Flashing Black Screen only on SL

Twice now I have had this problem. I log into SL and after a minute or two, sometimes 10 minutes, I see a bunch of random colors on the screen, then my screen goes black (like the monitor turns off), then it comes back to SL, perfectly normal. But then it does the same thing about every 10 seconds, or when i try to move the mouse (touchpad). I've never had this problem with any other games. When I restart, my computer is normal.....meaning the screen doesn't continue to flash on and off.

Dell XPS M170 Laptop
Windowx XP
1 GB RAM
2.0 GHz
Nvidia GeForce Go 7800 GTX 256 MB

TMS

I'm afraid your laptop is getting hot. Make sure you are not using your laptop on some soft surface or even on your lap. Air needs to circulate to keep things as cool at possible inside the computer...........the ventlation holes are mostly on the bottem.

SL taxes even the best computer with it's CPU and graphics calculations to get all you see to your monitor.......that causes your CPU and GPU to work very hard. Those things get hot when that happens. Laptops are very prone to overheating (and desktops being larger with more air to circulate are less prone to it..........though they, too, will overheat.

You might look into one of those "cool pads" I've seen advertised to help cool your laptop.

That's what I was afraid of.....my laptop does get pretty hot, especially when using fullscreen applications. But the first time this happened, it was on a fan base, with the fan on.....I guess it doesn't keep it cool enough. I wonder if there's an especially good one that really does keep a laptop cool. I have a Targus one. It's ok, but doesn't keep it that cool.

When it happened again now, I wasn't using the fan...so it probably was too hot, even though I only had the laptop on for about 8 minutes, lol.

Thanks,
TMS