white screen

since a few days, everytime i run GW for a little time (like a minute or less) my laptop's screen goes white (acer 1690 series, 128 mb ati radeon vid, 1 gig mem). i can hear GW running in the background, and i can switch back to my desktop , with the screen remaining white. it will take a while for my screen to return, but in a few seconds it will go white again.

this doesnt occur when i dont play GW.

anyone know what this is? i think my videocard or so might be overheating, but i have no experience with this.

anyone have any ideas?

I want you to do something for me. Turn it off and take the battery out of the laptop. Leave it out until it is about room temperature, then place it back in and turn on your laptop. Run Guild Wars and see if the screen goes white. Let me know the results, and I will explain more.

aight, will do later, thx! (got home from 11h work and caipirinha cocktail on empty stomach... XD )

Try shifting the screen, back and forth.

Dunno what it will do but it helped me fix my old laptop problem, whose screen turned purple randomly.

ah, removing the battery didn't work

what do you mean by shifting?

terrain graphics problems i think, try to change the terrain quality to low

I would say install newer drivers. ATI releases a new set every month and the last 3 months have had major fixes which apply to the new GW rendering code.

Your laptop/video is overheating.


lift the base/back of the laptop up into something.. a couple of stacked cd cases, even running a small personal desk fan across the back of it, to blow the heat out will help.

I had a feeling it probably wouldn't, but more so than normal it does. Laptop monitors tend to build up a static charge from their batteries if they are run pretty hard, even if they are plugged into an outlet. Removing the battery and leaving it until room temperature is sort of a, "reset". Usually you can tell if it is a charge by what the screen does. Usually the screen will never come on normally. It will usually come on with multiple white, horizontal lines that move around constantly. Almost like static on a television. I knew your laptop didn't fit the usual description, but it didn't hurt to see if it would fix the problem.

Simply put, like shadowfell said, video is overheating. You might ask, "Why is it doing it now? It never did it before." Simple, it never had Guild Wars for long periods of time. Guild Wars uses a fair amount of juice to run good, so it is likely overworking your graphics card. You can either try what shadowfell said, or just try and find another card to replace it with.

ah, i tried putting my laptop on stuff so to improve air flow, but i think it's not enough, cause it didn't really help. maybe adding a fan would help. but that's just curing the symptoms, not the problem itself i think.

i've been playing for a while, and sometimes for hours, but this is really new.

i'm thinking perhaps my interior ventilation system has somehow clogged up or w/e and it needs a cleanup.

thanks for the suggestions so far

hey guess what, in a desperate try, GW did run yesterday, while i put the gfx as low as possible and with the adapter disconnected. however, when i reconnected my laptop to the energy net, the white screen returned *sigh*.

does this make the video card issue sound more plausible?