Help! Sudden Computer turn offs during RTW (apothecary?)

[thisismyusername]

Ok I just got RTW to work on my system, but now I found i LITERALLY cannot play a half hour into any game (whether it be the campaign, a quick battle whatever) without my laptop computer suddenly and inexplicably turning off out of nowhere.

Ill be playing the game as usual and out of nowhere my laptop computer will simply turn off as if the the power cord and battery were suddenly just yanked out of it! I thought this problem might just be a fluke but it happens as sure as day everytime I try to play (and it happens with THIS game and this game only) ... I was wondering if any one might know the cause or how I might be able to fix it ... you guys helped me fix my last catastrophic game problem so I figured what the heck maybe someone could help me again since i admittedly know close to nothing about computer functions. Thanks in advance.

Once again if a moderator reads this maybe the folks in the apothecary could help?

[Boudicca]

Allright, I´ve got an older Laptop computer and have had the same problem with rome total war (and have had that problem with Medieval before).

The computer - after playing for about 30 Minutes - suddenly shut down out of nowhere. After two years of succesfully playing medieval, I think the reason for the shutdown is overheating of the graphic processor or the processor unit (don´t know exactly, but my computer feels quite hot underneath after turning off...)

The problem is, that as it is a laptop computer, I was unable to provide extra cooling from within. So I bought me a small ventilator and placed it in front of the ventilation slot from outside. From that moment on, my computer just worked fine.

A friend of mine also told me, that the might have something to do with dust being drawn into the computer trough the ventilation slots...after a year or so, your CPU-Fan is full of it and can´t create enough cooling any more. He usually took a vacuum cleaner, placed it on the slot and so drew the dust out...

I applied both methods, the one with the vacuum cleaner only worked for three or for days, than the problem reoccured.

I hope, this helps you a bit, but playing high resolution games with laptops always seems a bit difficult...

[thisismyusername]

Hey i figured as much ... although the comp seems to get rather hot doing other programs but it never turns off while doing it ...what exactly do u mean by ventilator?? maybe i could try this out ...

[Tomcat]

Almost certainly this is a heat issue, especially as RTW is known to be very cpu intensive. Somewhere on your PC, probably the side or the back, there should be a ventilator grille opening to let the hot air out from inside. Put a vacuum cleaner nozzle on this to suck out any loose dust. Otherwise blow air over this ventilator grill for some forced cooling. If you cannot find the grille, give us the name of your laptop and somebody will probably be able to tell you where the grille is.

Tomcat

[Boudicca]

Thats exactly what I meant, I hope it will help!

[Red Harvest]

There is a very good chance that it is overheating either the CPU or the graphics--but this sounds like CPU overheat. So forcing a bit more air through it might do the trick. Sometimes the little fan will fail.

There is one other thing I've seen happen with laptops: sometimes the transformer lacks the capacity to run the machine at full load for more than a few minutes. I had a not-so-bright boss illustrate this for me when he used a smaller transformer from an older machine, because it fit in his luggage better. His machine would shut down after about 15 minutes while we were running simulations. Our laptops were very similar, but I noticed he had a smaller, lower capacity transformer. When I asked him about it he said, "Yeah, it came with one like yours, but this one is lighter and fits in my luggage better." He used the bigger one after that, and the machine ran fine.

Some laptops run "throttled" when on battery power--the P4's I had ran at much lower speeds on battery to conserve power...of course, that didn't help with simulations that needed to do X calculations...it took longer, and during that time was powering the display as well.

[thisismyusername]

Yep it was the overheating ... funny how this game must is the only one that does it to my computer, this must be an amazing game. I bout a mini desk fan and set it up blowing into the vent on the back of my computer, and i havent had one crash since! Once again, thanks for the helpful info everybody, especilaly redharvest.