# Screen Flashes, Then Freezes



## OneUp03 (Jul 12, 2011)

I started having this problem about a week and a half ago. I had this same problem on my desktop, and that resulted in having to replace the motherboard... In the case of my laptop I'd have to get a new one if this can't be resolved.

While doing anything on my laptop (doesn't matter if it's intensive or not) the screen will randomly flicker, then the mouse, ctrl+alt+del, etc freezes. The problem started right before my return trip from Africa. I was hoping that it might have had something to do with the higher voltage there, unstable power grid, or even the different climate. I have tried running my laptop off of solely battery, and it still froze. Once I got home, I cleaned out my laptop completely and put on new silver thermal grease. However, the problem continued. I tried multiple restore points, reinstalling latest drivers, testing the 2 different sticks of ram separately, running malware and virus scans, doing a clean boot and changing what program startup, but all to no avail.

My last thing I can think of trying is reinstalling windows, and if it continues it has to be a motherboard or gpu problem. This problem even occurred during the System Recovery boot option, however it hasn't occurred in safe mode yet... Event Viewer does not show any error/critical event that sounds like the cause of the problem.

System:
Windows 7 Pro (clean install within past 2 months)
HP Pavilion DV6-1280US
Amd Turion X2 Ultra 2.4 GHZ
ATI Radeon 4650 HD
6 GB RAM DDR2
500 GB 5400 RPM HDD


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## iraqiboy90 (Jul 15, 2011)

dont know if this helps but I do kind have the same problem: Screen flashes each second then system freeze (no mouse, nothing..), and that was all after a fresh re-install. and I found out that the graphic driver was somehow not working together, not even the manufacture driver itself..
what I did was a really long method to get it working but, I will explain half of it:

Go into safe-mode, as I assume your PC will work normally under it. Go to device manager and uninstall the graphic driver, restart and get back into safe-mode again, then disable the graphic card now. Restart the PC and enter normal mode, let windows update find the graphic driver for you.


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## OneUp03 (Jul 12, 2011)

Well...It's been happening in safe mode now, so I'm not sure what can be done. It occurs about 1min after logging into safe mode. I am pretty convinced now that it's a motherboard/gpu issue. I guess I could try reflowing the motherboard and gpu, but don't know if that would actually help or not...


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

Yeah, that sound very much like a video problem. You could try to replace the graphics card (I'm assuming it is instead of a video chip), or better yet just reflow it as you originally intended. Though do understand reflowing is a latch ditch effort, and can cause irreparable damage if not done properly.

If you want to do some testing, or at least attempt to do so, you can run MemtestG80/CL which will test your GPU/VRAM. You can also run HWMonitor and check temps and voltages to see if there's any problems there. Voltages on positive rails should never exhibit anywhere near a 5% skew. If you see anything close for, say, the +5V rail being around 4.25V or 5.25V, then you may very well have a power supply issue, and that most certainly means replacing mobo/laptop. Check BIOS too for voltage readouts if it has em available.


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