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PC shuts off while gaming?
JusticeforPluto
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, my dad's laptop recently began to shut down while he playing games. Specifically, Napoleon Total War and only NTW.
It's been a while since he played the game, but he's put hundreds of hours on Empire Total War, Napoleon Total War, and Shogun 2: Total War without issue.
For those of you not familiar with the Total War Series, Empire was before Napoleon and is graphically very similar. Shogun 2 came after Napoleon and is a more demanding game. He sets everything on low in all games and does not play the battles, just the campaign map.
Looking on line, the most common source of this problem seems to be overheating. However, his laptop seems fine temperature wise after it shuts down, combined with the fact that neither the similar or more demanding games in the series do this makes me suspicious of this.
So, what I need is:
1: A way to measure the temp of my dad's pc to completely rule out/confirm overheating as the cause. (also, an idea on how hot is too hot)
2: Other ideas on what is causing this issue.
3: Ways to resolve said issues.
It's been a while since he played the game, but he's put hundreds of hours on Empire Total War, Napoleon Total War, and Shogun 2: Total War without issue.
For those of you not familiar with the Total War Series, Empire was before Napoleon and is graphically very similar. Shogun 2 came after Napoleon and is a more demanding game. He sets everything on low in all games and does not play the battles, just the campaign map.
Looking on line, the most common source of this problem seems to be overheating. However, his laptop seems fine temperature wise after it shuts down, combined with the fact that neither the similar or more demanding games in the series do this makes me suspicious of this.
So, what I need is:
1: A way to measure the temp of my dad's pc to completely rule out/confirm overheating as the cause. (also, an idea on how hot is too hot)
2: Other ideas on what is causing this issue.
3: Ways to resolve said issues.
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If you'd prefer not to wait for a software suggestion, you could try taking the case apart and blowing the dust out of it. It's entirely possible that a fan has failed or is too stuffed to work efficiently. That would more likely fit if it was shutting down for all games, but for the ease of removing a few screws (your mileage may vary) it might be worth your time to explore...
Good luck!
HWmonitor and Realtemp are the two programs that I usually see recommended for temperature monitoring.
Depending on the laptop there may or may not be a discrete GPU, but if there is you will want to check temps for both the GPU and the CPU. In general you would like to see temps for you CPU stay below 60°C or so, and temps for the GPU to stay below 80°C or so. That being said you shouldn't see any safety shutdowns until you hit +90°C for the CPU and like +100°C for the GPU. Exact cutoff temps will vary but if you are getting up into those ranges it wouldn't surprise me if that was it.
Just to be clear the way your laptop feels on the outside of the case doesn't really tell you a whole lot. There's a lot of insulation and other crap inbetween the case and the places where you actually care about the temperatures.
Temp checking is always a good idea, but you'll probably want to start with the event logs. They will hopefully tell you what is happening to cause the shutdowns. Also if you are getting a blue screen (screen flashes to blue background with white text before shutdown) you can change some settings around to make that screen stay up before the auto reboot and it should have relevant codes for you to google for more information.
It is odd that only does it for 1 game and not the other 2. Has he been able to play like 2 hours straight on Shogun 2 and can only get 20 minutes out of NTW?
It might be different, but I had an old laptop that would die because of a bad battery. It would work fine and have no issues, but if the computer was stressed above a certain point it would screw up the power supply from the battery and trick it into thinking of a power surge of sorts and shut down.
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Follow up question: does the machine quit working if you run the game in windowed mode?
I would canned air it occasionally, but this was the first time I cracked that guy open to do it. I don't know how open you are to do that, but it was quite a difference. Also I got one of those cheap laptop cooling mats after. May not be needed, but I've spent $12 in worse ways.
Mine may have been worse off because it's gone on deployments and such, but it might help.
Event logs are pretty simple. This is a rundown for windows xp, but it should be fairly similar for any version of windows. Basically you go to control panel, then perfomance and maintance (or system and security for newer versions of windows), then administrative tools, then event viewer (or if you don't see it you can go to computer management and then event viewer). Alternatively you can probably just search for event viewer in the start menu and click the shortcut.
Once you have even viewer open you will see a list of a bunch of things. You basically scroll down until you find something that occured around the same time as a power shutdown and you look at the details to see what it says. The details probably wont make sense but it will at least give you some items to google to find out what's going on. You may find that the only event logged is a recovery from an unexpected shutdown, which means whatever caused the crash didn't log any problems. In which case you'll probably have to do some manual troubleshooting or start looking for a new laptop.