screen goes black

[Jerilynn Lemon]

Apologies if this has been covered and I missed it in search.

There are times when my SL experience goes well and times when in the middle of it all, the laptop screen goes black. I'm force to hold the on/off button down to turn the computer off and restart.

My specs:

HP Pavilion g6-1d21dx. (g6 notebook)

Processor: AMD A6-3420M APU witj Radeon HD Graphics 1.50 Ghz

RAM 4.00 GB (3.48 usable)

64 bit

Firestorm (with Singularity for back up. FS does have its moments). The same happens on Singularity too.

I run SL on it on AC power, it runs great (with some expected lag) then the screen dumps (times of blackness occurring varies). It does feel hot at the external monitor output, but when I use it on full battery power, no problems, other than the battery getting low in about 90 minutes.

I've reset my FS to default settings thinking maybe I'm overdriving the graphics chip.

Can anyone suggest a median setting I could use to minimize the black screen effect.

Maybe dumping the proverbial cache could help?

 

[steph Arnott]

Sounds like either the screen is going into sleep mode or your laptop is overheating and protecting it self. Vacuum out the fan regularly and allow good ventilation under your laptop.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

I think you're right about the GPU load, it sounds like overheating to me. It could also be an overloaded power supply.

 

Assuming it's overheating....

Like Steph suggested, make sure there is no built up dust blocking your cooling.

You could buy a cooling pad, compatible with your laptop.

Lower your graphic settings, especially draw distance.

If you're running windows, turn off all fancy features, like aero.

Set your graphics card to performance instead of quality (I'm not sure how to do that with a Radeon card)

 

Always monitor your temperatures. There are plenty of free programs for that like Speedfan, Realtemp, Speccy etc etc.

[steph Arnott]

BTW: If you using AC power supply to your notebook, remove the battery else it will burn out.

[Rolig Loon]

Clearing your cache will make your graphics card work harder, at least until it has downloaded all those textures again.  Never empty your cache unless there's a good reason to do it.  (This is not one.)  A large, full cache is WAY better than a small, empty one.