Something is up with my laptop.

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03-16-2009, 08:46 PM
Pastulio_

Something is up with my laptop.

A couple weeks ago, I was surfing the internet on my laptop, when all of a sudden the entire screen just went black, but the laptop was still on. I restarted it, went into safe mode, shut it down, and started it again, and everything was fine until earlier today. I was watching a show on the laptop, and again, everything just went black all of a sudden. It can't be just the video, because the sound from the show was lost as well. I've been trying to get it to work for the last hour. I'll restart it, but then it'll do the black screen again, and then I'll try restarting it again, and it won't boot properly, so I go through a restore process that it prompts me to do, and it'll get me back to normal, but then the black screen comes back minutes later, as soon as I try to run a program, mostly Firefox.

Anyone have any ideas what might be going on with it, or how I can solve it? It's running Vista, and I've only had it for about 7 months...
03-16-2009, 11:55 PM
ninja9578

Sounds like your video card. Audio is usually embedded into the video card, so both can go out together. What graphics chip set do you have?

It's not cheap to fix, but that's definitely covered by your warranty so take it to wherever you got it from and have GeekSquad look at it.
03-17-2009, 12:00 AM
Pastulio_

I've left it alone for a while, and ran some virus scans and it appears to be running alright now. I have no clue what kind of graphic chips I have, but I'll probably have someone look into this just to be safe.
03-17-2009, 01:13 PM
ninja9578

Control Panel -> Display Options -> Advanced That should show you the chipset.
03-17-2009, 09:07 PM
Pastulio_

Thanks, but upon further investigation, it's not that the audio/video are dying, it's that the laptop is shutting itself down, but not completely. It could be a sleep mode or something. I did a little research, and apparently that can be caused by overheating or overworking the CPU. I think the CPU is fine, but my laptop does tend to get pretty hot. Any advice?
03-17-2009, 11:42 PM
ninja9578

Take it in for service, sounds like the fan is broke. I've had my Macbook running at 200% for over a week a few times and it never shut down.
03-18-2009, 12:58 AM
Marvo

Quote:

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Take it in for service, sounds like the fan is broke. I've had my Macbook running at 200% for over a week a few times and it never shut down.

Your Mac. This is a normal laptop, not quality hardware :P
03-18-2009, 01:13 AM
shroom

Are you using mobile broadband? That can let in a few nasty viruses that ADSL doesnt. But id agree with the assumption that it could also be a graphics card problem. If it persists try re-installing your drivers and do a BIOS flash just to be safe.
03-19-2009, 03:02 AM
ninja9578

Might I recommend buying one of these: Belkin Laptop Fan I have one running and it keeps like laptop, even when running Vista or Blender, really cool.