Hey guys!
I know there's a ton of these posts regarding driver issues on the internet already, but I like to think i checked a ton of them and tried all the suggested solutions. Right now I'm kind of at my wits end, which is why I'm posting here. About two months ago, give or take, my laptop's screen suddenly started flashing while playing a game (turning all green / red / black) and eventually it returned to the desktop and I got the something along the following error: display driver stopped responding and has recovered.I thought that was it for now, but ever since it keeps happening while i'm 10-20 minutes into a game, and sometimes even when watching youtube/streams or when browsing the internet.
The first thing I did was delete my current drivers and download the latest versions (Intel(R) HD Graphics Family and NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M), figuring that would solve the issue but it didn't. I also made sure all my windows updates were done. Since nothing helped I tried to do a factory settings reset, which returned the laptop (Dell XPS L702X, bought in 2011) to the state it was when I first got it. Since this didn't seem to help either, I'm starting to guess it's just a hardware issue? I've also tried updating my BIOS and other updates through the dell website (customed to my laptop), aswell as a customized Intel driver. Can it be that a windows update causes this issue? Because before I started testing the laptop after the factory settings reset I first let the Windows updater run all the important and optional updates. Oh, one last thing, when I'm playing these games and I keep my hand next to the air vent the heat is nearly unbareable, can this be related to a overheating issue? I made sure all the air vents are dust free and ran Speccy (I think) a while ago and the temperatures were between 80 and 90 degrees celsius (176-194 degrees Fahrenheit if the converter is right).
Anyways, i guess this seems like a dying video card, or can it simply be overheating? And if it is overheating will a simple solution like a cooling pad be a possible solution? Not sure if this is all clear because i'm not that into the tech kind of stuff, if u have any questions feel free to ask and thanks in advance! I can post a DxDiag if that helps.