Really weird hardware/software problem on my laptop

hessodreamy

I'm by no means a technophobe, but I'm a little bit stumped on this one.

On my Sony laptop I had a copy of vista and a copy of windows 7 on another partition. I used vista for general stuff and win 7 just for recording music. Over christmas things started going weird: the display had these dotted vertical lines all over, and wouldn't boot into vista (just freezing during startup). The thing is, the bios splash screen was also a bit screwy, which suggests a hardware problem. I could, however, get into safe mode on vista, and I could get onto the windows 7 installation, so this suggests a software/drivers problem, right?

To make matters worse, the windows 7 installation then stopped working. So I did a factory restore. The first time it seemed to work, but after a few hours use it went back to it's freezing and failing to start. Subsequent attempts at restoring have frozen before they've finished.

Now I've just put on windows 7, and it kinda looks like it might be ok. However, the bios splash screen still sometimes looks screwy, like the company logo has now got all jagged edges. Basically every day I'm waiting for it to die again!

What confuses me here is how some things suggest a hardware issue (corrupted display on bios screen, multiple installations not working) and some suggest a software issue (booting OK in safe mode, ending up ok with win 7).

So win 7 is working, although I've been a bit scared to download the hardware specific drivers, and I'm working on the win 7 generic drivers.

Any suggestions as to would could be, or could have been the issue? And whether it might die again?

Myser

Sounds like it may be related to the graphics card. I have seen something similar on a DELL laptop - it was a known issue related to overheating of the graphics chip.

Have you cleaned out the air vents and fan blades of any dust recently? You can use a vacuum or an air duster cannister.

How old is the laptop? Could be the BIOS backup battery too?

Notmyrealname

2 options:
1) Your laptop is overheating or has overheated and damaged the GPU.

2) If your Sony is fitted with a nVidia 8000 series GPU then there is a manufacturing materials defect on all of those GPUs and they will all fail at some point, every single one. nVidia issued a press release about it. That means you can get it repaired under SOGA. Post the model number and we'll check if you're not sure.

danthemoneysavingman

just thinking about the vista failure part, have you run checks on your hard drive (e.g. chkdsk, error-checking thru windows tools)

cant comment on the video issues

hessodreamy

Notmyrealname wrote: »

2 options:
1) Your laptop is overheating or has overheated and damaged the GPU.

2) If your Sony is fitted with a nVidia 8000 series GPU then there is a manufacturing materials defect on all of those GPUs and they will all fail at some point, every single one. nVidia issued a press release about it. That means you can get it repaired under SOGA. Post the model number and we'll check if you're not sure.

It's an NR32S, which apparently has a 8400M nvidia card and is affected by the defect. I headed over to nvidiadefect.com and there's lots about it. I'll start looking into that. The laptop is 3 and a half years old though, so I'm not sure how much I'll get in the way of refund.

I'll get some compressed air and clean out the fan tonight.

I did recently run a chkdsk which failed to complete. This was before I got it up and running with a new installation. I'll try that again tonight.

Since installing win 7 I've been using the windows bundled drivers. Last night I installed the correct graphics driver from the sony website and, lo and behold, it failed to boot up and I had to roll back. I haven't tried the other drivers but it's certainly starting to look graphics card related.

But the knowledge that there is a graphic card defect is something pretty strong to go on!

fwor

Have you used memtest 86+ or similar to check for memory errors?

Pretty much all the symptoms you describe could be caused by RAM problems.

S0litaire

my ancient dell has the same problem.

The trick i use was to power the laptop and get it to run Memtest 86+ Till i started to see the the vertical colours and flashing blocks (graphics problem).

Once it was like that for 10 seconds i rebooted the laptop.
It then runs fine from them forward till I shut it down.
It's a known problem with Nvidia graphics card and their terrible heat-sink design.
But it would cost 4 times the worth of the laptop to replace the graphics in the dell. So these day's i only use it for an emergency server/laptop

Notmyrealname

fwor wrote: »

Have you used memtest 86+ or similar to check for memory errors?

Pretty much all the symptoms you describe could be caused by RAM problems.

Its a nVidia 8400 GPU. Its the GPU. Every single one of them ever manufactured will go faulty. Its not a case of if but when. It has sod all to do with the heatsink design and everything to do with a faulty die defective materials used in the GPU packaging material (the square bit the actual silicon is mounted in and not the box) during manufacture

When the OP uses the Windows drivers, it doesn't use full hardware acceleration so the problem is mitigated. The nVidia drivers DO so the problem is more apparent.

Go to the sony support site and see if there's any recall information. They'll replace the motherboard with one that has another 8400M on but it should see you a couple more years.

hessodreamy

Notmyrealname wrote: »

When the OP uses the Windows drivers, it doesn't use full hardware acceleration so the problem is mitigated. The nVidia drivers DO so the problem is more apparent.

This makes sense and explains why it was working in safe mode, and why new installations weren't working, but how about the disruption to the bios splash screen? Are the accelerated hardware drivers in effect at this point?

Myser

I have seen this issue on a DELL laptop which affects the BIOS splash screen too.

Although the laptop was out of warranty, for £30 they arranged for an engineer to visit and replace the motherboard.

Contact the manufacturer - you may need to be persistent about the nVidia known issue.

robmar0se

I concur - in the last week I've seen two PC's with these dotted vertical lines, both were grphics issues. In one we replaced the Nvidia 9800gt card and was sorted. The other was more similar to your particlar case. It was an HP IQ510 all-in-one job where the graphics were integrated onto the asus motherboard.

Problem was intermittant at first, we were using Vista, wherein the desktop opened with what appeared to be colours missing. After a number of other tests (memtest, chkdsk, BIOS, etc), we did a clean re-install of Vista, which did improve matters - we just got the dotted vertical lines, but when we tried to re-install the Nvidia GeForce 9300 GS drivers from either HP or Nvidia the system crashed (BSOD 0x0000050) - we couldn't get around this (no expansion slots) , new motherboards are not available - so a 4 yr old £1200 PC is ready for the dump - or breaking!