laptop shuts down after SL login...help!

Hi Everyone,
I just got a new laptop, installed Second Life, and after a second of logging in, the screen promptly went completely black, the computer locked up and wouldn't respond. After about 30 seconds it shut down and restarted! I am wondering if this is a problem with my graphics card or something specific to Second Life?

I have a Gateway laptop with :

Centrino Pentium M at 2.1 Ghz
512 mb memory
NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 Graphics Card (256mb)

I have McAfee but I set the firewall to accept Second Life per instructions on the SL knowledgebase.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

One possibility is that the laptop is overheating.

Another possibility is that the graphics chipset is drawing more power than the power-supply expects and so it does a shutdown.

SL dissipates more GPU power than just about any other program. Unfortunately, whether it is excess heat or excess current, there is little you can do unless you know of others with the exact same box that can run SL in which case you might try to tell Gateway your system is out of specification and they should replace it. I wouldn't be real hopeful about that, though.

It's not the power supply - I have the same problem and similar graphic's card so I upgrade the power supply thinking it to be the issue. No good, with plenty of extra power I was having the same issues. Something more on the side of this particular card and SL.

Did you try running a different game or something like 3dMark?
If it is overheating, or the power supply it would crash on any other heavy game.
If not, there's something else teh matter...

Thanks everyone who responded, I will try the 3Dmark test and report back with the results.

I came searching on the forums as in the last week my Dell XPS M170 has just started overheating (and yeah, it is overheating and how!) and turning itself off when using SL. It hasn't done this before, ever and I use it a heck of a lot for SL and have done for a year now. I've also just heard from another user of the same laptop that hers is doing the same.

It looks to me like something's wrong with the client, causing the computer to churn even more than it normally does with SL and this is especially affecting laptops for the obvious heat reasons you always get with them

Update: I downloaded 3dmark and tried to run a benchmark test, I got the same result...screen went black and computer locked up then shut down. Pretty sure it's a video card issue, but before I send this in for service, does anyone know of a similar game that I could download (free) to test the the graphics card one more time (preferably an OpenGL type game)?

Thanks, Jules

I don't know if World of Warcraft is OpenGL or DirectX, but either one should exercise the same hardware. You can get a free 10 day trial version at their website.

overheating, get a new computer dude, and not a laptop this time