Sometimes my laptop screen flickers on and off and then gets stuck!,

[Shaggy]

ok
so i have a sony vaio grt716s, the one with a 17" screen

anyway, recently its being a little werid
once in a while the screen will flicker on and off(turns off for 1 second) and then back on again.
When it does this, the mouse pointer then has like a square with purple/pink colours around it (looks as if the video card has issues?)

Anyway, so basically then the computer gets stuck, and needs to be restarted (by pressing down on the power switch for a second or two).


Also is there any thing to help speed up my computer besides a reformat?
its starting to slow down now!!

its a 2.8GHZ with 1GB RAM!!! windows xp

[kee-lo_]

Sounds like it could be overheating

what tempretures does mobilemeter give you?

[Twisted-Rizla]

Also is there any thing to help speed up my computer besides a reformat?
its starting to slow down now!! 

You can run a disc clean up and then run a defrag. Also, make sure your anti spyware software is up-to-date.

[Shaggy]

temperature is 63
hdd temperature is 56
charge rate is 0.08w
frequency is 2.83ghz