driver crashes & jerky sounds.

Well, the reason I'm posting this is because I need some help with my laptop.

lately, whenever I play a game, the graphics driver usually crashes and then restarts, but lately it just crashes immediately, and I have to restart my laptop to solve this issue. This problem happens mostly with games made around 2005-2007, with games like GTA San Andreas and American Wasteland. Some Steam-based games like Portal and L4D also has this issue, but in this case it'll restart the graphics drivers and never crashes.

Another issue is concering sounds. Sometimes, whenever I play a song or watch a video or using Guitar Pro, the sounds immediately becomes jerky, with an "aaaaa-aaaaa" kind of sound, like "audio track-aaaa–aaaaa-aaaa-traackckk" kind of sound. Usually this happens occasionally, but lately, this has also been happening regularly, so I'm curious on what could be the reason. A friend suggested that it might be due to a virus, but I've scanned my pc for any kind of malware, and it's clean, while another said it's probably my copy of windows 7, whle another said it might be a hard disk failure.

Just a thought, lately I've been putting my laptop on "Hibernate" a lot, since it saves me time from having to load the applications I want to use when I start up my laptop. Could that be the cause as well?

Can anyone pinpoint what is the exact cause? I am using an Asus K50iJ with win 7 ultimate, and the specs are here : http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/asus-k50ij-notebook

I'm sorry I have to tell this to you, but, your friends are idiots.

Open your box and remove all the dust. Check if the fan(s) are properly fitted (if they only move around a little bit their effectiveness decreases ~75%). Check temps while it's on and see if they go too high.

spyware wrote: I'm sorry I have to tell this to you, but, your friends are idiots.

Open your box and remove all the dust. Check if the fan(s) are properly fitted (if they only move around a little bit their effectiveness decreases ~75%). Check temps while it's on and see if they go too high.

Spyware is right, this sounds like a heat issue. It's probably a bad idea to open up the laptop if it's under warranty though, so you might want to keep that in mind. Some laptops inherently have this issue. I don't know about newer laptops, but quite a few P4M laptops I've gotten will play games fine for a while until the graphics start phasing in and out of 6fps sessions when the heat gets dangerously high. Never seen the screen actually "crash" however. P4's are also hot processors to begin with, too.

And, yeah, your friends really sound like they have no clue what they are talking about.

ok, how do I check the temp on my laptop when it's on?

also, I might check my warranty and ask the store I bought it from to look into it, I still have the proof of purchase as well as a warranty number.

$watch cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature #probably In windows, download SpeedFan or something similar.

ok, I've run SpeedFan, and the readings so far:

HD0: 38C Temp1: 49C Core0: 37-38C Core1:36-39C

The values for the last two switch between the lowest and the highest temps regularly, that's why I listed it that way.

is that considered high?

fuser wrote: is that considered high?

No.

if that's not considered high, than what else could be the issue?

update: now it's

HD0: 40C Temp1: 49C Core0: 40C Core1: 40C

that's still not high right?

Check processor usage (and temps) while playing games/doing stuff that crashes/errors.

fuser wrote: HD0: 40C Temp1: 49C Core0: 40C Core1: 40C

It varies by processor, but it's generally not something to be concerned about until you have at least 70C. 75C< is what I would consider a significant problem, and your temps are nowhere near that. Are these idling temps?

well, that's the normal temp when I do normal stuff like web browsing or listening to mp3's or doing some coding.

I'll check it whenever I'm playing a game.

update: I decided to play Portal to see how it goes; so here's a screenshot as a summary of what happened.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

needless to say, the driver stopped a few more times and hl2.exe closed by itself.

Funny how your first posts says your running win7 but your stop error says "windows vista driver". Go to Asus and install the correct drivers for win7 including the bios update for win7 support, See what happens. http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=ZWrNVPXEbNNTjJZg

52 isn't that bad, the default is set to warn >50 (the little flame indicator) but it shouldn't do anything like crashing/lagging stuff. Odd.

I still have no clue what causes your problems.

Edit: Keen, korg, very keen.

korg wrote: Funny how your first posts says your running win7 but your stop error says "windows vista driver". Go to Asus and install the correct drivers for win7 including the bios update for win7 support, See what happens. http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=ZWrNVPXEbNNTjJZg

well, I just started playing games right after I installed win 7, and since it worked fine, I didn't think installing Win 7 drivers would be necessary, besides, the drivers weren't out when I bought my laptop, win 7 was just coming a few months later.

So which drivers do you think I should install? the only ones I can think of are Intel Graphics Driver for Win 7 (32 bit) (I should've mentioned I use 32 bit) do I need the VGA driver as well? And since you mentioned win7 support, I'm guessing BIOS 212(Add Win7 Support) is the one I need, right?

Is there any other drivers you can advise me on, korg?

I'm not going to give a link, but there is a nice program on the pirate bay called "driver genius pro". It is a god-send if you are dealing with obscure drivers, bad websites, or multiple computers.

And as fun as opening up computers is, it doesn't make you smarter to suggest doing it. At least with laptops. It almost always seems a waste of time, and dust is probably never what I'd suspect at first. Ventilation maybe. When I would suspect dust or bad ventilation is when their computer is really old. For instance if they were to say they had like a 1.5Ghz CPU, or a computer designed for something earlier than XP.

I would definitely install the bios revision first, Then just uninstall your old drivers and reinstall all that they have for win7. (It can't hurt) Driver and bios updates are designed to meet the changes and updates for what OS your running. As far as running a "driver update" program I've found these things can cause more of a headache than anything, Best if you can find your own and download them yourself.

Dust and lint cause a lot of problems on laptops, (people love to use them on the carpet for some damn reason). You don't need to take the whole unit apart, Just remove any covers on the back, Ram,hard drive, wireless card, etc and blow it out with air. Usually gets most of it. I generally like to field strip them down to nothing and clean everything, Apply new thermal paste and reassemble them but if your not experience you'll have a laptop in a bag. (God knows how many of those I've got).

Anyhow as always not having your unit in front of me to test we can only speculate on your problem from what you tell us. ;) Good luck, Post back with questions or problems.

well, when I downloaded the BIOS update (BIOS 212 Add Win7 Support) and I unzipped the package, it just shows a file named 212 with no instructions.

what do I do with this?

yeah, I did thought along the updating bios lines, I'm just too nervous to think about actually doing it.

also, I found this: http://www.filecluster.com/Drivers/Motherboard/Download-ASUS-Update-Utility.html

so I've just uninstalled and reinstalled the graphics drivers, and so far, all the games I play don't have any crashes, in fact, they run better than before.

however, I haven;t got around to updating the BIOS, namely because the tool is a bit troublesome to use.

fuser wrote: so I've just uninstalled and reinstalled the graphics drivers, and so far, all the games I play don't have any crashes, in fact, they run better than before.

Glad you got it figured out :) Have to admit, that was a nice catch Korg.

Thanks, Updating your bios with the Asus update tool is very easy. On the first page select update bios from file > click next > Navigate to where the zip file (You don't need to unzip it) and choose that file. Next screen will show the flash utility, click flash and let it go, Easy.

wow. I wish installing this thing could be easier, though. Version 7.17.09 asks me to reboot NT, even after I rebooted it. Version 7.17.13 has AsusUpdate.ini missing, so right now I'm going to find AsusUpdate.ini for this version and flash my bios.

update: nope, both versions don't work one bit.

Let me ask you this, Are you using the asus setup or the installshield setup. You should be using the installshield setup.exe, Ive used the Asus updater for years and never had a problem.

yeah, I installed it from the installshield setup.exe, it doesn't work.

Funny, Well it just as easy to use the EZ Flash 2 in your bios setup. I found a link for you to follow (That way I won't have to type it out). Follow these instructions and it will hook you up:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20070215223109668&board_id=1&model=P5B+Deluxe%2FWiFi-AP&SLanguage=en-us&page=1

Fuckin' url tags don't wrap.

thanks , I'll check it out.