Crashing.Follow

So basically I have a few games that crash my laptop. They really shouldn't be as this laptop can & should be able to handle them (I even play them in low spec).
My laptop is an Asus g74 (system model: G73Jh). It is maybe 15 months old, maybe a little older (but under 2yrs).
The games? Diablo 3, minecraft (if I don't go play it in the browser -.-), and a few other "non online" games (steam bought games).
I have and can play WoW at max settings, I could even play Star Wars: TOR at max settings and never had/get this issue.
I also try to stay up to date on drivers (updated video today when D3 pointed out it was not so).
Any suggestions to try to get this issue under control?

Just wanted to add: When playing D3 in full screen mode, the screen with flash blink to black and then the laptop turns off.
I lowered all the settings and put it in window mode and instead the screen flashed to a bunch of vertical grey bars. There was a sound, but I'm not sure if that was due to the game's sound freezing on a tone. I had to hard reset the laptop, it did not power down on it's own.

And dxdiag in next post, i guess it makes it too long for this one?

or mayby not, it keeps erroring me when i post it. ill take take screen pics of it >.>

Edited, May 15th 2012 9:40pm by Sandinmygum

Even zoomed in, I can't see the graphics card model fully. is that an ATI 5860 or a 5840?

The model number you gave doesn't have enough info for me to conclusivly identify the machine. is it a G73Jh-A1? a G73Jh-X1?

if you can, use alt+printscreen to take a screenshot of just the dirextX window and upload that.

First step i'd do is go see if there is an updated chipset driver from the Asus you should head to Asus next to update all the other drivers, but mainly I'm concerned about the chipset driver.

If that doesn't do the trick, you'll want to check the log files after a crash to see what happened. to access those, go to control panel, then administrative tools and event viewer. Look under windows logs for system logs and application logs for crash errors that occur at the exact moment the crash took place. if you find any of those, post them here. There should be some already.

That laptop, all of the potential models, should have enough horsepower in theory to play those games. ATI cards are notorious for driver destabilization, and they are a pain in the ass to fix compared to their nvidia counterparts, so it could very well be that your driver crapped out and needs to be fully uninstalled, cleaned, registry purged , and rebuilt from scratch. It could also be a heat issue. check any fans for intake issues. also download speedfan and run it to see if your video card temperatures at idle are running high. 15 months is plenty of time for the heat pipe on those laptops to be clogged if you aren't blowing it out with an air can regularily.

given that minecraft and steam games are affected, it might also not be video. Minecraft in particular requires java and microsoft .net. Update to .net 4.whatever via windows update under the optional updates if you haven't already, get java from java.com. DirectX is a factor but it should be updated under windows update now.

You could also be dealing with a faulty computer ram chip.

Seems like los of people are experiancing crashing on minecraft and ATI cards, so it may be driver just doesn't ike it at the moment. Some things to try in there too. http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/823684-minecraft-crashes-and-displays-your-display-driver-has-stopped-responding-but-has-sucessfully-recovered/

Was there a stop error code of any sort (0x000xxx etc.) with those errors?

Kernel power 41 by itself can be several things, but 41 (63) specific on an ATI machine may be related to an audio driver conflict, as seen in this thread:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f299/solved-kernel-power-41-63-error-434613.html

Check your device manager for extra audio things that shouldn't be there, disable any extras one at a time and try launching games and see if crashing occurs.

If that doesn't do the trick, it may truely be a hardware power issue. possibly a failing power brick to the laptop that isn't delivering as much electricity as it is rated for the 3D accelerator, posssibly a bad voltage regulator on the motherboard. If it does the same thing just on battery and it isn't the audio issue, you're probably looking at something wrong with the core OS load, or a bad voltage regulator.

edit: also, consider purchasing a copy of a program called snagit for taking screenshots.

Edited, May 16th 2012 7:14am by Kaolian

So i did the audio disable as suggested in that forum. The one I disabled was the one that my comp seems to use. D3 is being used in all of this. I logged in and played 12min (timed it) and it crashed. Not turn off crash, but it did "grey" screen (bunch of vertical grey bars). Turned off, waited a few min, turned on and went into safe mode. Went and checked logs for the crash.



The next entry is a critical and all it informs is that the computer was shut down wrong.

So I restarted, normal mode, enabled and disabled the other audio. Booted up game, and wasn't even able to get all the way in before the screen went grey. However, this time it snapped back so I quickly alt-tabed out and managed to get device manager open to close D3. My screen right now has a bunch of pixel flicking going on and off.

Opened event viewer, 1st error is a amdkmdap error:



I googled it, but this pixel flicking is getting annoying so I'm going to restart here and see what I can find.

I updated one audio (Realtek) but have been unable to get the AMD Audio one to update (the version mines is, is not the current one). So I'll be trying to do so tonight and hope all will be good.


Here is a pic of the pixel issue that is now showing up:



Would/could audio cause that?


I know how to play with my toys, not fix them lol. I do thank you Kao for the help thus far.

If you have a spare laptop hard drive laying around somewhere, it might be a good idea to try a windows reinstallation and see if that fixes it. Your load may be 100% fine, so installing on a second hard drive would let you know right away if the load is good, or if its the power.

Chances are, if it is power, it's going to be the voltage regulator on the motherboard itself. If your laptop is under warranty, send it in for RMA. If it isn't, it is possible to either replace the motherboard, or if your soldering and diagnostic skills are up for it, replace the power module, voltage regulator and any capacitors that look bad. It looks like the motherboards are available, but there are several different variants, and they run in price from $150 to $300 ish, all from vendors i've never heared of before. The power module, voltage regulator and everything else is on the motherboard, the audio system is on its own daughter card, but the audio chipset is on the board itself.

It could possibly be the power brick, but that is rare. only way to tell is buy a new one and see if that fixes it unfortunatly. Basically the internals of that particular laptop are very close to the design of the internals used in the Dell E6500-E6520 series laptops, and thye use several common components, including a very similar power brick design (asus designed the Dell laptop internals for those particular models) and one thing about the Dells, is that the power bricks last forever and are usually either working, or smouldering piles of plastic when they do fail. I'd expect something similar from the Asus one since they designed them both.

That particular laptop is one of the few out there at the moment that actually have a removable video "chip" so you could theoretically upgrade the video card someday for at least one or maybe two generations. That alone might make it worth saving, but the voltage regulator is in a wierd place on that particular model, and its only going to be replaceable if you have very precise soldering skills or access to an electrical board soldiering robot of some sort.

Thats the one good thing about power related issues. usually their failures on a board are very noticable.

Yes.

And I watched a video on how to take this bad boy apart. I'm so not doing it -.-
I found some info while looking on a How to take a part, and found my GPU could be hover heating. I air blow mine fans, and pop a lower cover off to get at a good angle to do so (and to blow dust out, not into the pc) at least once a month. One thing I do not do is blow air in while the PC is on. A site suggested doing so in the GPU's air flow system. I did and was able to play some D3 for an hour or so with no issues.

Getting to the board to see about any kind of burning or heat issues is more for a job by someone with way more skill than me.