I've already posted on the official tech support forum for SC2, but figured I'd throw this out to you folks in case someone has an idea what is going on. I have a gaming laptop (Gateway P-173XL FX) that I loaded SC2 onto. This laptop is a few years old, but has a GeForce 8800M GTS that runs anything else I play flawlessly (Dawn of War 2, Team Fortress 2, other random FPS and RTS games). After 10 to 20 minutes of SC2, even while paused (but not in menus - paused during a stage/level/challenge) my laptop simply shuts completely down without warning. No graphical or audio issues, nothing - just *poof* and its off.
I've tried several workarounds, including messing with some registry settings and configurations recommended to me. A lot of other folks are seeing this same behavior, but there is no common thread of hardware, OS, settings, or anything. My laptop is not overheating, though the fan is in high gear the same as it is for any gaming. I've turned off Windows 7's "auto-reboot" setting with no change in effect. No other games, applications, or situations have ever caused my laptop to just shut down, but this is 100% repro and is very frustrating! Any ideas?
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Even if other, older games work fine, there's a chance that SC2 is stressing your videocard in ways that the other games don't. I'd recommend trying an extended stress test with Furmark and seeing if you get the same results. Other than that, I'd recommend making sure that all your video card drivers are up to date.
I'll give the stress testing tool a try and see if that has a similar result. I'm not sure about the minidump, but I spent an hour in the event viewer looking for any hint of what is going on and couldn't find anything. My BIOS also doesn't have any settings for auto-shutdown that I could find (my guess being that if the BIOS was trying to protect from overheating perhaps it doesn't notify windows or create an event log).
I managed to fix that exact problem with Alpha Protocol by going into BIOS and setting to reduce voltage to the CPU when the temperature gets too high; you might try looking for that.
Since this is a laptop, I recommend a cooling pad - I thought they were the dumbest thing ever, but I got one for the wife and it keeps her PC from shutting down from heat. They're still dumb..but they also work...sooo..
If you think it isnt a heat issue, if you go into your control panel and open Administrative Tools, select Computer Management, and then click on the Event Viewer.
From there you can see the automated logs that windows spits out...If you look in the application section, it may have an actual error related to your shutdowns. Check the times of the logs against when it last shut down and see if anything stands out.
If windows is recognizing a problem, then chances are it might be in a position to record minidump files if something is 'triggering' this issue. However, usually minidumps are generated on BSOD errors, so if you're actually out-and-out losing power to the laptop one probably won't be generated. In any case, you can do the following to see if you can get one. Windows need to be configured to generate them first:
When the shutdown happens next, after you've set those settings, look in the path you specified for minidump files and see if one was generated. If you can get one, then you can look into that file to see which module/dll is giving you problems. If one doesn't crop up, then chances are your laptop might be experiencing some kind of actual power loss, though what could be triggering it at such a specific and predictable place is beyond me.
Might be the issue you're having.
TNC - Thanks again - I'll try the minidumps tonight as well.
EEP - I'll give the fan control a shot, can't hurt to have it on full. I do have (and use) a cooling pad that keeps the bottom of my lappy pretty well cooled.
Carn - I'm not sure I want to mess with CPU voltages in a laptop, but we'll see how desparate I get if the other solutions don't help .
Thanks all! Now you've made me distracted from work wanting to give these solutions a shot :P.
But seriously, I know we can overcome this! I like the idea of undervolting your gpu and cpu...that could help. Just out of curiosity, try it w/out the battery in as well.
Also, when in doubt, it never hurts to try the memtest built into win7, or a checkdisk. Seeing as you have 4gb of ram, it's possible that you've got a chunk in your higher addresses that is flaking out, and perhaps sc2 is more memory intensive than others, and is freaking that out.
Also, check out prime95, it's a good tool for doing cpu/memory stress tests if the GPU stress tests turn out fine.
Also, i think it's funny that i started googling this problem, and found your forum post, considering i was googling for solutions FOR YOU, and i had not previously been a member of this forum (which is bizarre, given how much of a PA superfreak i am )
Good luck buddy, we'll get this crap working by PAX or bust!
I looked around in my BIOS but couldn't find any options for voltage settings or heat monitoring at all. There are no BIOS updates available for my model laptop either. Also, my NVIDA control panel doesn't have any options for the fan, and the associated driver is from 7/6/2010.
We'll see how it all goes, I'm hoping next time it shuts down (which seems inevitable) I can get some more info from the dump. At that point I can try some more in-depth component testing based on the info I get.
If it is overheating, then doing this should make t take longer to shut down, at least.
Heat: You certainly possible, especially if it's dusty. If you have a gaming laptop, shell out the $20 to get a cooling pad, it's well worth it.
Power: If your power adapter is shoddy, it might not be outputting enough power to run the laptop at full tilt. If it dies again mid game, unplug it, restart, and check the battery. If it's dead (or close to it) then that's probably it.
Hardware damage: Always possible that a capacitor (or several) has blown and things are just wonky now. For that, you better have a warranty...
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Waffen - I've already added the variables that page called, but it has had no effect.
TNC - minidumps are not being captured by this spontaneous shut-down.
Thanks again for the various tips all!
I've been experiencing this issue for about 2 weeks now with Starcraft 2 and I've gotten a work around for my system going. I'm using Windows 7, but it might work for others as well. When you fire up the game, immediately go into the options for graphics and change the game to play in Windowed Full Screen instead of Full screen mode. I did this on my system and I don't get crashes anymore.
Hope it helps someone out!
As the author mentioned, he is pretty confident its not about HEAT. I second that because I did extensive verification that its not overheating that cause the shutdown.
I had Speedfan(which display all temperature sensors in GPU, CPU, HDD etc) and logged the temperatures every 3 sec while playing SC2. When SC2 does its "poof" shutdown, I went back and check the log; highest 94C for GPU and 74C for CPU. This is pretty high. However, consider that it is well below max operating temperature (120C for 8400M and 105C for T8100 cores, checked nvidia and intel site for spec). Also, I tested other graphic-intensive games and they net simlar(some even higher) temperatures without any shutdowns even after 5 hours.
Yes I've done most, if not ALL the proposed solutions (cap framerate, update drivers, register tweaking, BIOS tweaking, raising temp alert threshold etc). I even tested on my desktop's GTX 465. Still "poof" after 30 min of SC2 and at a temperature of only 50C. Even SC2 1.0.3 doesn't solve the problem.
after use my laptop during a year, I begin to give me problems with the blue screen, I have sought all the possible solutions that have idea and nothing has given result, I continue having the same problem. one day i
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