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Answer» I have the Gateway 7330Z notebook w/ 480 MB of RAM and the Intel Pentium 4
processor. I think all of the video and sound cards are whatever came standard with my notebook.
As far as i know, i have all of the required DRIVERS and up to date
ActiveX. I have been having problems playing some of the new games i recently
bought (Guild Wars, Half-Life 2, and F.E.A.R.) When i play, the fan in the back
sounds like its being overworked and the bottom of my computer gets a little
hot. After about 20 mins to a half hour of playing these games, my screen just
turns white and has no response whatsoever. I have to turn it off manually. One in awhile i'll have the same thing happen when i'm playing very basic 2D games online or when i'm running a simple virus scan or installing something.
I know the basics about computers and i'm currently majoring in computer science, but i honestly know nothing about troubleshooting these types of things. I was thinking about having more RAM installed on my computer, but i wasnt sure if
that would completely solve my problem or be a total waste of my money. Any advice
you have regarding my problem will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I don't think more memory is going to stop your computer from crashing.
From what you describe it sounds like a heat problem. Not sure what is to be done with that for a LAPTOP, in a desktop it would be cake to slap in a few case fans, etc...
There are these little laptop platforms with fans and such built in that claim to keep your laptop cooler when you are running heavy apps, but I don't know much about those either.
Guess I am not alot of help in actually solving your problem But I can pretty much assure you that more memory is not likely the fix.Thanks a lot for the advice. Although i'm not sure what i'm going to be able to do, at least i know not to waste my money in buying more RAM.
Right now i'm researching those laptop cooling pads that you were talking about. I'm not sure if that will solve my problems either, but at least they're relatively cheap.
I was just hoping that i didnt waste my money in buying all of these games, but i guess we'll see what happens.
Thanks againGames are never a waste of money!
Keep checking back, other, wiser, people may reply with other things to try.lol well they're a waste of money if i can only play them in 10 minute increments, but otherwise i completely agree.
i could pretty much use any advice possible though, i think i might get one of these cooling pads (they're going for only about $10 on ebay and i'm hoping the the low price isnt related to its performance) unless someones comes up with the miracle solution that i desparately need.
thanks againIf it is still under warranty that would be an opportune time to use t.
If not, make sure it is as dust free inside as a laptop can be.
The fan itself may have problems, if it has not always been this way. How long have you owned this machine. When using it are you on a hard surface (good) vs. a soft surface which molds to the bottom and effectively limits the cooling ducts?Have you done any overclocking?Could be the fan as suggested, with 480 of ram I would suggest when you have the free cash to upgrade to 1gb and if you have the spare cash invest in a external hard drive for your computer, you can get 250gb's for so cheap now.
The white screen thing really is odd.
Quote Could be the fan as suggested, with 480 of ram I would suggest when you have the free cash [highlight]to upgrade to 1gb [/highlight]and if you have the spare cash invest in a external hard drive for your computer, you can get 250gb's for so cheap now.
The white screen thing really is odd.
More RAM has NOTHING to do with this problem.wow thanks for all of the suggestions. well i'm not quite sure what overclocking is, but if any of you guys have information on that, that would be great.
also, i have owned my computer for about a year and a half now, but i havent really done much with it other than school work and regular internet browsing. i'm not sure if it is under warranty still or not, but i'll be sure to check that when i go home tomorrow.
i have also heard that using the laptop on a soft surface can cause air flow problems. about half the time i'm playing on a hard surface, and half the time i'm using it on my lap or bed, but i get the same problems regardless of where i'm playing. that being said, i would probably have to say that i have had the white screen problem many more times while using the computer on my lap.
do any of you think that buying a laptop cooling pad will help at all, because that was my current idea thanks to Serrik.
thanks for all of the POSTS guys, its been a real helpThe only way I could think low RAM could cause the problem is, if it means overusage of the paging file causing the HARDDRIVE to cause heat? But then you should get the problem outside of the games as well. How much disk access is there in games?
You don't know what overclocking is? What do they teach you at your computer science course...i'm not too sure how to find that out, but i do get the same problem once in awhile when i'm not playing games (lenghty installs and virus scans mainly)and after looking at a lot of posts on here....i have no idea what they're teaching me at school.
haha jk....mainly all ive taken is a couple programming courses and a principles of CS class so farHard to overclock a laptop!i just bought one of those laptop cooling pads today at bestbuy. so far, it has been working wonders. ive been playing games all day while my girlfriend is at work (the usual), and havent had a single problem yet. hopefully i didnt SPEAK too soon though.
thanks for all of the great posts
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