Computer problems

[Skysooner]

Okay, I have a 2 year old Sony Vaio with a 2.4 Ghz processor and 1 Gb of Ram. I have a year old NVidia graphics card that was working well until recently. There was an electric glitch in our neighborhood, and we were having several sudden outages followed by the electricity coming back on. The clocks didn't even have time to reset. After that happened, the system would try and reboot, and it would lock up on the login screen with a hardware error. This would self-correct itself in a couple of minutes, and the system would be working.

A couple of days later, however, all of a sudden, the CPU processing is running at 100% whenever I get into any sort of intense graphics program (i.e game). After a couple of minutes of playing, the computer screen will just go black. The computer is on, but there is nothing processing anymore. I end up having to reboot.

My question is what is the most likely cause of the problem?

Graphics card? Processor? Memory?

The computer runs fine when it is just doing everyday browsing and Office things.

[mdklatt]

My question is what is the most likely cause of the problem?

Graphics card? Processor? Memory?



I would look at the hard drive first. If the hard drive was busy during the power blip you could have data corruption somewhere important. Run a diagnostic utility (like chkdsk) on the drive. Flaky RAM can also cause weird problems, and memory is sensitive to power surges and stuff.

[ouflak]

I have this issue on an old laptop of mine and have heard of others that have this issue. I'm guessing there is a problem with my power handling, perhaps an issue internal to the CPU itself. You could see if you can replace the CPU, but I doubt it as it is almost certainly built in (don't know how you feel about soldering).

[soonerboomer93]

cpu's aren't built in, they're in a ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket that normally has an arm on it. Sounds like Power Supply, mainboard or possibly just the video card. My best guess is the video card itself

[ouflak]

cpu's aren't built in, they're in a ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket that normally has an arm on it.

Yup. I wasn't sure about this as many laptop brands do have their CPU's built. But it does seem that Sony has decided to make life a bit easier on their support staff. I found a website (http://www.automatedsolution.com/vaio/disassembly.htm) describing the process of replacing a CPU on a Sony Vaio model GR. This has screws, not an arm, so that means every model of laptop might have its own access to the socket.

One thing about my symptoms is that it comes with a CPU temperature spike. If I remove my power supply, the temperature spike goes away although I still have the 100% usage for the same period of time. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to try getting a new high quality power supply first. It's easier and very possibly cheaper, and even if that doesn't fix the problem, it's a good investment depending how long you want to keep using this laptop.

The CPU swapping procedure doesn't look like rocket science. I've poked around in my old Dell to sort out a fan problem (they've been overworked because of the temperature spikes). If you feel confident enough, you could give it a shot.

[Skysooner]

When my hardware problem during the boot up occurs, it has been when the CPU was hot. It doesn't seem to occur when there is enough ventilation around it. However this total blank screen occurs even when it is well ventilated. It doesn't mean that there isn't a temperature problem on the inside either though.

First things first. Going to run chkdsk.

[RacerX]

Sky - As always
1. Virus Scan
2. Spyware scan
3. Memtest86
4. Spend 50 bucks and get an UPS.
5. Have the case off with it plugged in and running. See if all the fans are spinning. The case fan, the cpu fan, etc. The video card might have a fan on it.
6. Scandisk