laptop restarting while playing a game

[Thiago]

Hello everyone.

I have a Dell laptop, XPS 15, my specs are on the attached file, like requested. I hope i did everything right, if not, please let me know.

I used to play Diablo 3 on this laptop, highest settings possible, and it never gave me any problem. Now i quit Diablo and moved to an online game, called Atlantica Online (Link Removed - Invalid URL), and then the problems started. I guess it's important to say i play this game for a very long time now (3~4 years) and never had any trouble with my old PC (a Quad-core, 4gbs ram, 1gb video), and my brother also play this game on his laptop (a i5, 4gbs ram, onboard video).

When i try to run it on my Dell, first, it started to overheat. I started monitoring my CPU and GPU temperature, and it'd go from 50ºC/122ºF (idle) to 90ºC/194ºF just a few seconds after i started the game. To solve this problem, everytime i run the game, i run this app: ThrottleStop (ThrottleStop - Performance Adjustment Tool for Core 2 / Core i CPUs) so i can 'underclock' my CPU to 75% and turn off the Turbo feature of my i7 (Note: I also tried to run the game without underclocking my CPU and it restarted anyway).

When the problem occurs, screen goes blue, sometimes purple, there are some squares, like a chess board, it's all messed up. I see the mouse still works (it moves a big square when i move the mouse) and keyboard still works aswell (capslock light). But if i try to press any button, the computer will freeze and i have to hard reset it.

I hope you guys can help me solve this problem, i really like this game (it's the only one i play actually, but if it's the game's fault, i'll stop it, just want to be sure).

Thanks in advance,
Thiago.

PS: English is not my native language, so if i didnt make myself clear enough, i can try to explain better.

 

[Mitchell_A]

Welcome to Windows7Forums.com.

Sounds like your heatsink fan is clogged with dust. either disassemble your computer and clean it out or buy a can of compressed air and blow it into your fan once it's been turned off for at least an hour. this should cleat the vent and restore airflow to keep your temperatures lower. It's very important to wait an hour otherwise the compressed gas which is cooled rapidly when uncompressed could cause a sudden temperature change on your processor great enough to actually crack your chip.

Hope this helps.

 

[Thiago]

Welcome to Windows7Forums.com.

Sounds like your heatsink fan is clogged with dust. either disassemble your computer and clean it out or buy a can of compressed air and blow it into your fan once it's been turned off for at least an hour. this should cleat the vent and restore airflow to keep your temperatures lower. It's very important to wait an hour otherwise the compressed gas which is cooled rapidly when uncompressed could cause a sudden temperature change on your processor great enough to actually crack your chip.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick reply, Mitchell_A.

I have a question before trying to do this. I forgot to say, when i run the ThrotleStop app, while running the game, my CPU and GPU never go higher than 60ºC/140ºF. Do you think it still might be a problem with my fan, or maybe dust?

I have this laptop for 11 months now, never tried to clean it inside, at first i thought it was dust, but isnt 60ºC/140ºF a regular temperature for a laptop?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mitchell_A]

If the temperatures are skyrocketing to the 90's I would assume it's a cloggage problem. If it doesn't occur when you run throttlestop, that would be because the processor/GPU are being throttled to the point where they're not using enough power to create that much heat. Typically when gaming my computer runs around 65-75 degrees. I just cleaned my last week, prior to that it was 95 and would crash when gaming, and idles around 50-60.

It's worth a try.

 

[Thiago]

If the temperatures are skyrocketing to the 90's I would assume it's a cloggage problem. If it doesn't occur when you run throttlestop, that would be because the processor/GPU are being throttled to the point where they're not using enough power to create that much heat. Typically when gaming my computer runs around 65-75 degrees. I just cleaned my last week, prior to that it was 95 and would crash when gaming, and idles around 50-60.

It's worth a try.

Well, like you said, it's worth a try. I'll try to get it cleaned up this week. Thanks again for your reply Mitchell_A!

 

[Thiago]

Just wanted to add a pic of how my screen looks when the problem occurs (i didnt know how to take a screenshot with my computer in this state, so i took a pic hehe).

Link Removed due to 404 Error

 

[Mitchell_A]

I have experienced that before on my notebook and at the time it was related to drivers I do believe. I'll check more into this when I'm home from work.

 

[Thiago]

I just ran a few benchmarking tests and it looks like there's nothing wrong. These are the apps i used:

Memtest and Rammon (memory);
FurMark (GPU);
Prime95 (CPU);
Also a diagnostic tool provided by Dell, and everything seems perfect.

I'd like to add that during these tests, CPU temp was above 80ºC/176ºF and GPU was above 90ºC/194ºF and nothing wrong happened. I could still surf the web, use MSN messenger and my screen didnt freeze. During my gameplay, sometimes screen goes purple in 2~3 minutes.

 

[Mitchell_A]

Did you get it cleaned up?

 

[Thiago]

Did you get it cleaned up?

Yes i did, Mitchell_A, and it didnt help much. Laptop's still restarting with this particular game. I tried Diablo 3 and Warcraft 3 (two games i use to play) and all was cool. Also installed CoD Modern Warfare (im not a big fan of this kind of game, but i tried anyway just to be sure) and it was also cool.

I dont get why this happens only in my laptop while running Atlantica Online, but i ran out of ideas to try to fix it.

 

[Mitchell_A]

If all of those games performed normally and stress testing didn't indicate any underlying hardware problems, the only culprit remaining is software: either your graphics driver or the game itself. Make sure you've got the latest drigers from your card manufacturer and check for the latest patches for Atlantica Online
This APPEARS to be the latest. Check with the developers to be sure: Link Removed - Invalid URL

 

[Thiago]

If all of those games performed normally and stress testing didn't indicate any underlying hardware problems, the only culprit remaining is software: either your graphics driver or the game itself. Make sure you've got the latest drigers from your card manufacturer and check for the latest patches for Atlantica Online
This APPEARS to be the latest. Check with the developers to be sure: Link Removed - Invalid URL

I have the latest patch for Atlantica Online (if you dont update the game client, it wont let you play, so it's always up to date).
I tried the nvidia 301.42 driver and the 296.10 as well (didnt try a previous driver because i thought it would be pointless to downgrade my video card driver so much), still nothing. This really got me.