weird video artifacts suddenly popping up

[Tikker]

In the last couple of days, I've had some video artifacts starting to show up on my laptop (dell inspiron 9400, C2D 2.13ghz, 2gb ram, geforce go 7900 GS, xp MCE 2k5)

nothing new has been installed, nothing uninstalled

looking at gpu temps, they're well within the normal operating range. Originally, it would just glitch while playing Madden 08, but now it's happening even sitting at desktop

it doesn't happen all the time, but often enough that it's very irritating

bios has been updated, old video drivers removed, and new installed (actually were the same version, but redownloaded)

any thoughts before I ghost it, and re-install?

[Tikker]

hrm, i tried to upload and attach a pic, but it doesn't seem to show

[Dimuza]

the only time i had any issues with artifacts that really wasn't heat, I had a MB that had decided to not enjoy two matched RAM sticks - but only with one game (oblivion).

asuming these are happening all the time, making no difference what youre doing....<?> are you running anything like active desktop or anything? anything that could cause a change to your environment based on an outside source?

[Tikker]

nope

some quick googling shows 2 other people with similar symptoms and turned out to be bad ram on the video card

luckily, I'm still in warranty coverage if it turns out to be hardware

[Dimuza]

man, google is good (usually) for tracking down the odd techno-problem, ain't it?

if it does anhything different, post about it, will you? I'd just be interested to see if it clears up or gets worse

[Gidan]

Do you happen to have any way to monitor the temp of your video card. There is chance that your card is starting to overheat.

[Tikker]

that was my first thought Gidan, it does it sometimes while just idling at the desktop (ie zero stress on the gpu)

looking at gpu temps, they're well within the normal operating range. Originally, it would just glitch while playing Madden 08, but now it's happening even sitting at desktop

[Gidan]

Go me for not reading. I will do a bit of research and check with some hardware guys I know and see if I can get any other ideas for you.

[Tikker]

the Dell support guy seemed to think it was the LCD screen itself, but that seems just retarded

video card? probably
software conflict? probably not, but possibly

[Gidan]

I would lean toward it being a video card issue. I highly doubt its the LCD itself especially since the type of things your seeing are not what you would see if your LCD were going. If you have any access at all, you could try taking a can of air to it just in case. Not sure what your laptop looks like, but I know my vid card has a dedicated fan that I can blow air into and it cleans it out a bit.

[10sun]

connect a regular monitor to it to rule out the LCD being the issue because it sounds like you have a dying video card.

[Tikker]

[Tikker]

here's some more weirdness to add

hooked up a 2nd lcd monitor(nvidia dualview)

the blue lines are not generated on the 2nd monitor

if I drag something from the laptop screen, and move it to the 2nd monitor, the blue lines go with it....

if I force it to redraw the window, the blue lines do not reappear
w t f

swap to clone mode, and the blue lines are never generated, even after gaming a bit

I'm kind of really at a loss now

[Tikker]

last test found this


artifacts are only produced at 1920x1200 and 1920x1080 resolutions(native resolution of the lcd is 1920x1200)

everything below that seems to work just fine


and afaik, this kind of indicates it probably is the ram on the vid card that's dying, yes?

[Diekan]

Stop using Windows.

[Tikker]

it's got nothing to do with windows you cock monkey

[Diekan]

How stupid are you? That was sarcasm you dried up cum stain.

Definitions of sarcasm on the Web:

* witty language used to convey insults or scorn; "he used sarcasm to upset his opponent"; "irony is wasted on the stupid"; "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own"--Jonathan Swift
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

[Dimuza]

Poor Harrison. He's allergic to pussy

[Gidan]

That does sound like ram on vid card going. I personally have never found a program to actually test the vid card ram. Sounds to me like you may be spending a good chunk of time with dell in the next week or two.

[Tikker]

started the process last night, so next step is sending in the laptop for repair

[Tossica]

started the process last night, so next step is sending in the laptop for repair

Always buy the at home service for laptops. They are notorious pieces of shit no matter who the manufacturer is. The turn around is like 2 days on at home. Call for service, they come out the next day or 1 day later at most and fix it onsite.

[Tikker]

we'll see
I kind of suspect that's not an option in this neck of the woods tho

[Tikker]

finally got a chance to get the laptop sent back on this past friday

got it back in good working order last night

that's pretty quick turn around actually

they even cleaned it for me, heh

[Gidan]

Did they tell you what the problem was or at least what they replaced?

[Tikker]

they replaced the video card


BUT

they did something really wrong, it just blew up again

woot?
going back out for repair tomorrow, wuwu

on initial powerup, everything looked great, but then all of a sudden the artifacts came back

then about 8 seconds later, the LCD just stopped displaying signal (it's still getting power, the backlight is on, but screen is black)

plug in an external monitor and I can do stuff again, but artifacts are still there (it's different looking artifacts this time, vertical lines, instead of horizontal)

i actually pulled it apart, reseated the card, reseated the connection to the lcd, etc but it's still fucked

yay for warranty I guess