Computer screen turns black when playing games

[zerodymebaldwin]

Well i have a Gateway FX p-7805u with a Intel core dueo cpu p8400 @ 2.26 GHz 4 GB ddr3 memory and when i first got this computer brand new in 2009 it was amazing i would play video games like wow and rift and swtor at like 120 FPS but out of no where my screen starts to turn black while playing video games and so i looked some into it and they said with the gateway fx the cpu cooling gel sucks so i replaced that with nice quicksilver and it still does it so then i looked more into it and it says that downloading msi afterburn and selling your core mhz down lower would fix it and it does but only sort of what it does and when i do that my screen turns blank and then a error saysing your nvlddmkm driver has recovered and when i play games now i can barly hit 25 fps and lets all admit that is very *censored* when playing games with sparklys stuff and what not popping everywhere, so i started thinking what i did to anger my computer like this and i remember i did a bunch of misch stuff on my comptuer but i was like 17 soooo ehhh but i had like 3 down anti viruses on my computer the microsoft essentions kasperky and gamershield and i constly did full scanns but then i remmeber i down loaded some thing called uhhh advanced system care to quickly get rid of all my lil internet browsying history of the naughty stuff. i click the deep and i remmeber it changing my core values of a bunch of stuff to "help" my computer, and i think that where my problem lies maybe? and yes i did do system restart and compelely removed my video card even with the driver fusion and it still does it... the only other thing i can think of is maybe a power problem ? but i wouldn't mind getting some advice... sorry for the long read!!!!

[Calum]

More than likely a faulty graphics chip, the mobile Nvidia 8/9 series which you have are notorious for this especially in laptops with less than perfect cooling which allows them to get very hot.
My advice would be firstly to clean the heatsink and fan thoroughly, secondly try a fresh install of Windows with the latest Nvidia drivers.  Trying to troubleshoot an installation that has had a lot of random tweaks and settings applied by a dubious program isn't going to go far.  If you still have the same problem with a fresh install, it's likely the graphics chip is toast.