Random crashes (black screen can't alt+tab) when playing games

[ArchSymbiosis]

First off I'll say I play lots of games, so this bothers me just a little. It all started with Starcraft 2, keep in mind this is during random intervals. I could play the game for 5 mins to 1 hour and the computer screen would go black and usually a looping sound, or just nothing for a little bit then background music or something. The computer would completely lock up and the only remedy is hard reboot.

This is now happening with Call of Duty: World at War, Singularity. Both First Person Shooters, Starcraft 2 is a Real Time Strategy. Not sure if that helps, but FPS's are intensive with the GPU and RTS's are CPU intensive. So I don't know whats going on. For me and my hypothesis is when a certain sound goes off the computer crashes, but maybe it's just me, because when ever it crashes there is always a sound to go with it.

I have a Qosmio X305 - Q701 laptop and have had it for about since probably August 2008 making this 2 years old. I never mistreat it or anything and have used some caned air. Some people think it needs a new thermal paste on the GPU and some think it's artifacting. I'm not sure what it is.

All I know it freezes when I play games randomly sometimes it won't freeze. As far as temperature goes it's usually only gets up to 65 C. If there is anything else you guys need to go on let me know.

P.S. - This ONLY happens during playing games.

 

[Route44]

Usually when we see these issues only happening when gaming it predominately points to a driver issue. Go to your laptop's website, find your exact model and update the latest video drivers avaliable.

 

[ArchSymbiosis]

I went to as far as uninstalling the card and then reinstalling the drivers. To no avail.

 

[Route44]

Try the following...

1. Download Driver Cleaner Pro or Driver Sweeper (both have free versions; make sure the version will work with your OS) to your desktop screen and install.

2. Download the latest diver(s) for your video card but don't install them.

3. Uninstall your video card drivers and reboot your PC into Safe Mode. Run Driver Cleaner Pro or Driver Sweeper but ONLY for the video card drivers. I had someone use it on their chipset drivers! If it doesn't find any video card drivers that is quite okay.

4. Reboot and install new video card drivers.

 

[ArchSymbiosis]

I did what you said. Unfortunately it didn't work. Got Driver Sweeper, uninstalled my video card, rebooted in safe mode, used it to get rid of the drivers (not chipset), restarted again. I checked to see if any driver was on it, and nothing was there. Went to the site and downloaded the newest one and installed it.

I think it might have a problem for the fact it's not from the main Toshiba site. I might try getting there newest driver at the main site for my computer later and see if that works instead.

 

[Route44]

Yes, download the latest from Toshiba. That is the best route to take.

 

[ArchSymbiosis]

I defragged and tried doing the old Toshiba drivers. Nothing. Game crashes more frequent now. Could it be bad patches of memory?

 

[Route44]

Go to Toshiba's website. Find your laptop model and update the latest drivers that they have for your system.

 

[ArchSymbiosis]

I did. The newest one they have for my computer is 186.42 which is completely out of date. Tried the default drivers with the computer. Nothing seems to work. Been using driver sweeper every time I uninstalled my video card, and ran it in safe mode to no avail it still crashes.

Turn the graphics as low as I could last night to see what happened, and so far it didn't crash. I'm going to continue testing and keep you updated. If you think anything else will possibly work let me know.

 

[Route44]

The one thing about laptops and pre-built PCs from the likes of Dell, etc. is that they will only update their drivers to a certain point and then they move on to other offerings. It sounds like their latest drive offerings may be their last.

Is you graphics onboard or a dedicated card?