World of Warcraft™

Ok so my laptop started crashing. I love it, it plays WoW on high above 30 fps in any situation, I don't want to get rid of it and I want to keep using it.

With games like GW2 coming out I want to also be able to play them while sacrificing little in ways of performance.

Current problem: random restart/crash. I initially thought it's from heat but that makes no sense, the system has been running hotter than some of the times it crashed. I am now thinking of checking the memory in the laptop. That's my second guess that a memory block could be bad.

I hope to find out why it's restarting but in the meantime I want to see what possible upgrades I could do to the laptop so that it lasts me another 2 years (yeah I bought it in 2009 for 1,600 and it was worth every penny).

Model Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q870 Laptop
Dimensions 17.4 x 11.6 x 1.6 inches
Processor Type Intel Core i7 I7-720QM
Hard disk capacity 500 GB
RAM capacity 4GB
RAM type DDR3 SDRAM (upgraded to 8GB DDR3 1333)
Speed 1.6 GHz
Screen size 18.4 inches
Screen resolution 1680 x 945 pixels
Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M TurboCache
Optical drives Blu-ray Drive/DVD-R/CD-RW
Removable media slots Card reader
Operating System Windows 7

Download and run HWMonitor, and run WoW in Windowed mode, in background (not minimized). Check how high temperatures for both CPU and GPU go up to.

I'll give that a shot tonight. I got a Microsoft memory block checker too just in case to run tonight.

This can't be right,

HWMonitor is showing 65 to 70 C
That's on cores 0-4

As far as I'm aware they should be running somewhere around 33-35 C

What about the graphics card?
Is this with WoW running in the way I described?

HWMonitor isn't reading the card at all.

Yeah, this is wow running as described. Along with a bunch of IE windows and Mail.

To clarify I only have the following sensors listed:
Computer temp
CPU temp (cores 0-4)
--CPU power
Hardrive temp
Battery
--power
--capacities
--levels

It should. It's at bottom of HWMonitor.

If it does not, download GPU-Z and check temperature through there.

GPU-Z shows the 360M card running at 58 deg. Celsius

With wow running windowed mode (high settings), IE running 4 tabs, Firefox open and Mail. So pretty heavy load of programs running.

Hm, the temperature seems normal. CPU's max temperature is 100C, with many people finding ~70C under load.

GPU temperature is also normal. Far-cry from ~90C exhibited by some of the other laptop GPUs.

So it's something else.

If you remember exactly when and what time it crashed, there may be a hint or two in the Event Viewer. It will have entries in error/caution.

It crashed during wow or playing HD videos.

I did leave it on overnight once and went to bed and found it shut down (it was just playing music at the time).

I guess next thing to check is the memory. But I'm not sure whether it could be the RAM or Video memory causing it (if it's even possible to check video memory?)

Video memory issue will show up in form of severe display corruption. Did you check the Event Viewer?

All that the event viewer showed me in the Critical category was the following:

Event 41, Kernel-Power

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.


Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power" Guid="{*********-2005-44C2-AC5E-77220C37D6B4}" />
<EventID>41</EventID>
<Version>2</Version>
<Level>1</Level>
<Task>63</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000002</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="************" />
<EventRecordID>109731</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID="4" ThreadID="8" />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>****</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-18" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="BugcheckCode">0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter1">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter2">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter3">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="BugcheckParameter4">0x0</Data>
<Data Name="SleepInProgress">true</Data>
<Data Name="PowerButtonTimestamp">0</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

* represents edited out

Okay, potential reasons for this is:

1. Overclocking (which you didn't do on a laptop, of course)

2. RAM issue (as you have noticed. Did you try running Memtest86+?)

3. Battery / power issue (not likely)

4. Overheating (we just established this isn't the case)

So I think it's RAM issue. Try using Memtest86+, not Microsoft memory checker or something.

Thanks for the help Kalg.

I ran a mem test earlier today and while the testing was running (two times) the computer completely shut down and failed to restart during testing.

It was hard to catch EXACTLY when the crash happens during testing but it looks like as soon as it started 32 bit testing phase.

So I'll stop by Microcenter and pick up an 8gig set to replace the current 4gig set I have.


I did a /whew for a second there because this is a cheap fix compared to having to get another battery potentially!

Yeah, relatively cheap fix in also that you don't need a new computer. :0

Well that's still to be debated. I hope this laptop will be within specs to run GW2 lag free as well. It does great with wow so we'll see!

OK I'm back.

The crashing never really went away. After discovering faulty memory blocks, I fixed it by getting new 8GB ram and installing it in.

The laptop still crashes though. At times it works great (go through an entire night without anything happening) then it just straight shuts down, and restarts.

Even checking "disable automatic restart" did not help me get a blue screen to get more information out of it.

I did get a BSOD once and I managed to get that it brought up a file named: dxslmmg.sys

I don't know how to resolve it. I tried to go back and uninstall any programs I have installed recently (Adobe Photoshop, AutoDesk Pro, Bamboo draw pad software). This did not help any. I checked to see if my BIOS is up to date, everything is fine. The battery doesn't flicker, a lot of times the power light is stable when the screen just shuts off.

A search online shows that some people blame AVG or other anti virus software. I'll uninstall that tonight as well. But in the meantime, anyone have this issue before and can help out?

Are you sure it is really named 'dxslmmg.sys'?

It's probably something else, isn't it? If it is what I think it is, I would try older graphics drivers.

Also try running sfc /scannow in command line.

Did you try memtest86+ on the new RAM? It might be that a slot is faulty maybe.

The name actually is dxgmmsl.sys

I ran memtest on new memory and it passed fine with both sticks.

So bleh ;/

What's worse is that it shuts down the screen, keyboard and laptop seem to start right back up running. I'm wondering if my video card died.