Greetings
I'm having two issues with my Alienware Area 51-m 7700
1) Video - randomly, my screen will freeze up and the entire screen will be filled with vertical bars of varying widths. Sometimes they're red and black, sometimes grey and black. This has happened about 4 times now. The video card is the ATI mobility x800 and I've updated the drivers.
If I need to replace the card, that's fine...any suggestions on where I can buy one?
2) Temps. - The temperature of my system has always been high and it seems to creep up every month or so. At idle, notebook hardware control is saying my CPU is at 117 F and the HD is at 120 F. That's pretty hot for idle, in my opinion. When I attempt to play games, it goes up to 140 for the CPU, so I really can't play games on it anymore which is why I bought the laptop in the first place.
I've used compressed air to clean dust out of the fans and from the system in general. I've regreased the CPU and GPU with Arctic silver about 2 months ago. The new grease helped for about a week and dusting really only buys me about an hour of "normal" temps.
I have a feeling the high temps are related to the display problems.
Any suggestions on what else I can try? Would replacing the fans make any difference?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
I'm having two issues with my Alienware Area 51-m 7700
1) Video - randomly, my screen will freeze up and the entire screen will be filled with vertical bars of varying widths. Sometimes they're red and black, sometimes grey and black. This has happened about 4 times now. The video card is the ATI mobility x800 and I've updated the drivers.
If I need to replace the card, that's fine...any suggestions on where I can buy one?
2) Temps. - The temperature of my system has always been high and it seems to creep up every month or so. At idle, notebook hardware control is saying my CPU is at 117 F and the HD is at 120 F. That's pretty hot for idle, in my opinion. When I attempt to play games, it goes up to 140 for the CPU, so I really can't play games on it anymore which is why I bought the laptop in the first place.
I've used compressed air to clean dust out of the fans and from the system in general. I've regreased the CPU and GPU with Arctic silver about 2 months ago. The new grease helped for about a week and dusting really only buys me about an hour of "normal" temps.
I have a feeling the high temps are related to the display problems.
Any suggestions on what else I can try? Would replacing the fans make any difference?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
