sudden graphics corruption - help!

LeanWolf · Aug 5, 2004, 09:39 AM

My laptop, a Dell Inspiron 8100 with the Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB, has worked flawlessly for over two years, until now. Last night, in the middle of some 3D modelling work the display just went haywire (see pic)!
I'd been using the latest Omegas(2.5.58) for over a week without a problem. Rebooting didn't help so I uninstalled them and rebooted into safe mode to run driver cleaner; that's when I got scared, no driver loaded and still the corruption (see pic).
I installed the older Omegas(2.5.52) that i'd had on before and gave up for the night. Today when I booted up everything looked fine, but then slowly as i surfed more and more pixels started to corrupt. I think it may have to do with the temp of the graphics card. I checked the tv-out but it was also corrupted, which meant it wasn't my screen. Everything else works perfectly, programs and such.
So give it to me straight, my graphics card is fried, right? Seems stupid to trash a perfectly good laptop because of one component. I've heard you can mod these dells by buying a new graphics card from dell, after much persuasion... Anyone know if i can put something better than the 7500 instead? I'll head over to the Dell forums after posting this and see what i can learn.
Any and all help/advice greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

Geminiwave · Aug 5, 2004, 10:33 AM

wow...

im so sorry man...if its doing that in safemode well.......lets just say its gunna be hard to get the broom out of that cards ass...

its pretty much FUBARed.

Talk to Dell, see what they can do. is the laptop still under warrenty? RMA IT!!! (backup the harddrive first though) I dont know what else to tell you.

LeanWolf · Aug 6, 2004, 07:41 AM

well i've been to the dell forums and it seems that this is normal behaviour for mobility radeon 7500 cards over two years old!

so not so much a dell problem as an ATI problem, i'd say.
anyway, i've ordered a mobilty radeon 9000 card to replace it. i wanted the nVidia quadro4 700go GL until i got the price (over 400$

) At least the dude was nice and gave me no hassles about upgrading laptops; he even recommended a site that shows you how to do the switch (that i'd already found)

anyway thanks for all the helpful advice

I googled 'remove broomstick graphicscard ass' but that didn't help...

Louiemaster · Aug 29, 2004, 09:36 AM

glad you got your problem worked out and btw you can play doom 3 on the m9000 if u wanted too of course.

Geminiwave · Sep 11, 2004, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeanWolf

well i've been to the dell forums and it seems that this is normal behaviour for mobility radeon 7500 cards over two years old!

so not so much a dell problem as an ATI problem, i'd say.
anyway, i've ordered a mobilty radeon 9000 card to replace it. i wanted the nVidia quadro4 700go GL until i got the price (over 400$

) At least the dude was nice and gave me no hassles about upgrading laptops; he even recommended a site that shows you how to do the switch (that i'd already found)

anyway thanks for all the helpful advice

I googled 'remove broomstick graphicscard ass' but that didn't help...

Yeah google isnt too helpful for that...I Think you need to sacrifice pigeons to the computer gods to get that one fixed.

or just buy a M9000. that always clears things up

btw you can play doom3 on a Rage256...i tried it on my friends laptop..of course its basically devoid of textures and shit but it was really cool! We got it running a few times but now it just says that the hardware is incompatible :'(

CeDe · Sep 20, 2004, 04:09 PM

I´m having exactly the same problem with my 2,5 year old Inspiron8100 and Radeon7500. Can you tell me the link to the site with the description for replacing the video card ?

Geminiwave · Sep 20, 2004, 04:53 PM

yeah actually it'd be nice to know. one of my friends was asking about replacing his vid card because its giving up on him and I told him that i had heard of people who could do it.

wanna spread the link to all of us?

LeanWolf · Sep 26, 2004, 02:45 PM

oh hi! sorry i haven't checked this thread since i got the 9000, checking the new graphics..

what's weird is that the 1st card they sent worked for two days and died, the replacement they sent has been working great ever since.

anyway the instructions and all kinds of goodies for Dell laptops can be found at http://www.bay-wolf.com/

you can find a link there to a program that controls the fans on dell laptops
i've been using it for years and it's really well done

Samir · Sep 27, 2004, 03:31 PM

LeanWolf:

Finaly somebody that has same issue as i do!!! I've tryed googleing anything about this for month, and nothing! I had same problem as yours, on my Radeon Mobility 9000. It started when i installed new Omega drivers (based on 4.7 or 4.8 i don't remember) I suspected broken hardware, and even started thinking to sell my laptop for 50$!!! Well, until i tried to roll back to ati's orginal Catalyst (version 4.3 & 4.5, both tried). Rolling back to these driver versions geve me so much trouble (reinstalling Windows

at the end).

What driver version are you using?!?

LeanWolf · Sep 27, 2004, 06:32 PM

Samir:
my problem had nothing to do with drivers, it was my old mobility 7500.
i was using Omega 4.8 and I still am, i haven't tried the new 4.9 yet.
everything works fine with my 9000, no overlay/playback problems that many others are complaining about.

tahart · Jun 7, 2005, 06:09 AM

I'm having the same problem with an "ATI Mobility Radeon 9700" in my fairly new ProStar notebook (http://www.pro-star.com). The display gradually gets more and more corrupted, especially if I'm scrolling in IE or some other app. It used to be okay if I turned off Hardware Acceleration, but now that doesn't help. Anybody else have info about this problem? The latest ATI drivers for my notebook are from 03/2004.
Too much heat seems like a plausible cause, especially with the notebook running a 3.4 Ghz P4 with Prescott and Hyperthreading...
I have an RMA number but am too busy to send it in at the moment.

tahart · Jun 7, 2005, 10:16 AM

Well now it's gone completely south. I cannot see anything after the initial POST screen, can't even boot off a floppy or see anything in BIOS. Why does ATI suck so bad?

yoda133113 · Jun 8, 2005, 10:40 AM

Just like LeanWolf you seem to have a bad card if you can't even see stuff in bios, but i wouldn't say ATI is bad because your card is bad (some hardware from any big company is going to be bad if you are that 1 then it stinks to be you, my last laptop from gateway had that issue it stunk, but they got me a new one). Don't wait to send it in, if you can't use it, then you might as well send it in before you need to use it and can't. ATI is definately better in the mobile category, so I wouldn't knock them because your's is messed up, the next one should work just fine, so go for it and enjoy the returned product

TE|Cole · Jul 6, 2005, 07:38 AM

I have had the same issue on my 9600 mobility. Basically I fried my chip from overclocking and not cleaning the heatsink often enough. The card was totally fired. I took the lappy a part. stripped it down to the mobo. took a pen and tried to break it, since it was garbage any way. I took the end of a pen with the cap on, and put it right on the core chip. I then punched the pen about ten times, as hard as I could. I couldn't break it

. I did manage to chip off two capacitors from the die. Out of morbid curiosity, i hooked the video cable back on, and booted. Alas! It has worked trouble free ever since! lol. great story of dumb luck. My emahcines cooling solution for this chip sucks. I recommend that anyone gaming on a m68xx that overclocks should put a better heatsink on.

yoda133113 · Jul 6, 2005, 09:12 PM

you are one LUCKY FOOL cole, chipping of ONE capacitor on my PSone completely shut it off.

kuro · Jul 8, 2005, 11:57 AM

I am having a similar problem to this on my Samsung x10 laptop with a Nvidia GeForce 4 440 go 32m.
It was working fine untill I started it up one day to see a corrupted desktop like the pictured ones above. I have tried reinstalling windows and updating drivers etc but nothing seems to be helping.
Sometimes i when i switch the laptop on i get nothing but a black screen all though i can hear it starting up, and i have to keep switching it on and off untill i get any display at all.

When it does load i usually get 2 found new hardwear notices for i think the vga and the geforce 4 440 go.
I also get a few error reports saying:
your computer has recovered from a serious error,
there was an error probably caused by "Nvidia GeForce 4 400 go" which then sends me to nvidias driver page (which is of course no use if your using a geforce go card)

Does this sound like i need a new graphics card or something? Any help would be greatly appreciated