Laptop Issues

[Methais]

A friend of mine that knows nothing about computers recently got a laptop, and says that when she's playing WoW (I forgot if it's only during WoW or during anything) her screen will randomly black out for a couple seconds and then come back on, I guess similar to when you change your screen's resolution.

I haven't looked at anything on her system yet, but I'm gonna try updating the driver first. If that doesn't work though, what else would you suggest I check? Thanks.

[Sean of the Thread]

Sometimes.. much like a cell phone.. the connection to the main and the screen is loose or fucked. I'd check that first.

[Trouble]

Could it be an overheating of the GPU? Maybe install something like ATItool and see what temps she gets while playing WoW.

[Kranar]

If the GPU overheats your entire computer will shut off.

On the other hand, I have had a similar problem on my laptop and I reinstalled my video card (ie. took it out and shoved it back in) and that solved the problem for me.

[Methais]

If the GPU overheats your entire computer will shut off.

On the other hand, I have had a similar problem on my laptop and I reinstalled my video card (ie. took it out and shoved it back in) and that solved the problem for me.

I'll try that first and see how it goes.

Which leads me to my next question....I've never done shit on a laptop before but I hear they're a pain in the ass to deal with hardware issues. Is it really that bad, or anything in particular I should know? I've swapped out video cards and all that on desktops, just never a laptop.

[Sean of the Thread]

You said the monitor flips out for a few seconds.. not that it shuts down completely once in awhile. First troubleshooting step is to check to see if the shit is loose or otherwise fucked (lcd).

[Kranar]

Which leads me to my next question....I've never done shit on a laptop before but I hear they're a pain in the ass to deal with hardware issues. Is it really that bad, or anything in particular I should know? I've swapped out video cards and all that on desktops, just never a laptop

Hmm... they're really not a pain to work with, in fact when taking one apart you really come to appreciate the ingenuity that goes into them and how they efficiently put the system together. However, they are different from desktops in many respects. Another disadvantage is that different laptops are just physically different and there's no universally adopted standard for video card peripherals. If this problem happens frequently in WoW, try another game or try using a 3D benchmark and see if it still happens.

[Celephais]

yeah they're not that complicated, if you can find an official article on replacing a component, they'll tell you the steps on how to best get inside and work with it (if it's a Dell their site has really nice skematics for all their laptops... you just have to go at it like you're replacing a component)

[fallenSaint]

Its very possible the card isnt something you can pop off and back on. I might suggest changing to some after market drivers and seeing how that goes as well as a possible test.

[Methais]

Seems like it was a driver issue. She was running Vista on her laptop, which I've heard shitty things about so far, particularly with WoW. But so far so good, the driver seems to have fixed it. Although the blacking out only happened in WoW, and was very random (she said it would sometimes go for an hour or 2 without doing it, and other times it will do it right off the bat. So far so good though.