Problems with Hardware

[The Man In The Mist]

So! As many people know, I got a new laptop roughly two months ago. It's a Dell, running Windows 7, graphics card is NVIDIA geforce GT 540m.

I crash. A lot.

Sometimes I can go a few hours without crashing, sometimes I kick the bucket multiple times.

Sometimes I have to reboot my entire computer.

Neverwinter Nights- Multiplayer, is the only game where I have this problem.

So this is NwN related. Mind you, I haven't trialed ran many other games.

Erwin and Adhesivez both postulated it's heat related, and it is true- whenever I play NwN, my Temperature shoots up by ten degrees celcius (from roughly 50-55 to 60-65 C) and sometimes up to 70 C.

A cooling pad may fix the problem. It may not.

What I am looking for, I suppose, is possible solutions to my problem? What other information do I need to provide for you all to help in solving this? Or is it something I simply need to live with?

[Softie]

When you are playing, is your computer on a flat surface?  Two books to elevate it and a fan blowing cold air directly underneath may do the trick.

If you have been playing with it on a flat surface for a long amount of time with no airflow under it, it is possible that it has overheated so much that the gel on the heat sink has partially melted in which case, you are screwed because it is only going to get worse as it continues to melt.

Is it possible for you to open up your laptop to check?  Assuming you know how to open it up, you do not need to be a PC guru to check, if gel on the heat sink has melted it will be very obvious, you will see a goey melted mess.

Is it still under warranty?  Where did you buy it?  If it is, do NOT open it up, that will probably void the warranty.

[The Man In The Mist]

It is still under warranty. I was given it by Best Buy due to our warranty.

[Softie]

I would suggest bringing it back to Bestbuy then, tell them you think the heatsink melted and ask for a replacement.  Depending on the store staff they will either open it up and look, or just ship it off for a replacement.

What you are describing is heat damage to the computer in some manner, even if the gel on the heat sink did not melt.

[Paha]

First of all this:

You don't have a heat problem if nwn is the only thing doing this to you. It would happen on everything that uses graphic card, any game, any program that uses some manner of rendering power. It doesn't really matter if it's old or new game, they all put strain on graphic cards. Even with just normal use through longer priod of time, if it didn't vent properly or gets heated up.

If it was heat related problem, your pc would go down and reboot. Is it a real crash, or does the game alone crash? There's a difference here.

If it's nwn related, I suggest updating your graphic drivers and also getting the good old nwn graphic fix to help with crashing. If you have overrides, remove them all and only take the most necessary ones, and start working up from there.

Your pc is unlikely to be too broken if it works in general.

[Softie]

By the way, I was assuming you meant the actual machine crashed and that you were not playing any games besides NWN.

[Wasted Hero]

http://www.escapefromundeath.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62953
 
I had similar issues and these fixes worked for me.

[tropic]

I had problems with my NVidia card at first as well, this fixed them.

[The Man In The Mist]

Tried to install it. Got this.

D:\Games\Neverwinter Nights

"Folder not accessible."

[tropic]

Could be read-only?

[el groso]

There's the processor affinity thing too, in case you have not tried it yet.

Set a processor affinity in the configuration file.
To fix it permanently, open your nwnplayer.ini file (it is located in same directory as the game) and in [Game Options] section add this line (or change existing one to =1):

Client CPU Affinity=1
Now the NWN game will always use your second core.