My baby is dying

Hello,

I just got a brand new laptop a few months ago, but now it's dying. I was having intermittent problems with BSOD's, and random freezing of the entire computer (i.e. I'll be playing TF2 and suddenly the image on the screen will freeze and the last half second or so of sound will loop forever. Keyboard and mouse input do nothing, so I'm forced to hard reboot). Sometimes after these freezes, nothing would show up on the computer screen when I powered it on, but then I would just turn it off and turn it back on and it would work.

I tried system restoring many times. Once I actually got a BSOD while Windows was performing the system restore. I also got an error that the system restore didn't work a few times.

Now, when I turn on my computer, nothing happens. I was playing Team Fortress 2 when it froze, so I turned it off with the power button. Now nothing displays on the screen when I turn it on, though.

I install almost nothing on my computer.
I have all the recommended Malware software from this forum. I ran Firefox with NoScript. I don't even use anything like torrents or porn on my new computer because I wanted to keep it pristine. I installed OpenOffice3, Steam, Firefox, and that's basically it.

Please help me save my baby!

 

When playing your game have you checked the graphics card is not overheating which is causing these freezes and crashes.

Please post the specs of your computer and your operating system

 

I run RivaTuner to monitor my GPU temperature. Usually it stays in about the 60's C when I'm playing. Here's the info:
Sager NP5793 Custom Sager Notebook (Built on Clevo M570RU-U / M571RU-U)
- Processor: ~Intel® T9300 45nm "Penryn" Core
- Video Card: nVidia GeForce 9800M GTS 1,024MB
- Ram: ~ 4,096MB DDR2 667 PC2 5300
- Primary Hard Drive: ~ 320GB 7200RPM
- Battery: Smart Li-ion Battery (8-Cell)
- Operating System: ~Windows Vista Home Premium 64-B

 

Have you tried turning the graphics down in the game and see if it lasts a little longer in running in the game, the reason i'm saying this is if it runs longer on a reduced graphics in the game it could be that your graphics card is too hot if it does the same then its looking more as something else causing the problem.

Please post back once you tried this.

 

Well, I would do that but, as I said, when I turn on the computer nothing happens. The power light is on and I see the hard drive light flash a few times, but the display stays completely black.

 

OK, now it finally turns on after I left it off for a while. What could cause this. Is it just the video card overheating? I had it on low settings before, though, and it ran at like 160fps, so I turned the settings up a bit. It seems like my computer should be able to handle fairly high graphics...

 

Is the computer still in warranty?

If so, I would contact the computer company about it as anything you may do hardware-wise will invalidate said warranty.

 

Now that sounds to me that the hard drive is locking out or not fully spinning inside you might have to replace the hard drive.

 

It's still under parts and labor warranty. So should I send it in for hardware repairs? It's pretty new (a few months old) so I'm surprised it's a hardware issue. Also, I'm getting lots of BSOD's, and weird things like errors from Explorer.exe: "Application has generated an exception that could not be handled" on system startup.

Would a repair installation/reformatting help, or does this seem like a hard drive problem?

 

Take it back to the dealer for repair. Don't give them a copout. If you try to fix/repair yourself they may say you've broken the warranty terms.

 

Sounds like you may have gotten a lemon. Did you purchase it from a large retail chain, Circuit City's former competition? Just wondering, family member got a new laptop at a very large electronics chain, had less than a month and the HDD went south for the duration. Checked it first with a linux live cd, no HDD found. Checked the BIOS, no HDD present. It is under warranty and was repaired quickly. If it is under warranty it isn't your problem, save what to do until it is repaired or replace.