Windows 8 laptop black screen crash/freeze
2014-07
JakeP
This is my first post on this StackExchange - I started from StackOverflow and thought this could be a good place to ask a question for a different kind of a problem.
I own an XMG P501 laptop - I bought it around 2 years ago. Since then it's been through 2 major problems: I spilt tea on it once - had to replace the keyboard (and added an SSD btw); last year its AMD GPU also failed - I sent it off to the manufacturer to have it replaced with a GeForce GTX480m (and then installed Windows 8 on it myself).
I think since it's come back from the manufacturer, every now and then it crashes/freezes to a black screen. It doesn't appear to respond to any key presses - I can hear one of the fans speeding up after a minute or so, and sometimes I can hear a constant beep (of the kind that, afair, were shortly present on boot-up back in the days of the DOS PCs). The only thing that seems to work is hard shutdown and then switching it back on.
There's no blue screen, no "Windows has recovered after an unexpected whatever", the system loads back normally.
Obviously, I'd like to fix the problem as I hope the laptop will serve me at least until the release of The Witcher 3 so here's the question: Is there any way of actually getting some crash dumps or anything like that? Is there any kind of software I could use to try and determine the cause of the black screen freezes?
As it's my only system for now, I don't want to have it sent back to the manufacturer/servicing for an unpredictable amount of time - I would much prefer to either replace a part myself or tell someone exactly what the problem is so they can fix it ASAP. Afaik, even if the problem wasn't caused by me, the warranty is probably void now so I'll have to pay for everything.
If you need my laptops specs, please let me know.
HtS
My laptop randomly freezes, especially during internet browsing and tab closing (all main browsers). I'm not sure what is causing this. At first I thought it might be overheating, but it sometimes occurs after a cold boot. Are there any tools that I can run in the background that might help pinpoint where the problem lies? There's no BSOD, or restarts, it simply stops and I have to hold the power button for a few seconds for it to turn off. Thanks
ps: I'm running HDD Health, and it says the drive is excellent, so I'm guessing it's not the hard drive.
tony-p-lee
Try AntiFreeze, an emergency task manager for unresponsive and hanging systems.
AntiFreeze offers a last recourse when you find your computer in a hung state. Because programs consume too much CPU or too much memory or too many programs have been started, your computer has become unresponsive. The mouse still moves but no programs are responding, you cannot switch to other programs or even close them. You have even tried to start the Windows Task Manager even that won’t work because it does not get enough attention from the scheduler to respond to your mouse clicks and keyboard presses. You are ready to press the reset button, instead you can press the hotkey of AntiFreeze. It will put to sleep all running programs except the most critical ones, giving you the opportunity to close down the programs which are causing problems. You may even be able to save or recover your work.
AntiFreeze is freeware.