My computer, it no worky!

[Askthepizzaguy]

Greetings all.

For a while now, my computer has been acting up and I can't play games on it, such as Medieval 2 Total war, or Civilization IV, and it also seems to take a whenever I try to watch videos on it. If I do things which don't take a lot of graphical wizardry, the computer crashes a lot less. Yet it still does.

What happens is, randomly, the screen will go pitch black, and the audio will become distorted and start looping a tiny audio fragment like a skipping record. The audio will stay distorted for a few seconds, then it will come back normally for a few seconds, then it will just die and make a loud electronic garbage noise. There's no cursor, nothing on the screen at all, and none of the buttons on my keyboard do anything. It looks like the operating system is messed up, because if it just wasn't displaying properly, it wouldn't affect the audio, and my buttons would still work, but nothing changes anything. I have to do a reset by pressing the power button for 5 seconds.

Needless to say, when this happens a few minutes or seconds into whatever I was doing, I can't ever finish anything I wanted to do. So now video games and movies are forbidden tasks, on a 2,000 dollar laptop.

This is a Toshiba Qosmio, a few years old, top of the line in its time. I spent a good deal of my savings on this machine I was hoping would last for a while. Now I can't even do basic stuff without it freezing and forcing me to reset.

I am no technical guru. There's no viruses I can find with multiple different scanning tools. I just want to know if anyone out there knows what could be causing this, but I'm not looking for random guesses. If you've seen a problem like this before and have actual technical expertise or experience, then please let me know what you think.


I am trying to decide if this is something I can fix, or if I need to break down and buy another computer. I really don't want to do the latter.


If you can identify the problem correctly for me, I will be eternally grateful.

If you can tell me how I can fix it, and it works, I don't know what I'd do but I'd be really happy.


Help! Help!

[rajpoot]

Overheating?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Overheating?

Nope, got a rather large fan pointed right at the back of it, and the laptop is on "stilts". I've got seasons 4 and 5 of star trek the next generation on dvd propping up the left and right sides of my machine. Air flow is not just good, it is frickin' freezing my wrists while I type.

I thought it was overheating too, but the bottom and back of the machine is cool to the touch.

[drone]

Overheating?

This would be my guess as well. Just because the case is cool doesn't mean the interior components are cool. To me, a cool laptop case is a warning sign that heat is not being dissipated properly. Try running a diagnostic like SpeedFan to check the CPU/GPU temps under load.

[Askthepizzaguy]

This would be my guess as well. Just because the case is cool doesn't mean the interior components are cool. To me, a cool laptop case is a warning sign that heat is not being dissipated properly. Try running a diagnostic like SpeedFan to check the CPU/GPU temps under load.

hmmm ok.

With my computer doing nothing but having firefox open, and me typing this, I've got temperatures ranging from 46 to 34 degrees Celsius on 4 different displayed components. That tells me that at least one part of my computer is still pretty hot on the inside. It will only get worse if I do something strenuous.

What could I do to lower the temperature?

[Double A]

Have you tried carbonite?

Or, you know, cleaning off the dust? I know you have a fan, but that doesn't get rid of 100% of dust. More like 20%.

And then there's google.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I tried cleaning out the dust, but other than poking it out of my fan vents with a paper clip, I can't open up this machine to save my life. Thing has like 97 different screws and when I get them all out, it still won't open up. I'm afraid I'm going to break it.