BleepingComputer.com: Computer shuts off while playing games/video

My computer turns off in the middle of playing any type of game, facebook games, online games, regular PC games and it will shut down while I'm watching movies. The first time it happened windows trouble shooter popped up and said it could be a few things causing it to shut down, possibly a recently install program, my virus protection ect. Once it shuts down i can usually reboot right away. Only on one occasion it shut off and wouldn't come back on. I had to wait almost an hour for it to come back on. This has only happened while playing games and watching video. So i did a full system restore (factory) from back up disc hoping it would fix the problem but it did not. Even down to the bare bones of my computer it still happens on a regular basis. I assume that it's my video card that's the problem. Is there a way to fix this or do I need to replace it. If i do need replace it do i have to replace with the original or can i use a different one all together without having to change anything else (or upgrade) on my laptop. I'm trying to find the cheapest, easiest fix possible i have a gateway nv79u laptop with windows 7 thanks for any help or advice

here's a link to the specs of my laptop
http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668590.php

Hello and welcome to Bleepingcomputer.

First we need to know why your computer is experiencing a Blue Screen, in order to do that I need you to follow my instructions below, so we can see what driver the Blue Screens are being caused by.

Download BlueScreenView 
No installation required. 
Double click on BlueScreenView.exe file to run the program. 
When scanning is done, go Edit>Select All. 
Go File>Save Selected Items, and save the report as BSOD.txt. 
Open BSOD.txt in Notepad, copy all content, and paste it into your next reply.

Bruce.

my computer wasn't configured to save any of that information. i changed the settings so i could run the program and i will try to get my computer to shut off today and then run that program

Okay that is understandable, I will watch for your log.

Bruce.

I finally got my computer to crash/shut off. When I restarted my computer and opened blue screen viewer it's still showing no crashes.

Hi. If you click on the Windows Start Orb and type "Reliability Monitor" in the search field, at the top of the list should be "View Reliability History". Clicking that will show the reliability monitor. If you look at the graph, check for the red "X"'s. SHould be like this:


If you click on the column where your crash happened, the lines under the graph should give a basic description of what the failure was. Double click this description and it will bring up a new window with detailed infromation about the crash, like this:


When you find the appropriate crash logs (based on date and time), hopefully they will be for the same reason. Please post back with those log and hopefully they will give us a place to start.

I am curious if event viewer has anything showing that blue screen view might be over looking.

In Windows 7, click on START.

In the search field, type event viewer.

Click on event viewer in the list of the window that opens.

Check for any errors you see in the upper top window area.

This window will have the heading with the words summary of Administrative events

Look for the following areas listed below, expand them at the + to see what errors happened in the last 24 hours.

ERRORS

WARNING

You might find a clue in this area as to what caused the crash.


Next thing we need to consider is if your computer is experiencing an over heating issue.

Two programs can help you diagnose this possibility, by monitoring your CPU and GPU temperatures.
Below is the URLS to both programs, which are free to download and use.

Speed Fan http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

You should also check your CPU cooling fan and heat sink for the accumulation of dust build up.

Dust can cause your CPU to over heat during extreme usage, because the dust acts like insulation and keeps the heat from escaping into the air where the cooling fan can push it away from the heat sink.

You should also have a good flow of fresh air cycling into and out of the computer case.

The last issue to consider is if your PSU (power supply) is capable of supplying enough Amps (working current) to satisfy the demand of the GPU during its peak usage level.

If the demand falls short, the computer can shut down.

An issue with a video driver can also cause this to happen as well.
Downloading drivers from web sites other than the one owned by your hardware can lead to using corrupted or mis-labeled drivers.
Even drivers from your hardware vendor can be bad or buggy drivers, some drivers do make it past beta testing and into public download web sites with a bug still in the code.
Sometimes the bug isn't corrected until another release number debuts.

You might want to try another release date of your video driver, even using an earlier release date of the driver if the present one is crashing your computer.

EDIT
I see while I was editing this post Bonzo had posted a useful tip above mine here, I seen it once I had uploaded this post.

Please try what Bonzo suggested.

@ Bonzo, thanks for your suggestion above.


Bruce.

This post has been edited by MrBruce1959: 13 February 2011 - 05:41 PM

 k.jpg (96.13K)
Number of downloads: 2i'm not sure this is going to help but heres what it said


in case you can't see that picture it says problem- windows was not shut down properly description-The previous system shutdown at 1:36:49 PM on ‎2/‎13/‎2011 was unexpected.

This post has been edited by kimbobimbo: 13 February 2011 - 05:44 PM

i found this log in the critical section event id -41 source-kernel power log-system
- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power" Guid="{331C3B3A-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}" />
<EventID>41</EventID>
<Version>2</Version>
<Level>1</Level>
<Task>63</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000002</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2011-02-13T18:40:35.468417500Z" />
<EventRecordID>5594</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Kimberly-PC</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data Name="BugcheckCode">0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter1">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter2">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter3">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter4">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="SleepInProgress">false</Data>
<Data Name="PowerButtonTimestamp">0</Data>
</EventData>


this one was in the error section event id-6008 source-event log log-system
- <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
<Provider Name="EventLog" />
<EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2011-02-13T18:40:48.000000000Z" />
<EventRecordID>5590</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>Kimberly-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data>1:36:49 PM</Data>
<Data>‎2/‎13/‎2011</Data>
<Data />
<Data />
<Data>9140</Data>
<Data />
<Data />
<Binary>DB07020000000D000D00240031004F00DB07020000000D001200240031004F00080700003C0000000100000008070000000000008403000001000000F1020000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>

these were both at the time my computer shut down

i'm going to look into the other things it could be i just wanted to say thank you for your help

i checked and i don't think my computer is overheating and I reinstalled my graphics driver and that seems like it's working ok. Is there a specific way to tell if your power supply isn't working properly or is it just trial and error because i think that might be the culprit

There really isn't any easy way to determine if your power supply is causing the problem.

To do this accurately, you would have to have a device or VOM meter in line to check for fluctuation in the power supply's output.

As I stated above, 300 WATTS is not a very powerful power supply rating.

Most systems require a minimum of 500 WATTS, as you can figure, yours is 200 WATTS below that.

I do not know what other hardware you have connected to your computer that draws off of the PSU.

To envision this properly, we use a pie as a whole unit, yes I am speaking of that type of pie you would eat.

As each piece of hardware draws current from the power supply, we remove a slice of the pie, lets say it is 1/4 of a slice that we removed, now we have a pie that is 3 to 1.

The next slice is removed and you now have 1/2 of the available supply left, if this ratio falls below the requirement of one of your peripherals, it drops back to its lower potential, where it becomes unstable.

Once it has reached an unstable state, it can crash or freeze up the computer.

In most cases the operating system senses this and shuts the system down to prevent damage, thus your computer shuts down without much warning or the ability to recover from the crash.

Heat issues, corrupted drivers or inadequate power supply can cause this to happen.

Bruce.

MrBruce1959, on 14 February 2011 - 12:12 AM, said:

According to the link Kimbobimbo provided this is a laptop. Unless she has upgraded memory, and\or is running a lot of peripherals, or is no longer using the OEM provided PS, it should be enough.

I am leaning towards a heat issue. But until some temps are provided there is no way to say.

The logs indicate an immediate crash, but I gues you knew that part already.

Three things pop into my mind right away.
1) Overheating. The links MrBruce gave in his previous post will help you monitor for this.

2) Bad memory (RAM). You can download a utility to check your Ram from here: http://www.memtest.org/ When the test completes, it loops back and starts again. The more times it runs, the better. I'd say letting go overnight, at least.

3) Drivers. I suspect this less because you say you did a complete restore from disk and still have the same problem. There's still a chance that Gateway has a bug in the driver shipped with the machine. You can try looking in their site to see if they offer any updated ones. I'm including 2 links for drivers. One is for the NV79 series, the second for the NV79C series. I can't find your exact model on their site. The drivers are different versions, so please choose the apropriate series.
http://support.gateway.com/product/default.aspx?tab=1&modelId=2385
http://support.gateway.com/product/default.aspx?modelId=2386

I took a screen shot while I was using cpuid hardware monitor but this time i put a game on so it did get a little hotter I'm not sure how hot is to hot but here's the screenshot

as with speed fan it's not big enough to be able to see with a screen shot but when the computer is just sitting it says all the core 0 1 2 & 3 are averaging around 30`c - 35`c when doing things like browsing the Internet I'm averaging about 40`c-50`c and then while I'm playing some kind of full game I'm averaging 70`c-80`c are these temperatures typical


 kkk.jpg (117.05K)
Number of downloads: 3

See page 55 of this tech sheet for the i3-330M CPU:
http://download.intel.com/design/processor/datashts/322812.pdf

It shows Max temp as 100 - 105 degF., but that sounds very high to me. Even your temps sound high, but I've never really monitored laptop temps before. Have a look through the cooling vents in the sides of your laptop to see how dusty it is inside. If it is dusty, a few shots through with some compressed air like this ( http://www.cannedair.net/electronics/duster.htm ) should help.