Thinkpad shutting down in games

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mitchell Freeman
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Mitchell Freeman

Sorry for the cross-post...I'm not even sure where exactly to start with
this particular issue. I have an IBM Thinkpad R32. No, not the ultimate
gaming platform, but it's not the bottom of the heap either. I don't expect
much, and I'm not disappointed. But lately, I have been getting denied!

In two separate games, the laptop will run as would be expected for about 5
min, then it just shuts down. Power off. Done. No message, no errors, no
dialog boxes, just off. When I reboot the laptop, it does not give me any of
the normal Windows XP "The system has recovered from a..." messages either.

I have the laptop plugged into the wall, so I am reasonably sure power is
not the issue. The laptop is not even a year old yet, so while it is
possible I may need to send it in for service, I am not convinced of that
either. Most of my older games (Sim City 4, The Sims, Starcraft/Warcraft,
Dungeon Siege) work just fine. The only commonality between the two new
games is that they are the only ones that use DirectX 9 (I just reinstalled
9.0b just in case DX was hosed). The latptop does not do this when using it
in any other game, or any of my business apps (Excel, Word, PowerPoint,
etc.). Just these two new (recent) games.

If the games crashed on any other system, I would bug the respective
software vendors, but the reality is that they run fine on all my other
platforms (including a Toshiba laptop I have as a backup). I run a clean
system--I basically run Office and that's about it. I even removed half of
the garbage that shipped on the laptop (IBM Global Center, etc.) and just
left the important stuff. And again, the laptop runs fine otherwise. Other
than the games (Temple of Elemental Evil and StarWars Galaxies, if it
matters). So I would say the Thinkpad is the culprit, since this only
happens on that laptop and not my Toshiba, but it also only happens when I
run those two games and not under ANY other circumstances (which would
otherwise point at those two games).

Anyone else have a similar situation? Any clues would be appreciated.
 
Go into Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Event Viewer and click on the
Application listing in the left panel. This will expose activities in the
right panel where you can check for yellow triangles with exclamation points
or red circles with white X's in them. Right-clicking these and selecting
Properties will give you information about the errors which could lead to
resolution.
 
This type of shut down is clearly hardware-related. It has nothing to do
with software.

Now, because your machine is shutting down when a computing intensive
application is running (these games), I suspect that the cause of te problem
is processor overheat. When the processor reaches a certain temperature, it
shuts itself down without warning. It has been designed to do that, to avoid
catching fire.

So, make sure you are not blocking the laptop vents. If you laptop uses a
DESKTOP processor, then I would say that I'm 100% sure it overheating. If
not, it may still be the case, but not as likely.
 
This was the clue I needed. There were no aberrant entries in the Windows
Event Logs, so I knew it had to be something seriously hardware-related, I
just could not put my finger on what.

But the overheated cpu shutdown clue gave me what I needed. I noticed that
even the energy saver modes for the laptop all had the CPU running at
maximum speed when plugged into the wall. I created a new power profile that
used the slower speeds, then played the game and no crashes occured. Like
magic!

Thanx for the heads up.
 
NOW re-pack that CPU and blow out the dust from the vents - it should
not overheat like that, it may need a new fan or new thermal grease.
 
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