Suspected Bad Graphics Card - Solutions?

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ElectroPulse

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 19, 2013
Messages
129
Hello, all!

A friend brought her laptop to me with a problem... Whenever Windows starts, the screen freezes with some colored artifacts across the screen, then a few seconds later it bluescreens.

I tried running the startup repair utility to try restoring to a past restore point. When it boots into this, it freezes at the point that the cursor shows up, and has colored artifacts across the screen.

I tried using the repair utility on a Windows install disc we had laying around, to see if the installed repair was somehow corrupted... Same thing.

I tried using a PartedMagic bootable image (using UBCD) to see if it was how Windows handled the video, but even that froze (and the screen's artifacts were even worse). Here's a picture of the screen:

31642ls.jpg


I tried plugging in an external display (what I actually took the picture of), and it shows the same thing as the built-in screen.

I've run the "Video Memory stress Test CE" on the UBCD to see if that gave any errors, and it didn't find any errors.

At this point, I'm assuming it's a video card problem... I hate to have to tell her there's nothing I can do about it, but I don't know if there is. Does anyone have recommendations of what to try?

Also, I kept track of a couple of the bluescreen error codes: One was 0x0000003B, and the other was 0x0000007F, in case that helps any. So far, googling them hasn't helped me much...

Thanks in advance!
ElectroPulse
 
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It's dead, Jim.

I had a laptop that did the same thing. I had found out too late that the exhaust fans on the bottom had died.

Accept the reality and break the bad news to her. It might give her comfort to know that she can take the hard drives out so she won't actually lose anything but the hardware.
 
The heatsink might be completely plugged up, fan is broken, or the heatsink became unmounted from the chip.
 
chibe said:
The heatsink might be completely plugged up, fan is broken, or the heatsink became unmounted from the chip.
Click to expand...

I agree with this, you or someone else is going to have to take it apart to see but a friend of mine repairs laptops and has shown me pictures of some of the suff that gets stuck in laptops. Its a lot more likely to happen if she has animals that shed a lot.

To me the fact that you get a display at all is a good sign, windows likely has some sort of temp monitoring on the laptop so its forcing shut-off and its likely due to a non-fuctioning heatsnk/fan or one that isn't properly mounted most likely on the gpu.
 
Thanks for the replies, all!

ssnyder28 said:
I agree with this, you or someone else is going to have to take it apart to see but a friend of mine repairs laptops and has shown me pictures of some of the suff that gets stuck in laptops. Its a lot more likely to happen if she has animals that shed a lot.

To me the fact that you get a display at all is a good sign, windows likely has some sort of temp monitoring on the laptop so its forcing shut-off and its likely due to a non-fuctioning heatsnk/fan or one that isn't properly mounted most likely on the gpu.
Click to expand...

Hmm... I'll need to try that. I'll probably take it apart this evening.

One other detail I forgot to mention: There are no issues in the bios screen, or any kind of CLI. Only when a desktop environment is starting to load are there issues.
 
There is no hope for that, even If MR.CLEAN himself come and cleaned it, it would still
not help that problem one bit. You might as well hit ebay for another motherboard and be
done with it. Let's just say it was clogged with dust, hair or even carpet fibers. If it did get to hot, It would just freeze up, or at most. It might would blue screen. The fact that it keeps running shows
that it is not getting too hot, because it does not lock up.
 
Auburn_Tigers said:
There is no hope for that, even If MR.CLEAN himself come and cleaned it, it would still
not help that problem one bit. You might as well hit ebay for another motherboard and be
done with it. Let's just say it was clogged with dust, hair or even carpet fibers. If it did get to hot, It would just freeze up, or at most. It might would blue screen. The fact that it keeps running shows
that it is not getting too hot, because it does not lock up.
Click to expand...

And if it does lock up (which it does), then there's still hope?
 
Have you tried it in safe mode?

I seen a laptop do this once. Bios showed up fine, but soon as it hit windows and the video drivers loaded, everything went to hell. It did not freeze up though, and when started in safe mode everything looked fine.
Turns out the GPU was fried, I ended up disabling it in the device manager so it wouldn't auto install drivers, and it made the laptop usable again, but anything 3d wouldn't work, and if you installed the drivers again it would instantly screw up. A replacement board was pretty close to the price of a new laptop so the owner didn't want to replace it.
 
FUBAR'd........sorry to say. DOA.:eek:

I'd recommend looking at powernotebooks.com..............they probably sell the best built, most reliable laptops/notebooks on the market.....all custom built.

Two of my kids have them and they are [H]ard on their stuff....flawless performance now two plus years down the road......excellent US support, too.
 
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