Captain Spaulding
Active Member
- Reaction score
- 45
- Location
- Chichester, West Sussex, UK
Just wanted to get some 2nd opinions on a problem I have with a customers machine freezing and now the display is bad.
Spec:
Dell Inspiron 531
Nvidia GeForce 8300 GS
Customer said it was freezing when running occasionally, sometimes when scrolling to the bottom of a window the window became fragmented, sometimes green then going black.
I take a look and these are some symptoms I notice when in Vista:
- Sometimes the screen flashes really quick a few times then freezes completely
- sometimes the mouse starts moving really slow then everything freezes
- sometimes the window you are working on becomes pixilated
- it froze during boot when the Dell logo appeared once
- when it asks to start windows normally then the whole screen is pushed to the left about 20% before booting
Steps I took:
Reseated RAM and cleaned connection – no change
booted with just 1 RAM stick, then the other, used different sockets - no change
booted into safe mode - still freezes after a few mins
Reseated video card and cleaned contacts – no change
Check temperatures with D7 – temps are OK, all fans running fine
blew dust out – no change
physical check on video card and motherboard for capacitor damage (blown/ bulging) – no evidence of problems
booted with puppy linux - screen froze after about 3 mins nothing could be clicked but mouse pointer still moved, same on 2nd boot
Now after rebooting again bits of text letters and small bits of the Dell logo are missing. Puppy linux just boots with lines across the screen, now nothing is readable.
Windows boots but everything is large and resolution seems to be very poor:
http://flic.kr/p/aPSWHr
I'm thinking the video card is shot? Just wanted a 2nd opinion.
There were a few other things I noticed when windows was loading OK:
- Sometimes the keyboard was not recognised on boot
- Some non plug and play devices showed errors in device manager
- Null device not present
- Creative AC3 software decoder
- Security Processor Loader
Thanks.
Spec:
Dell Inspiron 531
Nvidia GeForce 8300 GS
Customer said it was freezing when running occasionally, sometimes when scrolling to the bottom of a window the window became fragmented, sometimes green then going black.
I take a look and these are some symptoms I notice when in Vista:
- Sometimes the screen flashes really quick a few times then freezes completely
- sometimes the mouse starts moving really slow then everything freezes
- sometimes the window you are working on becomes pixilated
- it froze during boot when the Dell logo appeared once
- when it asks to start windows normally then the whole screen is pushed to the left about 20% before booting
Steps I took:
Reseated RAM and cleaned connection – no change
booted with just 1 RAM stick, then the other, used different sockets - no change
booted into safe mode - still freezes after a few mins
Reseated video card and cleaned contacts – no change
Check temperatures with D7 – temps are OK, all fans running fine
blew dust out – no change
physical check on video card and motherboard for capacitor damage (blown/ bulging) – no evidence of problems
booted with puppy linux - screen froze after about 3 mins nothing could be clicked but mouse pointer still moved, same on 2nd boot
Now after rebooting again bits of text letters and small bits of the Dell logo are missing. Puppy linux just boots with lines across the screen, now nothing is readable.
Windows boots but everything is large and resolution seems to be very poor:
http://flic.kr/p/aPSWHr
I'm thinking the video card is shot? Just wanted a 2nd opinion.
There were a few other things I noticed when windows was loading OK:
- Sometimes the keyboard was not recognised on boot
- Some non plug and play devices showed errors in device manager
- Null device not present
- Creative AC3 software decoder
- Security Processor Loader
Thanks.
