W3V Freezing/Black Screen

I've tried searching for the problem, be it specifically for the W3V or for other laptops, and I've already read most of the threads to no avail.

My W3V has served me faithfully for well over 2 years, and only now has it failed. It started with screen/backlight blinking off then on while playing WoW, and then to complete backlight failure for over 3 seconds at a time. Then, the entire screen starts failing while sound and keyboard responsiveness (Caps lock light, etc) remain, then that too loops and freezes. Apparently, only a manual restart can fix it.

I believe it is using two sticks of ~500 MB RAM for a total of 1024 MB RAM.

I've tried running games on my laptop HD, now I run them on an external HD.

I've tried changing the driver to factory installed ones to the previous version of Omega, to the current version of Omega. I even tried setting it to AGP with Fast Write on and Fast Write off, as well as setting the drivers to PCIe.

I've tried reformatting.

I've opened it up and cleaned the vent and fan.

Still have the problem. Normal temperature seems to be stable at 45C after cleaning, it used to be 50C. Before cleaning it ran up to 75 C to 76 C under load/playing games. The freezing is very random, sometimes occurring immediately sometimes occurring after a long time. It seems to freeze less when I play COD4 single player but freezes very often when playing WoW or COD4 multiplayer. When playing low resource games like Touhou or doing word processing/internet browsing it doesn't freeze at all.

I have not undervolted and it does not seem to freeze when I do the load test that is used for undervolting, only when playing intense video games (that are at the same resolution as the desktop). Froze once while watching anime, but never again.

I tried to be as thorough as possible. Thanks in advance for anyone with any idea on what to do or what's the problem.

 

Backlight failure is usually associated with the inverter board and/or cable. But this is purely an electrical problem; if the processing also freezes after the backlight dies, it's probably something else.

Given that you've cleaned it and it wasn't overheating before either, I think that something on the mainboard is just failing due to old age. Although 2 years is not so old for a (supposedly) business-quality computer such as the W3...

What I suggest is that you start removing any removable components: any peripherals, HDD, one piece of RAM at a time, and try running without them (without the HDD that would mean a Live CD like Knoppix Linux). If it runs stably without those things attached, they may be at fault.

But I really suspect the motherboard...

 

Is the screen still producing an image? When the screen flickers off, go somewhere with intense light and check if there is still a display. If the LCD is still on, that means that the inverter/backlight is the problem and you will need to get the inverter replaced and not the screen.

Your temperatures are way hot, my W3V idles at 47 and tops out at 73 degrees max, and I have my 735 overclocked to 2.26Ghz. Before overclocking it does 40 idle, 65 load. You definately need to clean out your heatsink and fan, as well as possible put some new thermal compound on your CPU.

 

Well the problem has gotten worse. I can't find a way to lower the temperature at all with the tools I have on hand.

One interesting thing to note is that barring some occasional problems booting up from a previous freeze, while running on battery power alone none of these things happen. It has yet to freeze and I can even run intense games on battery (albeit with lowered FPS and limited battery time). When I plug in the AC adapter power in it will immediately freeze. Sometimes even when idling it will freeze if plugged in!

In a thread where someone had similar problems whilst plugged in updating the BIOS was mentioned. Is there anywhere I can get a W3V BIOS update? I am unsure if the one on the global ASUS site is the right one, and the taiwan site is a bit unresponsive. A direct link or simply verbal confirmation on the correct download would be much appreciated.

I am also in the process of getting memtest to run to see if the problem is with the RAM.

EDIT: I forgot to mention on my second attempt to clean the heatsink area, I managed to clear a rather large, solitary dust bunny out from under the black plastic flap thing that surrounds and covers what I think is the processor. It's like a black plastic carpeting with a square cut out to expose the processor chip so it can make contact with the thermal pad/heatsink I think. After that, I could run full blast (still hitting temperatures of 76C, though) playing WoW, which I did for about 15 hours straight (withdrawal, lol) then the problems sprang up again.

For the problems turning on after a crash, it seems that third time is the charm whether plugged in or on battery. The disc will spin once, make booting sounds, but the screen remains black. I can turn on caps lock but nothing else works. Sometimes it will stuck with the CD light on or the bluetooth light on (sometimes able to turn it off via right side button #2 and sometimes not) but if I just keep pressing the power button repeatedly or slowly, it usually boots successfully on the third try regardless of power source or battery.

Any ideas as to what's wrong would really help, be it need to replace the thermal pad, buy a new AC adaptor, BIOS update, bad memory stick, etc. since I don't want to have to buy a new desktop/laptop.

 

What are you using to monitor your temperatures? Have you re-applied thermal compound ie; Artic Silver to the heatsink/CPU?

That's not surprising if your CPU is overheating. Plugging it into AC adapter will bring it to "High performance" and your CPU will throttle to the highest speed. If cooling is a problem, it will most definately freeze.

However, I have reason to believe that it also could be the X600 GPU that is overheating and could possibly not be the CPU. Unfortunately, there is no way of detecting the temperatures via software. The x600 uses ATi Power play when on battery mode and significantly reduces the core clock/mem speeds to conserve battery, on AC mode, it's full speed which could cause instabilities as you described if it is overheating. Head over to this thread if you have eliminated the CPU as the cause of the issue. But first, find out if the CPU is the problem or not, as its just too hard to say just by speculation.

I don't think BIOS will fix this problem.

This might be the problem, but highly unlikely. If the memory didn't have problems before, it shouldn't now. But do a memtest anyway.

 

Thanks D3X, that's really helpful!

The programs I'm using to monitor temperature was ASUS NB Probe. After another reformat, the download link from the thread I found in this forum does not work so I used the included ASUS PC Probe, which gave the same readings.

Is there a guide or something along those lines for specific aid in the application of thermal paste/pad for W3V? I ask because I read a thread discussing the danger of mis-applying since apparently laptops with paste and laptops with a pad require different treatment.

How would I go about doing this?

 

Follow this guide. on how to apply thermal compound. Of course this guide is for desktops, but the concept is the same and all you need to do is remove the fan and heatpipe cooler.
As far as the pad goes, I've actually removed the original grey/goop pad with isopropyl rubbing alcohol and replaced it with a thin layer of Artic Silver 5.