Vostro 1400 - Dying GPU?

Just recently my 1400 (with Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS) has been acting up, and it's out of warranty.

A couple of days ago I booted the laptop up and it froze at the Windows 7 loading screen with blue vertical streaks across the screen. I restarted and ran through some system recovery tool and the machine booted fine.

Sometimes the laptop will boot and not show anything on the laptop screen, but I know it is working (since the hard drive light continues blinking). The screen has it's backlight on, but no image shows up. I usually connect an external monitor that shows content on the screen, but again with streaks of various color appearing across the image.

There are also times where the laptop will boot fine and run fine for a while, but then crash with the screen going blank. Sometimes it will return with a "Nvidia driver stopped functioning, but recovered."

I've tried formatting and reloading Windows, and now the laptop screen won't show up with anything when booted up. I have to attach an external monitor to get an image, that usually has streaks going across it or various discolored areas. I installed the Nvidia drivers, but that didn't work because Windows' device manager has "stopped the device due to reported problems (code 43)." This error usually indicates the device has failed and Windows can't start it.

My guess is that this is a GPU failure. Is this the likely reason for these issues?

What are my options to resolve this?

Thanks for any help.

 

What GPU is it?

 

Nvidia Geforce 8400M GS. Updated my opening post with this info.

 

The 8400 is very prone to failure. Dell has extended the warranty to 2 years on your system.

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/...ate-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx

 

Even with the extension, I am still out of warranty by about 6 months since the laptop was bought mid-2007.

 

Is the GPU removable?

You might want to try this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=385973

Or this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=437683

Still, you might want to call dell and double check, maybe they will fix it.

 

I have a Vostro 1400 with the exact same issue. I have cooked it (the circuitboard with the GPU on it, after disassembling the entire laptop) in an oven which revives it for about 1.5 months. The GPU just died for the 3rd time today, and I am sick of fixing it, so I am just going to buy an e6410 to replace it, since it seems to be the most similar.