My laptop screen keeps going off! Solutions?

[oneala]

PC system : Asus TUF GAMING (FX705DT-AU092T)
After a given period of time, my laptop screen just goes off. After pressing the power button, my system boots up and works normally, till it eventually goes off again.

I found someone experiencing something similar here :
https://askubuntu.com/questions/823124/screen-randomly-turning-off

But I would like to know more about what is happening above (I am not sure what the commands in the link is doing.) Any help will be really appreciated. Just trying to learn.
Thank you.

[TheFu]

Battery saving mode?
Screen saver or power settings to put the system to suspend mode? Hibernate mode?

Depending on the release, check out the "Ubuntu Desktop Guide" power management settings. There are desktop guides for some of the other DEs too.

To get better help, always specify the exact Ubuntu release you are running
AND
the DE being used.

[oneala]

I am running on Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS, DE is GNOME 3.36.8

I don't think it is battery saving mode, or hibernate mode, because the screen doesn't shut down 'cleanly' There is occasionally some static on the screen before it shuts down (somethimes with noise too). Nonetheless I will check out the desktop guide's power management settings, and get back.

[rsteinmetz70112]

Are you running on battery or on line power when it shuts down.

[oneala]

It doesn't seem to make difference whether I am on battery or connected to line power, both times It goes off. I noticed a pattern that if I move my laptop abruptly (say moving it from one table to a coffee table) it goes off too. Could it be something related to hardware?

[TheFu]

Could it be something related to hardware?

Yes. Could be a lose electrical connection. Try re-seating all of those and cleaning out all the dust from inside the case.

[Autodave]

Check the RAM chips: remove them, blow out any dust, reinstall.

[rsteinmetz70112]

Make sure the battery is firmly in place, check the connections and clean the contacts.

[Frogs Hair]

Is the computer over heating prior to shutdown ?

[oneala]

yes, it tends to get really hot at times. This is just when I am doing basic stuff like surfing, and editing documents. Will try to cleaning and reseating, as suggested and will then update.

[oneala]

Update.. This seems to only be happening when I am on Ubuntu, when i boot into Windows, this does not happen. I am uncertain how to diagnose this..

[oneala]

Oh and I also cleared out dust, and checked connections.. No change

[oneala]

So I have dusted and cleaned up the contact points and even the fan, but still when I log-in to Ubuntu, my screen again shuts down. On the other habd when I boot into Windows, this doesn't happen (In all the time I was using Win, it only went off once for some update, as compared to 6+ times on Ubuntu).

[Frogs Hair]

If it is overheating I suspect there was some sort of problem with the Ubuntu installation. If you run the following command in the terminal it should display what process may be causing the problem. Post output here via copy&paste
top

[amanchesterman]

I don't want to complicate matters but I had the same problem (without the overheating) on my laptop. I've tracked it down to DPMS, which apparently stands for 'display power management signalling' and is often built into hardware.

I run Xubuntu and there are settings to disable the screensaver, not blank the screen etc. -- but on my machine these are ignored and the screen goes blank after a few minutes, whether it's running on battery or mains power. But the XFCE power manager has an option to enable 'presentation mode', and when that is selected DPMS is disabled and the screen stays on.

I don't know if your DE has a similar option? It might be worth exploring anyway, besides tackling the overheating of course.

[oneala]

Thanks for sharing your experience @amanchesterman, but i have Ubuntu 20.04 which runs on Gnome and I am currently unable to find much about DPMS, though I will keep trying. Also!! The same thing has also happened just now on my system when I tried to boot it from Windows 10! it shut off, and when I powered it back on I got the message :"Unexpected Kernal mode trap".
So I am kind of concerned that it is something related to the hardware bit :/

[oneala]

@FrogsHair, below is the result of top:




top - 16:22:40 up 1 min, 1 user, load average: 2.10, 1.01, 0.39
Tasks: 304 total, 1 running, 303 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 13.0 us, 1.2 sy, 0.0 ni, 85.2 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.6 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 7832.3 total, 4760.9 free, 1403.1 used, 1668.3 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 2048.0 total, 2048.0 free, 0.0 used. 6142.1 avail Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2082 ro 20 0 1256876 225688 41988 S 77.1 2.8 0:08.72 snap-store
1616 ro 20 0 1459892 93952 62748 S 4.7 1.2 0:04.45 Xorg
1807 ro 20 0 5294268 294220 121708 S 4.0 3.7 0:09.58 gnome-shell
2752 ro 20 0 2200844 113004 77736 S 3.0 1.4 0:07.80 skypeforlinux
2887 ro 20 0 6192916 159492 110180 S 2.7 2.0 0:10.02 skypeforlinux
top - 16:22:44 up 1 min, 1 user, load average: 2.10, 1.01, 0.39
Tasks: 304 total, 2 running, 302 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 2.7 us, 1.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 96.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.2 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 7832.3 total, 4753.3 free, 1408.9 used, 1670.1 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 2048.0 total, 2048.0 free, 0.0 used. 6136.3 avail Mem

[MAFoElffen]

I can confirm that the defualt seetings have DPMS on by default...


xset s off -dpms

That will disable DPMS and turn off screen blanking. If it is using an zorg.conf file, like the ones in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/, there are two sections (Monitor, Extensions) where you can disable or turn off DPMS.

[bietduoc]

You can check ram and cpu again, sometimes there are errors that cause overheating