J
JDKray
Hi,
As I stated in the subject line, I have a number of questions I need help with.
QUESTION 1:
My laptop has been shutting down by itself and without warning while I've tried to play games, which have worked completely fine in the past. I would say that even less than a year ago, maybe up to 10 months ago, everything was working fine. But starting a few months ago, say October or November, I've noticed that some games that used to run fine would shut down my PC after just a few minutes of playing. It was no longer able to make it to an hour, even. In one instance, me attempt at converting a long video file with a converter program also caused my laptop to shut down.
Around this time I've also noticed that some programs that used to work properly before wouldn't even start up anymore, such as ShadowExplorer and a launcher for one of the games that I have.
A couple years ago I disabled automatic updates on my PC since they caused windows to start up a lot slower than before. Once I disabled the updates, windows seemed to start up a lot better than before. After the more recent issues that I explained above, I decided to finally run the updates again to see if it would help. Fortunately, it did fix the problems I had with those programs, which are now working fine. I was also hoping that whatever the updates were able to fix could also transfer on over to my games, although I haven't decided to try them out until just last night. But now, however, I don't think that whatever was missing before the updates were installed was causing the issue with my games, and that it is indeed an overheating issue.
I should mention that recently I found and downloaded SpeedFan, which tells me the temperatures of my laptop. The program monitors the temperatures of four devices: My GPU, HD0, Core0, and Core1. I've noticed that the GPU temperature is now almost always above 60, sometimes going as high as 80 - 85 while I'm just watching a video online or have the Windows Media Player running. The Core0 and Core1 are also always high, running at around 60+ each. The HD0 is the only one that always runs at a regular temperature, which is currently at 38.
Last night, while attempting to play the game, the GPU temperature eventually reached 90, and a couple minutes later, went all the way up to 100, even up to 105. A minute or two later, my PC shut down. I tried it again later, and the game ran for a longer amount the second time, it ended up shutting down again.
Is SpeedFan fully reliable and accurate? If so, then it's definitely an overheating issue, isn't it?
QUESTION 2:
After shutting down for the second time, I've noticed that some of the icons on my taskbar and Start menu that were usually there were no longer appearing, so I tried running a System restore to see if that could fix that more minor issue. However, the restore didn't complete successfully and I got this error message:
"System Restore did not complete successfully. Your computer's system files and settings were not changed.
Details:
System Restore failed while restoring the registry from the restore point.
The restore point was damaged or was deleted during the restore."
It then told me that I could try Restore again with a different restore point (which I did), but that didn't work either and I received the same error message. What can I do about this?
QUESTION 3:
My laptop battery has been dying (or is dead) for a while now, and I can no longer run my laptop without having the charger plugged in. If I unplug it, the laptop shuts down after just four minutes or so, even if the battery starts out at a 100% charge, like it says it does.
So my questions about this are:
A.) Our recent electricity bill has been higher than usual. Does charging a dead or dying battery take up more energy than usual and could that be causing the rise in the bill? Or is that unrelated? We moved to our new apartment half a year ago and since then our bill has been higher (we're not doing anything differently here than we did in our old apartment), but I want to make sure that it's not the laptop or its dying battery that's contributing to that.
B.) Could a dead or dying battery cause a laptop to overheat? I tried to try out my game again without the charger plugged in but, as I said earlier, it shut down after just a couple minutes after entering the game (while the GPU temp was only at 78), so I couldn't test it out like I wanted to. Once I plugged the charger back in and turned my laptop back on, the battery was only at 3%... yet just a couple minutes later it was back at 100%... However after that, I tried my game again and while I was in it and my GPU was up at around 90 degrees, I unplugged the charger again quickly to see if it would cause any drastic changes in temperature. but it didn't. or perhaps I didn't give it enough time to do so. I don't know.
Here's my System Information as copied from the System Information window:
OS Name: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version: 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description: Not Available
OS Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
System Name: OWNER-PC
System Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
System Model: *
System Type: x64-based PC
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz, 2133 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date: TOSHIBA 1.50, 12/02/2010
SMBIOS Version: 2.6
Windows Directory: C:\windows
System Directory: C:\windows\system32
Boot Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale: Canada
Hardware Abstraction Layer: Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name: Owner-PC\Owner
Time Zone: Pacific Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory: 3.86 GB
Available Physical Memory: 1.54 GB
Total Virtual Memory: 7.73 GB
Available Virtual Memory: 5.58 GB
Page File Space: 3.86 GB
Page File: C:\pagefile.sys
I should admit that I am not very skilled with computer technicalities as I only ever use laptops for the usual internet browsing and that kind of stuff. So I hope I was able to provide enough helpful information in an attempt to receive legitimate advice.
So, yes, I hope I can get some help, answers, or advice in regards to my questions, and I would like to thank and extend my appreciation to everyone who will end up reading this entire post and attempt to give advice, in advance.
Thank you.
Continue reading...
As I stated in the subject line, I have a number of questions I need help with.
QUESTION 1:
My laptop has been shutting down by itself and without warning while I've tried to play games, which have worked completely fine in the past. I would say that even less than a year ago, maybe up to 10 months ago, everything was working fine. But starting a few months ago, say October or November, I've noticed that some games that used to run fine would shut down my PC after just a few minutes of playing. It was no longer able to make it to an hour, even. In one instance, me attempt at converting a long video file with a converter program also caused my laptop to shut down.
Around this time I've also noticed that some programs that used to work properly before wouldn't even start up anymore, such as ShadowExplorer and a launcher for one of the games that I have.
A couple years ago I disabled automatic updates on my PC since they caused windows to start up a lot slower than before. Once I disabled the updates, windows seemed to start up a lot better than before. After the more recent issues that I explained above, I decided to finally run the updates again to see if it would help. Fortunately, it did fix the problems I had with those programs, which are now working fine. I was also hoping that whatever the updates were able to fix could also transfer on over to my games, although I haven't decided to try them out until just last night. But now, however, I don't think that whatever was missing before the updates were installed was causing the issue with my games, and that it is indeed an overheating issue.
I should mention that recently I found and downloaded SpeedFan, which tells me the temperatures of my laptop. The program monitors the temperatures of four devices: My GPU, HD0, Core0, and Core1. I've noticed that the GPU temperature is now almost always above 60, sometimes going as high as 80 - 85 while I'm just watching a video online or have the Windows Media Player running. The Core0 and Core1 are also always high, running at around 60+ each. The HD0 is the only one that always runs at a regular temperature, which is currently at 38.
Last night, while attempting to play the game, the GPU temperature eventually reached 90, and a couple minutes later, went all the way up to 100, even up to 105. A minute or two later, my PC shut down. I tried it again later, and the game ran for a longer amount the second time, it ended up shutting down again.
Is SpeedFan fully reliable and accurate? If so, then it's definitely an overheating issue, isn't it?
QUESTION 2:
After shutting down for the second time, I've noticed that some of the icons on my taskbar and Start menu that were usually there were no longer appearing, so I tried running a System restore to see if that could fix that more minor issue. However, the restore didn't complete successfully and I got this error message:
"System Restore did not complete successfully. Your computer's system files and settings were not changed.
Details:
System Restore failed while restoring the registry from the restore point.
The restore point was damaged or was deleted during the restore."
It then told me that I could try Restore again with a different restore point (which I did), but that didn't work either and I received the same error message. What can I do about this?
QUESTION 3:
My laptop battery has been dying (or is dead) for a while now, and I can no longer run my laptop without having the charger plugged in. If I unplug it, the laptop shuts down after just four minutes or so, even if the battery starts out at a 100% charge, like it says it does.
So my questions about this are:
A.) Our recent electricity bill has been higher than usual. Does charging a dead or dying battery take up more energy than usual and could that be causing the rise in the bill? Or is that unrelated? We moved to our new apartment half a year ago and since then our bill has been higher (we're not doing anything differently here than we did in our old apartment), but I want to make sure that it's not the laptop or its dying battery that's contributing to that.
B.) Could a dead or dying battery cause a laptop to overheat? I tried to try out my game again without the charger plugged in but, as I said earlier, it shut down after just a couple minutes after entering the game (while the GPU temp was only at 78), so I couldn't test it out like I wanted to. Once I plugged the charger back in and turned my laptop back on, the battery was only at 3%... yet just a couple minutes later it was back at 100%... However after that, I tried my game again and while I was in it and my GPU was up at around 90 degrees, I unplugged the charger again quickly to see if it would cause any drastic changes in temperature. but it didn't. or perhaps I didn't give it enough time to do so. I don't know.
Here's my System Information as copied from the System Information window:
OS Name: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version: 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description: Not Available
OS Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
System Name: OWNER-PC
System Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
System Model: *
System Type: x64-based PC
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 330 @ 2.13GHz, 2133 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date: TOSHIBA 1.50, 12/02/2010
SMBIOS Version: 2.6
Windows Directory: C:\windows
System Directory: C:\windows\system32
Boot Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale: Canada
Hardware Abstraction Layer: Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name: Owner-PC\Owner
Time Zone: Pacific Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory: 3.86 GB
Available Physical Memory: 1.54 GB
Total Virtual Memory: 7.73 GB
Available Virtual Memory: 5.58 GB
Page File Space: 3.86 GB
Page File: C:\pagefile.sys
I should admit that I am not very skilled with computer technicalities as I only ever use laptops for the usual internet browsing and that kind of stuff. So I hope I was able to provide enough helpful information in an attempt to receive legitimate advice.
So, yes, I hope I can get some help, answers, or advice in regards to my questions, and I would like to thank and extend my appreciation to everyone who will end up reading this entire post and attempt to give advice, in advance.
Thank you.
Continue reading...