Graphics card in laptop

mrmitchell78

Hi all,

I've been having trouble with the graphics card in my laptop - basically one morning I switched it on to find that my display had switched into six smaller displays with a black horizontal bar to the right of the centre of the screen.

Could this be an overheated card? I have tried BIOS etc. Thanks!

fwor

It's possible but IMO unlikely that the graphics card/chipset has failed - generally they give no output or electrical noise if they fail.

Assuming that you really are getting six separate displays (e.g. do you get a mouse pointer moving in each "copy" of the display?) have you checked the screen resolution setting to make sure that it makes sense? Try some other settings to see if that changes anything.

It may also be worth connecting an external monitor to the VGA output to see if you have the same on that.

Incidentally, your laptop ~may~ have a separate graphics card, but that's relatively rare - most laptops have the graphics chipset integrated onto the motherboard. So if it's failed, the whole board typically needs to be replaced.