Endless Paradigm

basically it seems to be when i have a high CPU usage, mostly when i open up a game, my screen seems to turn off or just go black. then when i hold the power button to reset the laptop, the screen goes back to normal again, but seeing as I'm already holding the button, i can't undo pressing it.

example of this:
i bought Team Fortress 2 yesterday and have been downloading it ever since. the download finished last night, but i decided not to play it til the morning (it was 2am and i was tired). so this morning i open up steam then load up tf2. when it was starting up it started to stuff up. the way it was doing so, from what i could understand, just after it shows the splash with the guy with the tap on his head, the game would keep minimising and reopening with different resolutions, and just kept looping all the resolutions. so I'm guessing it was auto-finding my resolution (1280x800) but couldn't find it. so i shut it down via task manager. i looked up on the web and put "-w 1280 -h 800" as the launch options. then i loaded up the game again, same splash screen came up, then i could tell it was freezing because the vista loading mouse pointer was going, and the screen turned to a different shade of black. the mouse pointer was the tf2 pointer, but the screen was black. no matter what i pressed on the keyboard nothing happened, but yet i could move the mouse, but could not select anything as there was nothing to select.
so i held the power button, then after a few seconds, the tf2 menu screen appeared, but like i said above, i could not undo the shutdown.

so yeah, anyone got any ideas? (maybe getting the 4gb ram soon will help, but this might be more of a graphics card issue?) i have a Nvidia 8600GT graphics card by the way. my other laptop specs are in my sig if you need them. thanks

do all the usual first. make sure drivers for graphics, audio and chipset are up to date. check temps if your laptop supports that. re-download and re-install (the download may have stuffed up). install any patches or bug-fixes.

if  all else fails contact Valve's (i think they make it) customer support. you've payed for it (i hope) and your computer meets the recommended spec (hell, even my 6-year-old piece of spoon does) so it should work.

Hmm, try a lower resolution first.  Might also try lowering the refresh rate if possible.
This sounds like a software issue, possibly something with DirectX not interacting properly with the display.  Do other DirectX based games work?

PSPkiller Wrote:do all the usual first. make sure drivers for graphics, audio and chipset are up to date. check temps if your laptop supports that. re-download and re-install (the download may have stuffed up). install any patches or bug-fixes.

if  all else fails contact Valve's (i think they make it) customer support. you've payed for it (i hope) and your computer meets the recommended spec (hell, even my 6-year-old piece of spoon does) so it should work.

yeah I've got all the latest drivers. and my pc easily meets the recommended requirements, i can play crysis on low to med resolutions.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Hmm, try a lower resolution first.  Might also try lowering the refresh rate if possible.
This sounds like a software issue, possibly something with DirectX not interacting properly with the display.  Do other DirectX based games work?

thanks both for replying, but i think i should clear something up. the TF2 prob was just an example, with other DirectX games it occurs at times but most of the time they're fine, i just used TF2 as it was the most recent.

since zinga brought it up, I'm beginning to think it is a directx problem, so I'll try to download the most recent update and install that.

another problem i have that backs up this suspicion is with Counterstrike Source (coincidently another Valve game, but i hightly doubt that's the problem). with css, whether I've played it for 10mins or 2hrs, just randomly the screen would hang. completely randomly. its very frustrating as i can be "frozen" for 3-10 seconds. the time period between them are random aswell, but it is usually between 2-10 mins (i they occur) between them. while I'm "frozen" i see my weapon in my hand, i can change the weapon but the display doesn't change, i can only hear the noise, i can't shoot, i can move my cursor and view a complete 360 view from the spot i "froze" from.
i originally thought it was a network problem from the wifi temporarily disconnecting, but I've realised that the people on voice communcations, and text prompts are still live, that the display of the character maps etc freeze, so probably a DirectX problem (but to properly test my original network theory, I've just purchased a new modem as my old one is 4+ years old so it should determine if the disconnects are the cause)

alright, i updated directx via dxwebupdate.exe which i got from microsoft, but it looks like nothing has changed. i can't comment on the black screen problem as since updating i have no been in a situation where it has occured. but i can say that the "freezing" problem on counterstrike (and now it happens on TF2 aswell but not as often) still happens, so i might email valve about that, but to completely test it I'll wait til my new modem arrives. also that minimizing-maximising loop that happened with tf2 is still happening (which i simply press CTRL+ALT+DEL during the loop, then restore tf2 from the taskbar, but i cbf doing that everytime i want to play) so I'll email valve about that.

so does anyone have anymore ideas about this?

that minimizing-maximising loop  thingy sounds like a little problem i have. Because of a bug in my Graphics card driver and TrayIt! (a little program for minimizing things to the System tray) when i first log on and if i leave the computer for a while it will stop recognising mouse clicks. All i have to do though is hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and it'll come back to life. Do you have TrayIt! installed? its a long shot but it might help.

nah i don't have TrayIt!, so you think i should install it?

Well, i don't think it'll help your problem but its a useful little thing. Lets you minimize anything to the tray to free up space in the taskbar. Also lets you hide things quickly. Useful for untrusting parents.

ah sweet. i just downloaded it and its a pretty cool, handy app. i don't see though how i could minimise games to the taskbar though unless i ran it in a window as from what i gathered, you hold Shift while clicking the minimise button.