Hey everyone.

Recently, when playing games, I have encountered a problem where my computer shuts off when I play such graphically intensive games such as Day of Defeat:Source, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and CounterStrike:Source.

I have an alienware laptop, so I looked at the website, and it gave me hints as to what the problem could be.

The first thing I tried was of course, cleaning out the fans. I did all that I was instructed to do, and I got a good amount of dust out of the system. I turned it back on, tried to play Half-Life 2:Eisode1, and after a little bit of playing, thinking it would be okay, it shutdown on me again.

Then I saw something about the AGP bus speed. I talked to a representative and found that this is basically just considered overclocking. I have heard about it, but I am not too familiar with it. I understand the basics behind it (getting more gain out of your system without spending money on better equipment), but I also realize there is a risk when doing this.

Here are my specs:
-Intel® Pentium® 4 530J Desktop Processor w/ HT Technology 3.0GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB Cache
Windows XP Service Pack 2
-512MB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz 2 x 256MB
-Area-51m 7700 NVIDIA GeForce™ Go 6800 with 256MB of DDR3 memory
(If you need more information, please let me know.)

So of course, I thought that this was good enough to run my games, but apparently, I may need to overclock my video card a little, (or buy a newer one) to prevent this from happening.

Does anyone have any ideas? And thank you SO much in advance for any help.

Anyone have any ideas?


I really dont think overclocking will help... but something is up. Everything was fine until recently.

Overclocking would just draw more heat and on the surface that appears to be the problem to begin with.

So you were able to play these same games before without problems?

Are you playing on the battery or AC adapter? Have you tried both?

Any new hardware or software? What happens exactly? Are you able to play for some time?

Does the laptop just power off? Do you notice any major heat? (probably on the bottom of the laptop)



http://www.alienware.com/product_det..._features.aspx

Ok i have something that may help it happened to me before

When you were playing Halflife or CounterStrike Source Were you playing with the laptop sitting on say a table or something or was it on your lap when you were using it

If it was on your lap Then
Placing the laptop on your lap blocks the fan from extruding the heat from the laptop which means that basiclly it will jsut continue to get hotter until it shuts you down

Now the other thing that could of happened is your computer may be too low to run Halflife As halflife and CS Source Recommends 512 mb of ram for both games (Half life needs extra because of graphics)


Also Any game Produced by Valve or Steam Or Any other names they use has been sown to use up alot of computer usage and makes the computers work faster (Now my computer never over heats and i have 2 basic fans and a big one in the back but when i play halflife it tends too get hot after about an hour or two) now with a laptop it has 1 tiny fan so basiclly the laptop will overheat much faster

I hope this helps