Laptop display corrupted, machine locked up

[frozentundra123456]

Hi all, hope someone can help with this problem with my wife's laptop.

While she was using it, the entire screen developed a sort of translucent horizontal line pattern across it. You could see the webpage below the pattern. It was sort of like looking through a set of venetian blinds or something. In addition to that, the computer was totally locked up. Even holding down the power button would not turn it off.

Finally, I took the battery out and put it back in and that solved the problem at least so far. The computer booted normally and the display was then OK.

So my question is, What happened, and is this a symptom that the laptop may totally fail soon?

BTW, forgot to give specs. It is a 4 year old toshiba with some sort of athlon processor and integrated (motherboard?) graphics. It does run hot, even with a cooling pad. Is it possible that it just overheated?

 

[denis280]

Do you know the Temp.did you try cleaning it with a air compressor.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Do you know the Temp.did you try cleaning it with a air compressor.

Don't know the temps. Didn't try to blow it out yet either.

 

[Matt1970]

Sure sounds like overheating to me as well. Blowing it out can save your laptop from an untimely death.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I will have to try to clean it out a bit. My wife gets kind of nervous if I do much to it, or install programs like temperature monitoring ones.

I use afterburner on my desktop to monitor gpu temps. Is there a good one for monitoring cpu temps that is lightweight and does not use a lot of system resources? The laptop is pretty old and slow, so I dont want to install too much.

 

[Matt1970]

I don't think it's your CPU that is overheating. Clean it out as best you can and keep it on a hard surface so you get good airflow. If you do use it on your lap make sure you aren't smothering the air holes on the bottom with your leg.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I don't think it's your CPU that is overheating. Clean it out as best you can and keep it on a hard surface so you get good airflow. If you do use it on your lap make sure you aren't smothering the air holes on the bottom with your leg.

My wife only uses it on a desk on one of those laptop pads with the cooling fans. The problem I think is that I believe it is an athlon processor, basically a desktop processor downclocked and stuffed into a laptop. My next step is to blow a fan directly onto it if the problem keeps recurring. That is what my grandson does with his gaming laptop, an older asus that tends to run really hot when he is gaming.

Edit: my wife uses it mostly to play some online flash city building game, but on my i5 desktop it was using close to 40% cpu, so it is probably maxing out the cpu in the laptop.

 

[Steltek]

It could be your integrated GPU overheating (especially if it is an nVidia chipset, as it sounds like the laptop might be old enough to have one of the defective GPU chipsets in it). Flash does require a significant amount of horsepower, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it could be overheating.

Install Speedfan or HWMonitor to track temps.

 

[Paperlantern]

How long has she had the laptop? Am I to assume this is a laptop that has been working fine for months or even years and this is a new development? Or is this a relatively new laptop?

My guess is it is thermal in nature, possibly spurred on by the heat generated by the processor, but actually overheated the GPU, causing the bizarre graphical anomaly and the subsequent lockup.

There are countless models of laptop that use a fan and heat sink design that generally creates a "lint trap" problem and effectively blocks the airflow exiting the chassis. It probably needs cleaned out, especially if you are running it on a hard surface.

Depending on the model, some are easily accessible and can be cleaned in a few minutes by flipping up the keyboard or through an access panel on the bottom, and others are horrific and require the machine to be almost completely torn down to access the fan.

There are plenty of how to's out there though, google your laptop model, and "teardown guide" to see if you can find pictures of what you would be getting into, and decide before hand if you can do it.