I have a Toshiba Satellite A105-S2716 with XP. A few days ago the following started happening:

About once a day, for no apparent reason (twice while I was asleep), the computer freezes up and looks this this:



CTL-ALT-DEL does nothing (of course, I can't see what's on the screen, but I tried it anyway). All I can do is shutdown with the button and restart.

I thought it might be a driver problem. It has integrated graphics. I checked the Toshiba site and cannot find anything about this. There are no bulletins and their downloads section does not even have graphics drivers to install, even if I wanted to do so.

I thought it might be resource-related but I have a resource monitor and the two times it happened while I was using it the CPU, memory, and swapfile were all fine and nowhere near maxed out. I wasn't gaming and not using any intensive applications. It did happen once while I was using iTunes but the next 3 times I wasn't. As I said, twice I was asleep.

I searched Google and the only references I can find to anything even similar are is in relation to Vista (I have XP) and/or conflicts with apps which I don't even have.

Any clues?

My desktop has done that a couple times.
I have two 19" LCD's connected to one graphics card and a couple times when I have been messing around with the settings it has come up with that kind of mess. I was messing around with the resolution on mine, and mistakingly saved the wrong resolution.

It looks like it is trying to display something like 620 X 200 or something

yeshuas wrote:

It looks like it is trying to display something like 620 X 200 or something

That's odd. Is there a solution other than shutting it down with the button?

connect an external monitor. if it goes wacky too then you know it's not likely the LCD.

I have an out of warranty laptop here, that has the same type of issue. it seems to be heat related, if it's been on for a while and happens, you reboot and it goes away for a little while then comes back. if you shut if off for a while until it cools, it stays longer before it gets wacky again.

i took the drive out to recover info and could hear a faint ticking in the drive. with possible impending drive failure and possible graphics issue he got a new one.

phileysmiley wrote:

yeshuas wrote: It looks like it is trying to display something like 620 X 200 or something That's odd. Is there a solution other than shutting it down with the button?

It is odd that it is or at least appears to be losing its' settings for the resolution. When mine did it, it was my own fault.

See if there is anything in the Control Panel\Administrative tools\event viewer then check under hardware events see if it lists anything as an error

_Taz_ wrote:

connect an external monitor. if it goes wacky too then you know it's not likely the LCD. I have an out of warranty laptop here, that has the same type of issue. it seems to be heat related, if it's been on for a while and happens, you reboot and it goes away for a little while then comes back. if you shut if off for a while until it cools, it stays longer before it gets wacky again. i took the drive out to recover info and could hear a faint ticking in the drive. with possible impending drive failure and possible graphics issue he got a new one.

The drive is brand new. The original one went bad a couple of months ago and I replaced it.

I did see someone with a slightly similar issue (screen would go black, flicker) and it was a heat issue so that did cross my mind. But I have it in the same place as always and heat buildup was never a problem in the past.

Maybe I should just shut it down at night and start it up every morning? Right now I just leave it on.

yeshuas wrote:

phileysmiley wrote: yeshuas wrote: It looks like it is trying to display something like 620 X 200 or something That's odd. Is there a solution other than shutting it down with the button? It is odd that it is or at least appears to be losing its' settings for the resolution. When mine did it, it was my own fault. See if there is anything in the Control Panel\Administrative tools\event viewer then check under hardware events see if it lists anything as an error

I'll try that. Right now I just left it the way it was in case someone suggested something that I could do now or upon reboot.

The laptop that I traded a desktop for was getting hot, so I first bought a laptop cooler which helped.
Upon further inspection and cleaning, I decided to blow the fins out where the air is released from the fan. After doing that I turned it all the way over and noticed there was like a dust bunny in the fan, so I got my tweezers and started pulling it out. I pulled out what looked like the stuffing out of a comforter, and it was the size of half a grape when I got done.
Needless to say it runs much cooler now. (-:

1) I blew into the fins area but no dust came out at all.

2) I checked the Event Viewer. I'm not sure where to look for hardware events, but under System there are only DCOM Errors (which I can ignore, according to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298095) and Tcpip Warnings, which apparently are benign as well. They also don't correspond with the times of freezeup.

That is where they would be under XP, Vista has more places to look, and that was just a thought to see if maybe there was a driver issue or something.
It still could be heat related.

Okay, thanks. I guess I won't worry too much about it. If it keeps happening I'll try shutting it down at night and see if that makes any difference.

Thanks guys!!!