Laptop problem, need help

[Zhangir]

My laptop is switching off in Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms games
It does so the first 20 minutes I play and never after the second time I switch it on! (even though i may play 8-9 hours)

Initially I thought it was overheating, but the temperature is never above 80 (in most heated up cases) and I always have the cooling pad on.

The laptop simply switches off (as if overheating), no message given.

I play games like Mass Effect, which require much more of CPU and it never overheats enough to actually switch off (once or twice in lifetime maybe)

It never did so on Medieval 2 before, just recently.

My specs are quite good, and I checked a lot of things, both graphic and audio related.
I am actually quite clueless

I have a Steam version if that helps

Could it be due to the regedit, memory management, paged pool size?
My one is on the default i think (it's on 0)

So could you help lol?

P.S.
I have a HP 8710w, Windows XP


EDIT:
Funny enough, I also discovered that from today on (I didn;t do anything to provoke it) my laptop works perfectly fine for 20 minutes or so and then doesn't switch off but lags terribly, as in you can't even scroll through the map.
The CPU is also at 100%

EDIT 2:
I bought a new weird power adapter for my laptop half a year ago and it was quite strange behaving, heating up, strange looking and strange sound emitiing!

[Heinz Guderian]

Zhangir, i want you to try playing your laptop on a solid and flat surface and see if this helps the problem. When it switched off, did you notice that the fan sounded quiet loud (you should be able to hear it switch off after the laptop). Also, let your laptop idle for a while and then use Ct Al Del to see whats using that CPU. Also could be pr0n. Dont feel bad about that though

[Zhangir]

Heinz Guderian
Thanks for your reply!
Will try it out now!
Do you think the usage of the cooling pad is the bad thing?

About the fan, I am not sure it was too loud. It's always loud

pr0n? what's that?

P.S. Just to let you know I bought a new Charger, since my old one broke, roughly half a year ago and the new one was a little weird (as in made some sounds sometimes and heated up) and may be it was the cause???

[Heinz Guderian]

Dont worry about pr0n. it probably only affects me for some reason.

It really does sound like a over heating/thermostat problem. I had a problem like this with my old laptop. But it went away after i started using it on a flat solid surface which alllowed the laptop to be air-rated (sp?). Can you turn the laptop back on straight away or do you have to wait a while?

[Zhangir]

Just tried playing it without the cooling pad, but on a flat solid surface (wooden table)
This time i played Teutonic Campaign, as usually 20 mins in
Switched off
I noticed it was very very loud when switching it back on (the fan)
Moreover it didn't switch on straight away, but switched off back couple of times, so i had to wait

It really does sound like a over heating/thermostat problem.

You are totally right mate! spot on!

How do I solve it? ?
I already have a cooling pad which obviously isn't helping NOW although it was initially

Normal temperature just browsing TWC is 55 Celcius

Do you think it may be influenced by the Power Adapter?
I am gonna buy a new one just to check out (i don't like my current one, and i liked my first one)

NOTE:
When I played Assassin's Creed on this laptop before it was all like wowwww

Sometime after I got the new power adapter / charger thingy, the game started to lag enormously after like playing normal 20 mins in.
I didn't think it was adapter back then, but now having M2:TW do that, I am certain.

So my solution would be buying new adapter?
is there any other heating/thermostat problem solution?

+rep to you, but it says i have to spread around lol. Seems my last +rep was also to u
besides it seems you don't have the rep bar, so I am clueless here too!

[Zhangir]

Come on guys, I am desperate!
I did the anti-virus scan
I have a cooling pad
I have put PagedPoolSize on default
I have tried changing adapter
What else???
How to help?

P.S. Sorry for double-post

[Musthavename]

Is this happening just with Medieval II? Is it happening with other games aswell? Will it switch off if you just leave it idle?

[Zhangir]

Oh yes! It happens to most games now!
Nope it doesnt switch off if idle )
Tnks for reply mate

[eisenkopf]

Hi mate,

seems like a difficult one. I find it highly suspect that it happens always roughly after 20 mins. It might be some scheduled process or task. You need to isolate it.


Have you had a look at the logfiles?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427

tells you how to do it. (Another way, more brute but less exact, might be to start a game, switch to the Task Manager, and watch which processes use CPU power when the sytem goes out.)

Also check the Scheduled Tasks.

Further, note which other processes are running. Switch off all those that are related to third party (non-os) software, even antivirus (disconnect from the network first).


To make sure it's not hardware related:

Run a disk check that also looks for damaged sectors (it will take very long, depending on the size of your HDD).

Open the RAM compartment, and make sure they are securely fastened.


If all that does not help, you'll need to dig deeper with Sysinternals tools. But lets see whether the log files turn up anything, or eliminating processes helps.

[Zhangir]

Thanks for replying eisenkopf!

I just had a look in the logfiles, and there are some mistakes, I am not sure what to look for
I think i ll play the game, wait till it crashes, record the time and then look at the log file, correcT?

I will switch off all third party stuff, but it was all there before and worked fine...
anyways I ll just do it and see how it goes

I'll do the disc check tomorow and report the result
as well as opening the RAM and checking!

Tnks!

[burningsoul]

This is a really weird problem.
I would say its an overheating issue, maybe there is a setting in BIOS that turns off the computer after it reaches a certain temperature? Are you sure the temperatures never get above 80°C? What kind of antivirus do you use?

[Zhangir]

Oh! I am sure the temperature goes above 80 degrees when the cooling pad is not there, but with the pad i never saw it actually rise above 80, maybe though it did, I am not 100% sure
I have ESET NOD 32

[burningsoul]

I have heard of cases when NOD was causing serious problems on PCs. I would try uninstalling it nad see if it helps.
But I still think that high temperatures are responsible for your problem.

[Zhangir]

Just tried playing for an hour or so, so basically I was 30 minutes in, when the laptop started to lag severely.
And that's on M2 Total War... Oh God, why did we deserve that?

Anyway, it was like real real real slow...
A turn took 2 mins? maybe more!
And then it took me maybe 10 mins to exit the game normally and it still lagy even now (the Windows)
I noticed the PC was heated up a lot, but by the time I checked it was 70


EDIT:
The lagg was like 15 mins ago, and now i finally got access (is still slow) to Log Files (system part)
So at the time it started to lag there was A mistake (red cirle and a white cross in it)
source is iaStor
Event is 9
a second before that, there was warning (yellow triangle, black exclamation mark in it)
source was disk
Event was 51

Hope that helps

This logfile was in Control Panel - Administrating - Computer control - Look through events - system
(giving approximate translation, as my windows is in Russian )

[burningsoul]

[an idea]
Maybe your HDD contains bad clusters. Do a check of your HDD for bad clusters

I had a simiral issue a few weeks back. I was repairing a notebook of a friend of mine, he told me that after a certain time work on the NB is impossible, cause its slow. After some research i found that there was a damaged partition on the HDD, unfortunately the bad partition contained a very important windows file, which windows was always trying to read, causing the NB to appear slow. After a reboot the windows entirely stopped to boot, only displaying a message:

A disk read error occured.
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to reboot

The HDD was gone. I had to replace it
[an idea/]

[eisenkopf]

Hm, iaStor is an Intel driver for accessing storage devices, e.g. your harddisk. Event 9 means that it did not respond within the timeout period. The second one is an error on the harddisk during a paging operation.

This is an indication for me that something is wrong with your harddisk or the chipset drivers. It could be that windows is trying again and again to access a bad sector, or use a faulty driver. Since the above driver is not system critical, there is no immediate shutdown.

Here's what I would do:

1. Make a backup of all your personal files, which cannot be restored through a reinstall.

2. Run a disc check on your harddisk, with all options on. It will ask for a reboot.

3. Once completed, look at the logfile for checkdisk (see here: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102...?threadID=2247). Have there been any bad sectors or other errors?

4. Try again and see whether the problem persists.

5. If the problem persists, I would try to repair the chipset drivers. But let's wait for checkdisk first.

[Zhangir]

It actually Helped! OMG!
I did chkdsk in start-run and then it worked perfectly! WEEEEEEEE ))))))
THAnks A LOT!!!
A LOT!
To everyone who posted in the thread.
I guess the thread could be closed off not to pollute this forum

[eisenkopf]

Glad to hear that we could help you out! It would be a shame if you couldn't continue your excellent AARs!

[Zhangir]

Haha! cheers mate

I am planning a next one, but this time no Vanillas!
I ll try a mod

[Zhangir]

Sorry to bring thiS thread up again, but I had this trouble again and i did the same stuff you advised and it helped, so just another thank you