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#1
Screen goes blank and computer frozen at random times
Two days ago I downloaded and installed the game Minecraft for my son. After successful install, when I first opened the game my laptop screen went blank and no other response from it (well not actually blank, but vertical black and white lines). I had to press and hold the power button to shut it down, and then tried to turn it back on. The fan and lights came on, but no response from the display, except the backlight. Not even the bios splash screen. I shut it back down and let it sit for a little while and tried to boot again and this time was successful just as if nothing had happened. Everything seemed to be fine except it was now running a little sluggish. I proceeded to uninstall the game and ran a full virus scan with Malware Bites Anti-Malware, which found nothing. I then figured it was just some type of glitch or overheat and played around with it for a little bit and everything was working fine. I then walked away from it, but just by chance happen to notice that as soon as the screen saver came on I had the same blank screen and frozen problem as described before. I shut it down as I did before and tried to restart, but this time it restarted just fine (as opposed to the last time where I couldn’t even get the bios “flash screen”), I only booted into safe mode this time. Again, everything seemed fine while in safe mode, so I took a break and went to have dinner only to come back to another blank screen remembering this was while it was still in safe mode. I rebooted again into normal mode and ran system restore to the day before I installed the game. After the restore I played around with it more, tested the screen saver, played some videos, etc and it seemed fine, except for still the sluggishness. I walked away for a little bit glancing over every now and then to see if it happened again and I saw the screen saver working just fine. Then just randomly it happened again; blank screen and un-responsive. I can’t seem to see anything in specific that triggers it.
It has happened a dozen more times intermittently since then and seems to have no rhyme or reason to what causes this problem. Sometimes the screen goes completely blank, other times it has those vertical black and white lines, sometimes it restarts just fine while others I can’t even get the bios screen/pre-boot info to display, and others I get the bios to display, but stays blank afterwards.
In my own research and knowledge it may seem like a hardware problem, but if it is indeed something like the graphics adapter failing, would it not be just a working or not state? Why would it work sometimes and then fail after a random amount of time working. Another suggestion would be some type of overheating problem. I have had problems with the fan screaming and bottom of the laptop very hot, even when the computer is at idle, but through this whole problem the fan has been nice and quiet and I have even taken more precaution and given the bottom vents more ventilation. Being that most likely it is probably related to one of those suggestions, I still find it a little too coincidental that the problem started just as the graphics loaded when I first started that game mentioned in the beginning.
Any suggestions? It is really getting annoying… I think it’s fixed or it’s not showing symptoms then I’ll walk away to come back to it frozen. Just an added note, with the exception of one time (not including the original event) every time it freezes/goes blank it has been while the computer is at idle with nobody using it.