Laptop Locking Up

[Froglok]

I've been having some odd issues with my laptop that I've never had before with any game, it's randomly seizing up to a black screen or a black screen with some vertical white lines. I'm not sure it's just overheating but it's hard to tell because it's never done this before with games and I'm playing Everquest, of all games, with the old models and low graphics settings.

I tried putting my laptop on a large cold book to prevent the vents from getting covered, but this isn't helping. I lowered the max frame-rate in the options settings to 30 as well as other graphics settings and this seems to have lowered the occurrences, but it's still happening. The laptop is barely a year old too. Does anyone have any suggestions for what I can do other than buy a new laptop?

Thanks.

[Kuriin]

Do you play any other graphic intense games to see if it's just EQ? Is it integrated graphics or a mobile?

[Froglok]

Do you play any other graphic intense games to see if it's just EQ? Is it integrated graphics or a mobile?

Not sure about the graphics hardware. I use to play TF2 for hours on end at LAN parties and Starcraft 2 recently. Is the Titanium Client that much more graphics intensive than the original?

[Kuriin]

I'm not sure. Can you tell me the model name of your laptop?

[Froglok]

When I get home from work I'll check. Thanks.

[Froglok]

The laptop is a HP Pavillion dv7 Notebook PC

[Kuriin]

You said you played SC2 recently -- how recently was that? Just trying to determine when the artifacts/lines started appearing.

[Froglok]

It's been a while since I last played SC2 on this PC. I'm thinking it's overheating and apparently HP laptops have horrible ventillation. At least I can dry my hair with it.

[Kuriin]

Does sound like it is overheating. :[

[Froglok]

I can barely hear the fan speed up, which is probably the problem. I just built myself a laptop tray out of a grate and a christmas tree stand. Hoping for the best...

[Evilbob]

Right click your Everquest icon on your desktop, click properties - Compatibility then select "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and select what windows version you are running. Hope this helps.

[Froglok]

Bob that makes no sense, why would I select the compatability mode for Vista when I'm running Vista? How would selecting a different version make any difference on my laptop overheating? My makeshift ventillation stand seems to have done the trick anyway.

[h0tr0d (shaere)]

Heat, or graphics obviously. I've had this problem before, one was bad video card, one was heat. Laptops are notorious for this, well were. Is it under warranty?

[Froglok]

I'm not sure if it's still under warranty. It's served me well over the past year, it just needs proper ventillation if anything and it works wonderfully. Now my space heater desktop with dual video cards on the other hand...

[Kuriin]

The only thing I can suggest is get a laptop cooler:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007639%20600028834&IsNodeId=1&name=Cooler

And see if that works out. =( Do you happen to use any programs like Everest to check your temperatures? When there are artifacts like that it's definitely a heat issue or your card is dying. =(

[Froglok]

Kuriin I just bought a nice new laptop cooler made by Targus. It has a couple fans on it powered by USB. Hopefully it will replace my makeshift laptop stand. Otherwise I'm breaking out the computer parts and building my own.

[Wartooth]

check our laptops forum and see if anyone else is having this issue, maybe a warranty thing. My comp overheats too quickly because the batch i got mine in they put too much thermopaste on and now i have a new one 8D