W3J Dieing?

I'm having some issues with my w3j. While playing wow it will randomly lock up and the screen will get fragmented (colored dots all over the screen). I thought maybe my graphics card was dying, but the weird thing is, it doesn't lock up during Bioshock which is a lot more graphic intensive then wow. Now if i turn down powerplay to balanced it just turns blanks out then turns back in a couple seconds. THis is very weird behavior for a laptop. Before i send it into asus i wanted to make sure there wasn't something i could to to fix this? The weird part also is that the screen doesn't stay fragmented. As soon as i reboot it's fine again.


Thanks in advance

-Rj

 

How about turn off powerplay?

 

Are you running Vista by any chance ? I have this exact same problem with my GF 7900 GT running Vista .. probably something to do with drivers, but I'm not absolutely sure.

Cheers.

 

Did you try omega drives instead of Ati. Worked for me in NFS Carbon

 

YEah im running omega's, i disabled power play and ill see if that makes a difference. So seriously drivers would make my screen artifact up? it stays like that for about 10 minutes even if i reset my computer, but if i leave it alone it goes away......

 

sounds like possible overheating. Are the exaust vents very plugged up? You may want to open it up and blow some compressed air through the heatsinks / fans and vaccumn up loose stuff. I need to do that with my a8js everyone few months to keep the temps down (my apartment is in an old dusty house).

 

I will never try an omega driver again. It killed my z70va. I installed them and when I rebooted I knew something went wrong when I could not see the bios when I rebooted. Windows loaded(you could hear the sounds), but nothing was one the screen.

 

I dont think the omega drivers would cause those kind of issues. I installed them on my w3j and did not have any issues. I unistalled them because it constantly reset the gamma settings. So now I am using the drivers from the ATI site.

They work pretty good. I had too many issues with the drivers from Asus.

 

Your problem sounds like overheating. Time to clean the heat sink/fan!

 

Personally I'd give the stock drivers a chance. But cleaning is almost always a good suggestions, as well

 

EBE, do you think the Omega drivers damage a system? I installed them, then uninstalled. I have never overclocked my card at all.

 

Damage? Unlikely. But they can create software problems (I've seen that happen many times)

When problems develop with a machine, I recommend as the first step reverting to stock drivers. That eliminates driver incompatibilities from the start, and either: solves the problem in the happy case; or at the worst it makes the determination of its cause easier.

The second step is to use an entirely different OS, like Linux.

The third step is to reinstall the OS completely.

The fourth (is possible) is to verify hardware, by various techniques.

The order might of course be changed if some things are more likely to be the cause, or if they are easier to do.

For instance, verifying RAM is as easy as downloading an ISO writing it to a CD and booting from it before going to sleep. As such it should always be done prior to reinstalling Windows, because it takes much less effort.

Example 2: if the HDD is clicking and the system freezes with the IDE light on, it makes little sense to check the RAM. So we start with a HDD check first.

And so on...

Long answer to a short question.

 

THanks for all the answers guys, i was really about to send this thing into Asus. I disabled powerplay and for the moment it hasn't done it again, but I'll probably open it up later today seeing as how i got it last august and i've never cleaned the inside. I blew out the vents but i've never opened it up.

 

Yeah, you should open it up and give it a good, thorough cleaning. Keep in mind this is a dual purpose gaming laptop and grill, and the two aren't compatible, so don't let it become more grill than laptop.

 

personally I think it is the omega drivers too, I have had a few BSDs etc related to them. I discovered that they use an older file that does not handle transparecies properly causing numerious errors. Also they havent been updated since 7.4 and amd is up to 7.9. Anyway google drive cleaner pro and use this program in safe mode to completely get rid of your old drivers then go to http://ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst/ to get the latest offical drivers.

hope this helps

 

Thanks for the advice again. I tried official 7.9 (not supported by asus) and it crashed big time. So now im back official drivers from asus, and so far it's been crash free *crosses finger*.

 

Yep, modded drivers have had issues more than a few times...

 

Computer Just crashed again on default drivers, this is the screen when it booted up. I rebooted it a few times with the same screen, then it randomly went away.

 

Looks like GPU failure with the red bars & snow, but could also be a wire to the LCD is loose since you say it comes/goes. Time to call Asus or your reseller about sending it in for repair.

 

Maybe it's a good idea to give it a thorough cleaning before sending it in, at least you can eliminate overheating.

 

Does the GPU on the w3j have a seperate fan i can clean? I took off the cpu cover and cleaned the cpu fan. It almost seems like air is having trouble getting out cuz i can hear the fan running but not a lot of air comes out. I have a cpu temp monitor and its only around 52c. But i can't find a gpu temp monitor.

 

I do not know if the W3J has two fans. You can try searching the forums for a disassembly guide, I'm not sure one was posted though.

The GPU temperature monitor is usually under the GPU settings: right click on desktop, properties, Settings, advanced, GPU tab. At least in Windows XP

By the way also check the grate through which the air comes out of the laptop, not just the fan itself/ That can get pretty clogged as well.

 

i really wish i understood this computer. It's now been on for almost 2 hours without a crash. = /. I'm about to run 3dmark06 and if it stays I'm throughly convinced its not my GPU. A friend of mine suggested that because it only happens sometimes that maybe my gpu got knocked inside my laptop.

 

Possibly, in this case you can make sure it's seated properly when you clean up the dust.

 

FYI, W3J has only one fan.

 

Well i completely re-installed windows and now im running stock drivers. It corrupted once when i was installing something but taht was it. I finally got it to run 3dmark06 and it DIDN'T crash. . Maybe my fan is just moody

 

Are you running Vista or XP? =D

 

I'm running XP