Laptop is shutting down randomly when WoW is running

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1

Hello!

I can’t play WoW anymore on my laptop, because it randomly shutdown when WoW is running foreground or background. It started one or two weeks ago. Sometimes my laptop turns off immediately after I launch the game. Mostly turns off under 10 minutes. No warnings, no error messages, nothing.

Config of my laptop:
Lenovo G500s / Intel Pentium 2020M, 8GB memory, Nvidia Geforce GT 720M, Samsung EVO 850 500GB ssd /.

I know it’s outdated now, but I could play WoW through 5 years at minimum settings (only texture is on high) without problem. Until now. I limited the fps at around 40, to prevent overheating by 100+ fps, and avoid fps drops. I lost 10 fps by every expansion in row, but still I’ve got stable 30+ fps in Battle for Azeroth.

I don’t think it’s an overheating problem. I used HWiNFO to log the temperature during gameplay: The cpu is between 60 and 65C°, the gpu is between 70 and 75C°. One time it turned off at 45C°. Of course, I have got a cooler pad. I clean the cpu fan regularly, I reapplied thermal paste on my cpu and gpu last year. Lately I have checked the paste, it was in good condition. I repasted anyway with Arctic Cooling MX-4, so not with a cheap one.

I wanted to find out all games cause shutdown, or just the WoW. I haven’t played other games for years, I’m lack of time. So I’ve installed Tomb Raider Game of the Year Edition. It runs smoothly, no shutdown after hours of playing. The cpu 60°, the gpu 70°.

Also I’ve tried these things:

  • I have installed the latest available update for Windows 10 (version 1709).
  • The Malwarebytes Anti-Malware doesn’t find any viruses or other garbage on my laptop.
  • CrystalDiskInfo says my ssd is in perfect condition. Windows’s Check Disk doesn’t find any error, too.
  • Intel CPU Diagnostic Tool says my cpu is perfect.
  • Memtest86+ doesn’t find any error on memory modules.
  • The AC adapter (20V, 3.25A, 65W) looks good, it gives 20V under stress. I have tried my thinkpad’s charger (20V, 4.5A, 90W) with it, the laptop still shutdown.
  • The latest geforce driver is the 391.35 for my gpu, Nvidia don’t support my card anymore.
  • I verified the WoW client with Battle_Net application, no error. I also deleted the contains of the cache folder.
  • The laptop’s battery died 2 years ago, then I took it out and I didn’t buy another.

Maybe one of the latest patch of WoW made my laptop incompatible. What do you think? Could you give some advice?

2

Whenever you get a problem like this, the first port of call, is to look for errors, or warnings in the windows event viewer.

Particularly look for event id 6008’s (overheating).

3

There are those kind of entries: “Error ID 6008: Unexpected shutdown.”, but the description is not longer.

4

6008 Is usually due to thermal events. Check the cooling of your PC.

5

Hi Nofertiti

That does indeed sound a whole lot like overheating, so I’d suggest going through our Checking for Overheating Components support article to get a good picture of what’s going on, and what you can do to help the situation

6

I’ve restored the C: drive from a backup what I created two years ago. WoW folder is another partition, so it’s remained untouched.

Still there is no shutdown, it looks like it’s caused by software: driver, OS update, who knows.

7

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is related to the freeze/lag issue many are having (which Blizz has said is a high priority bug, so it should be fixed soon). Basically, for many of us, the game would randomly freeze for about a second. Mostly when completiing a WQ, or unlocking an achievement, or anything that pops up in the lower middle of the screen. But also random freezes. Could be due to old lappy that it just shuts down the machine.

Error 6008 means a part is malfunctioning and caused the machine to turn off. It COULD be the aforementioned bug causing it. Most of the time it is overheating, and your parts reaching 75 degrees could cause a shutdown, depending on BIOS safety settings. My old PC had the safety shut down set at 70 degrees. When you reach 80, parts are getting damaged. I wouldn’t advise you to change bios settings, but maybe if the lappy is dusty you should clean it a bit.