Hello,

I am playing LOTRO on a Dell Precision M70 laptop:
256MB NVIDIA Graphics Card
Intel (R) Pentium (R) M Processor 2.13 GHZ
2GB RAM

I get random freezes while I am playing the game, Sometimes I can play for 10 hours on highest setting, somtimes I cant even get five minutes on the lowest. How do I solve this?

Are you sure that it is a hardware issue, and not driver-related?

The problem can be with any number of things:

- buggy video/mobo drivers (make sure that your device manager is showing all of the drivers without any "unknown devices" or drivers with yellow exclamation mark)
- overheating (due to buggy fan-control, clogged heatsinks, faulty fans, badly assembled rigs...)
- overclocked CPU/VGA (even slightest overclocking of VGA can lead to severe system instability, while CPU can take allot of extra load)
- RAM incompatibility (not all RAM modules are universally compatible with every CPU or mobo)
- lack of power (CPU demands allot of power.. I can actually see the voltage drop and hear my fans slow down as CPU load climbs up to 100%. It is a single-core CPU and it just drains the 550W PSU)
- 3rd party device (any added card or drive that is failing can make your system crumble and crush)

That is just off the top off my head...

Eh to be perfectly honest Im not that great with computers so I dont know exactly how to tackle the options and expliot the real problem.

For starters, you should do this:

- Update windows (they are already updated if you haven't disabled automatic update service)

- Download and install latest DirectX. (Validation required)

- Update all drivers. The most important are mobo and video drivers.. only place you can update them is from Dell's support site.

- If you feel brave enough, update your BIOS. That is potentially dangerous because if it fails, it would probably render your laptop useless until the BIOS chip is replaced (and paid for).

Also, some temperature monitoring software is advisable.

P.S. I don't know about Dell, but I do know one tip for HP laptops. Plug in the mains before you start the game. When in battery mode, it runs on single core.. or downclocks itself.. not sure, but the result is the same: low performance.