Laptop troubles.

[mastag]

Oh wow, I'm posting on halflife2.net again. Exciting! Anywho, I'm having, as the title says, laptop troubles. I have a Dell Studio 17. Several days ago my laptop began turning off suddenly after minutes of being started up. Not shutting down, mind you, turning the **** off. At first I thought it was a overheating/fan issue, so I got some compressed air and sprayed it in and around the fan to get dust out. However, not only did the problem persist, but now the monitor will turn a greyish white color, and I can't even force shut down. The only way to turn the laptop off when it does this is to take the battery out. So, uh, what the hell? Am I screwed? Any ideas?

 

[mastag]

Bump? Anybodeh?

 

[xcellerate]

is this windows 7 or XP?

Open up 'computer management' and expand 'event log' then 'windows logs' then 'system.' Find the last time it restarted and see if the logs have anything to say out it. It should have like a 'critical' warning to go with it. It's weird you can't hold the power button down for a hard restart, that may indicate some more serious problems.

 

[Dinnesch]

What are the specs of your laptop? Dell has many Studio 17 revisions.

If the video card is a Geforce 8xxxM that's the cause, no doubt.(they are notorious for being unreliable)