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  • What happened here?

    I had to go to the mall earlier to use the wi-fi they provide there, why is a rather long story. Their wi-fi crapped out while I was trying to connect so I was in Word, working on what I could remember of what we were supposed to do, when my cursor suddenly stopped working. I'm used to this happening when there's too much happening on my laptop at once, I usually give it a minute and it goes away. It didn't, so I used the keyboard to bring up Task Manager, looked it over, saw nothing unusual, tried to move the cursor again, then realized it could click but not move. Since I know that a reboot fixes 90% of computer issues, I tried it, and I could move my cursor again. However, as I tried to bring my assignment back up, the screen got vertical lines all over it then went black. After a miniature heart attack I shut it down, thinking my laptop had been connected to the mall wi-fi just long enough to get a virus, and we went home.

    When I got home, my laptop (whose screen was working again) automatically connected to the wi-fi like it always does, then started some updates. At about 30% it said there was an error and was undoing the changes, then it restarted, finished the updates, and now it's working fine again. I ran a virus scan just in case and came up with nothing, so I'm thinking it had to do with the updates even though I wasn't connected to the wi-fi at the mall when it started being weird. Anyone have any idea why it might have done that?
    The fact that jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people.

    You would have to be incredibly dense for the world to revolve around you.

  • #2
    Sounds to me like your laptop overheated. That happens to mine occasionally.

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    • #3
      Vertical lines on the display does sound hardware-related, specifically the graphics hardware. It's a common symptom of overheating or, more seriously, of total GPU failure (which can happen after a long period of thermal cycling).

      Are your laptop's fans working properly? Did you accidentally block the intake or exhaust vents - and do you do that regularly? Look on the bottom of the case, where the intake vent is on many (badly designed) PC laptops.

      What type of GPU is it? We might notice if it's a type that is especially prone to total failure.

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      • #4
        It doesn't get very warm at all, which confuses me a bit. I can actually feel the exhaust vents and they're barely warm. When it started having issues it was on a flat table at the food court, so none of the vents were blocked. Computer specs are... (searching, searching) ...here.
        The fact that jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people.

        You would have to be incredibly dense for the world to revolve around you.

        Comment


        • #5
          Aha - the AMD E1 series are low-end APUs, so the GPU is built into that and it doesn't produce very much heat in the first place. As long as the air is actually being blown out by the fan, and not having to rely on convection (there isn't much of that in most laptops), it should stay cool enough.

          Though this does assume that the heatsink is still attached firmly to the thing. It's not usually a problem, but if it's had rough handling it's possible for it to work loose.

          It may be worth updating AMD's drivers:

          Graphics (auto-detect utility)
          Chipset drivers (64-bit or 32-bit Windows)

          If the problem persists - and by this I mean the pointer freezing under heavy load, as well as anything more serious - then you can probably check the temperature using GPU-Z. Switch to the Sensors tab and leave it open, then you can look at the temperature when a freeze event occurs.

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