HI there!
About a year and a half ago I purchased a Gateway P-6831 and have been using it roughly as a desktop replacement. I have not upgraded any parts of the hardware. I've reformatted on a number of different occasions in the attempt to keep things clean (but I am not good with computer anyway... so for the most part I am not aware of any software changes that I have made that would have adversely affected my computer). I've all many of games and other demanding programs in the past (Crysis, Mass Effect 2, Photoshop, Cubase) without any real incident.
Anyhow, a couple weeks ago, the display driver showed signs of being unstable. It first crashed when I was watching an avi file on VLC media player (something that should not have been a problem). I restarted and the problem seemed to go away. But it has been crashing more frequently during the last two weeks and quite inconsistently. It has crashed after being on for awhile and nothing nothing anything particularly demanding, crashed while handling graphically demanding tasks, crashed while not handling graphically demanding tasks and even crashing before Windows (Vista) has finished booting up. The length of time which it has taken to crash has shrunk to the point that I rarely get past the start up screen.
More specifically when crashing, first everything will freeze for a short while. Then either it will resume where it left off or restart. If it resumes, I get the message that the display driver stopped responding temporarily (I have a 8800 GTS and I am currently using the driver released with the laptop (I know its old and I'll get to explaining that). If it does not resume, I get a the blue screen of death telling me roughly the same thing before it shuts down. I originally had the current release drivers from Nvidia installed when the problem first showed up (I installed the months back however). I tried uninstalling that driver and installing the original driver. That did not work. I tried reformatting (because that works without fail (lol, i am not good with computer)). But the problem persisted. It is very difficult using my laptop at the moment but every so often it is possible for me to log on.
I noticed in general that within the last two weeks, the video performance seemed to be down from what it used to be. Any video that I watched would clip and slow down. I don't have a heat pad for the laptop but I've always either kept it somewhere or propped up (overheating issue maybe?).
I searched for every message on this forum containing P-6831 and did not anything very similar to this problem. However I noticed in general that the advice being given out seemed to be excellent on here (before I started having this problem, I almost felt well educated enough by the guides on here to upgrade my laptop, which is something I would not have had the courage to do otherwise).
I would be greatly appreciative if anyone could give me some advice into the matter. Perhaps you've something like this before or you have a general idea of how to fix it? Also, I know the observations that I've made about the problem are probably not as helpful as they could be. Therefore, I was hoping that someone could guide in the right direction as far as troubleshooting is concerned - where to find software that will display internal temperatures (if there is an overheating problem), good software for finding and killing viruses or any other cancer growing on my hard drive and maybe some input as concerning what to look for when checking to see if all the physical components are in the right shape (if I open up the laptop and see that graphics card has a whole melted through it or some odd thing).
Thank you for even reading this giant message. Being that this is my first post, I can safely make the guess that every post from here on out will be smaller by comparison.
About a year and a half ago I purchased a Gateway P-6831 and have been using it roughly as a desktop replacement. I have not upgraded any parts of the hardware. I've reformatted on a number of different occasions in the attempt to keep things clean (but I am not good with computer anyway... so for the most part I am not aware of any software changes that I have made that would have adversely affected my computer). I've all many of games and other demanding programs in the past (Crysis, Mass Effect 2, Photoshop, Cubase) without any real incident.
Anyhow, a couple weeks ago, the display driver showed signs of being unstable. It first crashed when I was watching an avi file on VLC media player (something that should not have been a problem). I restarted and the problem seemed to go away. But it has been crashing more frequently during the last two weeks and quite inconsistently. It has crashed after being on for awhile and nothing nothing anything particularly demanding, crashed while handling graphically demanding tasks, crashed while not handling graphically demanding tasks and even crashing before Windows (Vista) has finished booting up. The length of time which it has taken to crash has shrunk to the point that I rarely get past the start up screen.
More specifically when crashing, first everything will freeze for a short while. Then either it will resume where it left off or restart. If it resumes, I get the message that the display driver stopped responding temporarily (I have a 8800 GTS and I am currently using the driver released with the laptop (I know its old and I'll get to explaining that). If it does not resume, I get a the blue screen of death telling me roughly the same thing before it shuts down. I originally had the current release drivers from Nvidia installed when the problem first showed up (I installed the months back however). I tried uninstalling that driver and installing the original driver. That did not work. I tried reformatting (because that works without fail (lol, i am not good with computer)). But the problem persisted. It is very difficult using my laptop at the moment but every so often it is possible for me to log on.
I noticed in general that within the last two weeks, the video performance seemed to be down from what it used to be. Any video that I watched would clip and slow down. I don't have a heat pad for the laptop but I've always either kept it somewhere or propped up (overheating issue maybe?).
I searched for every message on this forum containing P-6831 and did not anything very similar to this problem. However I noticed in general that the advice being given out seemed to be excellent on here (before I started having this problem, I almost felt well educated enough by the guides on here to upgrade my laptop, which is something I would not have had the courage to do otherwise).
I would be greatly appreciative if anyone could give me some advice into the matter. Perhaps you've something like this before or you have a general idea of how to fix it? Also, I know the observations that I've made about the problem are probably not as helpful as they could be. Therefore, I was hoping that someone could guide in the right direction as far as troubleshooting is concerned - where to find software that will display internal temperatures (if there is an overheating problem), good software for finding and killing viruses or any other cancer growing on my hard drive and maybe some input as concerning what to look for when checking to see if all the physical components are in the right shape (if I open up the laptop and see that graphics card has a whole melted through it or some odd thing).
Thank you for even reading this giant message. Being that this is my first post, I can safely make the guess that every post from here on out will be smaller by comparison.
