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Video Card Memory Corruption

B

bk12321

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 14, 2005
Messages
1,063
Dell Inspiron E1705
1.83ghz Intel Core Duo
1 gb ram
100gb hard drive
Nvidia GO 7900gs 256mb

First off, I have owned this Dell Inspiron E1705 notebook since about 2 years ago. It gave me no problems, until last November the video card finally went (it had been showing symptoms for some time). It was out of warranty, but Dell replaced it because I had called them about it while it had been under warranty. It was determined to be a memory problem with the video card.

Now, 7 months later, the brand new card they put in is going bad. Actually, the other day I couldn't even get this laptop to turn on. Right now as i'm typing, there are blue rectangles and crap all over my screen, and they come and go. I checked it with the built in diagnostics program from BIOS, and its definitely another video card memory problem. Eventually (i'm assuming), like last time, the video card will finally die and I won't be able to use my computer at all.

Could something be causing this problem, or am I just getting bad video cards every time? I just wasn't sure if something like a faulty driver could cause memory corruption over time.

Either way, now I have to buy a video card for it since its a year out of warranty, so should I buy the same card (if its not an underlying issue with the computer), or if it is, another card instead of this one?
 
Grab Rivatuner and drop your core and memory clocks by 25-50MHz. If no artifacts are shown, increase them slowly or play it safe and keep them there.
 
DuffMan72 said:
Grab Rivatuner and drop your core and memory clocks by 25-50MHz. If no artifacts are shown, increase them slowly or play it safe and keep them there.
Click to expand...

Okay heres the issue.

1) Windows will NOT boot up with ANY video drivers installed, whether its Nvidia Forceware drivers or the standard drivers windows installs when it boots up and finds an unknown card. Therefore I can only boot up once, with the drivers uninstalled, and if my computer restarts I have to boot into safe mode, uninstall video drivers, and restart and it will boot up normally (with tons and tons of artifacts everywhere).

2) Tried messing with clock speeds, and since like I said before the driver can NOT be installed when I start windows up normally, I cant install Forceware drivers which are needed for both rivatuner and coolbits. I finally found a program which would do it with the standard drivers, and I tried it, and it randomly gives me errors saying it can't find any drivers/card installed and to try again or to restart. I got it to work ONCE, and immediately after I underclocked my screen blacked out, then about 5 seconds later a few artifacts (just random ascii characters) appeared on it, and then nothing. So i'm assuming that same thing is going to happen if I try to underclock or mess with anything again.

I don't know what to do lol. I know its overheating though because when I left my computer off for about 30 minutes and started it up again, there were about 50-75% less artifacts, but the artifacts will not completely go away.
 
bump to see if anybody else knows how I can go about this situation
 
okay well since apparently no one else has any ideas, I have a question

if I were to replace this broken 7900GS with an ATI x1300, do you think I would see similar problems?

I have gone through TWO 7900GS's now, so I don't want to buy a third one just to have it do the same thing as the other 2. All I want to do is run Counter Strike 1.6, which im sure the x1300 would be able to do.

It's a lesser card, so i'm sure its operating temperature wont reach temperatures that the 7900 would, but maybe im wrong.
 
bk12321 said:
okay well since apparently no one else has any ideas, I have a question

if I were to replace this broken 7900GS with an ATI x1300, do you think I would see similar problems?

I have gone through TWO 7900GS's now, so I don't want to buy a third one just to have it do the same thing as the other 2. All I want to do is run Counter Strike 1.6, which im sure the x1300 would be able to do.

It's a lesser card, so i'm sure its operating temperature wont reach temperatures that the 7900 would, but maybe im wrong.
Click to expand...

Bump for a response, because I plan on trying to get this computer fixed asap.

If I were to replace it with a lesser card, should I see problems like I did with the last 2 cards??? If so, I probably won't do it.
 
ADRENALIN_2099 said:
the ATI x1300 is VERY inferior compared to the 7900GS. are you willing to love with that?
Click to expand...

Well, I just want something that is going to work for more than 3 months before it randomly craps out and I completely lose access to my only computer.

The only game I really play is Counter-Strike 1.6 anyways, so i'm sure it would be able to handle that, but anything more I highly doubt it.
 
I'd suggest a laptop cooler. Just do a search for Notebook coolers and you'll see many choices.
I'm using a Antec Notebook Cooler S. Just chose one that seems to fit your typical use.
 
I would take it apart and refit the cooling/paste onto the gfx chipset.
Also clean the system of dust, it may just be blocked airflow thats the problem.
 
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