Not again...

[Mirewen]

I was on my computer last night when all of the sudden the screen turned off (you know when you turn off your television and the screen kinda collapses on itself?) It turned back on and I got an error message about “Your –insert another word for video card here- has stopped working but has corrected itself and is working again” Not the exact wording but you get the jist. It is a laptop by the way.

I’m slightly freaked out because of this…

http://www.qcdn.org/ffxi/showthread.php?t=52354

I’ve already had a computer bite the dust from what appears to be a similar problem. Can anyone have any light they could shed on why my computer would do that?

Also, it seems to be taking longer and longer to shut down, it looks like it is shutting down numerous programs before finally turning off no matter how many I have running. The other day I got on just to check my email then turned it off and it took about 3-4 minutes (the screen flashes a bit while it looks like it’s priming itself to shut down, almost as if I’m about to get the “This program has stopped working” Task Manager screen).

 

[Jinxy]

Scan for Virus/spyware. Ad-Aware or Spybot for spyware, TrendMicro online scanner for virus...or possibly AVG. Both are free, your choice.
Google exact error code you got and put it in "" example: "irq_not_less_or_equal"
Goto Start, select run, type in msconfig and hit enter. Pick the startup tab and uncheck any box of anything not needed to load at startup.
Next defrag your hard drive.
If you already have a virus scanner or spyware program installed...reinstall it.

In a nutshell what you just did with the above is sped your computer up and made it not load unnessessary programs. Which will speed up boot and shutdown. Reinstalling scanners will make sure a file didn't get corrupted for them and causing problems. Defragging hard drive puts things in order on hard drive...speeding things up too. The scan for virus/spyware is self explanatory.

The computer auto rebooting is because windows is set by default to reboot on an error and not give you a blue screen error (BSOD). You can change an option to force a bluescreen so you can troubleshoot what went wrong. Control Panel-->System-->Advanced Tab-->Startup and Recover Settings. You will see an option to Auto Reboot, uncheck it.

If you are still having problems after doing the above, let us know.

 

[Chasym]

This is happening because of the video driver. Ive seen it many times, Update your driver. You may have to go through a few before the problem resolves but this will fix it.

 

[Jinxy]

I didn't read the link provided in his post at first...

Is this the same computer as the one you had problems with in last post?
If not the same one, then still try out my suggestions.

Yes updating driver is not a bad idea, but I wouldn't put your money on it. Say it is a driver failure, what caused that failure. The process above will help you narrow down possibilities of what your problem is, there is never a "sure fix".

 

[Mistra]

Biggest thing to note is that software doesn't just fail unless there's a reason for it (granted it's professional software that has had no issues previously).

We're facing a variable now that is causing the situation, and to troubleshoot, we're going to have to look at several things to figure out what the variable is. Essentially we're faced with: X = TS + PS (TS = Troubleshooting / PS = Problem Solving)

First, I'd say do exactly what the first reply offered, run an extended virus scan. If that does not produce any leads, we move to the next sequence in the ephemeral flow-chart and attempt updating the driver. Because I severely doubt it's the driver, next we'll do a MeMtest (downloadable... there are instructions on how to make the CD). You'll have to set the bios to start up via CD Rom initially, but that's rather easy also, and you seem computer savvy enough. If not, Mire send me a pm and we'll talk.

Anyhow, if the MeMTest doesn't produce any hits, still don't panic. I highly doubt the video card is failing, but rather I think your hard drive may have something do with it given the information. A driver download may actually fix that, now that I think about it.

In any event, random things can happen and if it affects software, often times it's going to be a data problem, which is primarily caused by the hard drive or the RAM since both have cached memory (even though these days we have extensive amounts of RAM, most pc's still use a slight bit of Vram...)

Anyways, at most we'll have to do a backup of your software and just do a clean installation of Windows. May be a pain, but it's better than buying a new unit when you don't need to. If you need help with any of this, let me know.

 

[Mirewen]

Thank you for the responses. I'll try everything (I was going to just update the vid.)

And no Jinx, it's a new computer. The other one had to be trashed.