There is something wrong with my laptop, a lot of issues lately.

LOKITYZ

Estimable
Jan 23, 2016
3
0
4,510
I have an ASUS laptop that I have owned since late 2009. I regularly play video games on it. It has never had any real issues other than overheating at some points leading to its fan dying and an IT guy screwing up my hard drive while replacing the fan requiring me to replace it at the time (it was 2013). In the same year, I added an additional 2 GB of RAM (making it a total of 4 GB), and it has been working fine, so I don't think RAM is the issue.

Since then, I have made sure to use it only in air conditioned rooms; although sometimes, I had to use it in hot or warm places making it hot occasionally, but not necessarily as overheated as I used to make it. I regularly open up the laptop (like once every two months) to clean the insides from dust using air dusters or compressed air (following online instructions). Recently, a number of issues have started to show up. In early 2015, it started to turn off by itself, without being overheated, just slightly warm. This occurred very rarely, like 4 times from January till December. Two of these occurrences were while I was playing video games. The other two were minutes after I have closed the games.

In late December, the issues started becoming more severe. One time, I wasn't even playing video games; just watching videos on YouTube (not even HD), and all of a sudden the screen goes crazy. It's hard to explain, it looked like the screen was filled with those 8-bit graphic cubes with rainbow colors. It also made this loud buzzing noise on the speakers (not the machine). So I waited, it stayed like that for some time, and I decided to shut it down forcefully, holding down the power button. But when I turned it back on, the screen was just black. The fan was on, the DVD drive's lights were on, and so were the lights near the touchpad. But the screen was just black. I decided to wait (because my laptop has also been slow to boot up in recent years) and left it alone for nearly two hours. But it was still black. Maybe the next thing I did was wrong, but I did anyway: I turned it on and off over and over again. And it eventually worked. It turned on again.

However, other problems seemed to have appeared. A number of times, when I insert my USB's or external Hard Drives, messages on them being unrecognizable would show up, which freaked me out. I backed up a good amount of my Steam library on that external hard drive. So I tested them on other laptops and they worked just fine. It turns out that this unrecognizable message would show up inconsistently. Sometimes it shows up, sometimes it doesn't. For no reason I can understand.

After a few days of using it again, the crazy screen and shut down problem reappeared, and the solution has been similar. I had to wait a bit, turn it on and off repeatedly, then finally it would start up. Then It happened a third time; the crazy screen and buzzing sound, ending with a blue screen this time, and when the laptop started up after I repeated the process, a message saying that the VGA driver was not responding or was not working properly appeared (I'm not really sure exactly what it said, but there was a problem with the VGA).

Oddly enough, it has never turned off randomly again since that third time. The crazy 8-bit screen problem would occasionally show up, but it would not lead to a blue screen and shut down. It would only be followed with the VGA message. Instead, it just randomly freezes. When I'm working on my paper, or doing other things that require the laptop to be on for an extended amount of time, it just freezes. And no matter how long I wait, it stays that way. It even started freezing as the laptop was shutting down, literally in the Windows 7 shutting down screen it would just freeze and I have to shut it down forcefully.

The tricky thing is that in the past week, it hasn't frozen at all. It seems fine, other than the fact that it's very slow. Which is also random because sometimes it boots and works really fast. I have been using the laptop in short 2 to 3 hour bursts which maybe is a factor, but I'm afraid of what will happen in the future, when I have a important papers to write which require extended usage of the laptop.

One other little issue is that I've noticed the laptop has been heating up much faster recently. Something I cannot fathom because I consistently clean the insides from dust. Inside of the laptop is completely clean. This occurs even in air conditioned rooms and even when I'm not playing video games(albeit a little slower).

So what is exactly wrong with my laptop? The inconsistency of these issues and the fact that it seems just fine right now are really making me confused. It hasn't even frozen in the past few days. What should I do?

Sorry for the incredibly long post and thank you to anyone who had the patience to read through it. I just wanted to put out every little detail so that the problem could be pinpointed more easily.

Btw, just for additional information, my laptop's batteries have died since 2011, so I've just plugged it in since then.
 
Solution
The issue may be heat related, you can clean off the heatsinks and apply new thermal paste to them, an also replace the fan. Fans are pretty cheap and if you know how to tear down your laptop you can clean and replace the heat sinks.

If you have to pay someone to do the work, or if you think you may damage the system because of taking it apart fully, you may want to look at a newer laptop. For a system that will run games decently will be about $600 for a starter system for low settings with something like an A10 CPU/video card combo or a system with a 940m video card.

Vic 40

Honorable
Herald
Oct 22, 2013
25
0
10,590
Looking at what you tell and the age of the laptop is it maybe just the age that is catching up to it.The gpu that is having bad moments or the motherboard.
You kept it up to date for drivers and such i assume.Used those provided by the maker.
 

LOKITYZ

Estimable
Jan 23, 2016
3
0
4,510


Thank you for the reply!
So should I go and get a new laptop? Or is there anything I can do to try and get it repaired?
 
The issue may be heat related, you can clean off the heatsinks and apply new thermal paste to them, an also replace the fan. Fans are pretty cheap and if you know how to tear down your laptop you can clean and replace the heat sinks.

If you have to pay someone to do the work, or if you think you may damage the system because of taking it apart fully, you may want to look at a newer laptop. For a system that will run games decently will be about $600 for a starter system for low settings with something like an A10 CPU/video card combo or a system with a 940m video card.
 
Solution

LOKITYZ

Estimable
Jan 23, 2016
3
0
4,510


Okay, thank you for the advice