W520/Q2000M docked monitors suddenly deactivate

[davidhbrown]

I've recently been having an odd problem with my two docked monitors suddenly deactivating. All windows show up on my W520's screen which I have running as one of three monitors. When I go back to Windows 7's screen resolution CP, the monitors appear but are deactivated. I can reactivate them and they remember their arrangement. Don't have to reboot or anything.

Thermal issue? SpeedFan 4.45 is reporting temperatures around 73C for all dies. Under BIOS control, the fan seems to speed up only when it reports 75C. I started up TPFanControl (the special W520 version from June 6) and under "Smart Mode Cool," it's definitely wanting things cooler... temps are heading down toward 62C before slowing down from state 7 to state 3. I guess I'll let TPFanControl stay in charge for a while and see what happens.

Any other ideas? I'm not playing games, running complex statistical models in R which tasks just one CPU core. Graphics are pretty basic; no animation or anything that would really hammer the GPU.

Thanks

[davidhbrown]

Well, it does seem to have been time to blow out the dust... did so and idle temps are running between 55C and 60C per SpeedFan which is at least 5C better than previously. Still can not find any clues in the event viewer as to what actually happened.