laptop crashes mostly when playing sims!!!

fishing-girl

i have not had problems before last week.when playing sims and occasionally in surfing etc the screen just freezes starts pixelating then it just crashes, on reboot the screen comes up a pale grey with very fine vertical multi coloured lines and does not progress into start up i may have to reboot a few times until i get a proper reboot.
i have done hardware tests, system restore, upgrade drivers, spy malware stuff . but still have the same problems. any suggestions?

PS ITS A DELL XPSM1330.
ive just googled it and there are gpu issues

exup

it could be a few things. are you running windows XP ?
Try updating your drivers - video and sound drivers.
Also see that you have the latest direct X version installed.

Also laptops are notorious for overheating when playing games as the amount of cooling fans and heatsinks is small compared to a PC gaming tower. Make sure it has good air circulation because if it overheats it will shut down.

Your graphic card also may be overheating - which is for same reason as above .

The only other thing is maybe slow down sound acceleration in the direct X setup
if you go to START > RUN and type in dxdiag
you should see the direct x sound acceleration settings in there. just use the slider to move the accelration down. if the sound starts happening out of synch with the video turn it back up again.