8103 and graphics corruption

My Travelmate 8103 sometimes, out of the blue (no pun intended) goes to BSOD, claiming that the ATI driver ran into some problems. This is usually preceded by graphics corruption, such as displayed in the screenshot (Windows XP logon screen). The shot is of a crappy quality, but that's because it was taken with a cell phone cam, which in turn is because this malfunction is very hard if not impossible to reproduce by any certain steps. It just happens, and has no relation to how hot the machine is running or what has been done with it. I'm running the stock VGA drivers, as no newer ones are available from Acer. I haven't tried any unofficial drivers yet..

Has any of you run into something like this?

 

Video corruption can be caused by a few things:

1. Video drivers corrupt - To solve, reload video drivers, or try booting into safe mode to see if it's ok here. If so, it's either your driver or some software causing a conflict.

2. The video card is defective - I have see a defective video card cause video corruption. This would require a systemboard change. The only thing that makes me thing it's not a video card problem is the fact that the background is not corrupt.

3. The LCD is defective - I have also seen LCD cause video corruption. But like point #2, it's werid that the background is not corrupt as well. If it is the LCD, you just need a new one.

For point #1, the best step is to boot into safe mode and see if you still get the corruption or not. If you don't, then you have localized it to a software problem. In safe mode, the standard drivers are not loaded, just plain old VGA and no software is loaded, just what's needed by the OS to run.

If the system is running ok, reboot the system & hit F8 for the boot menu. Select Boot in VGA Mode. This will load the system with all the software, but use only the VGA drivers. This will narrow it down further to either software loaded or specifically the display drivers. If it's ok, then you know it's specifically the drivers and you can go from there to fix.

Try the display drivers from the Acer site (after you have un-installed the ones already in your system). If this doesn't help, try the ATI Catalyst drivers from the ATI website (I assume you have an ATI x700 GPU) and mod it with the ATI Modder utility from www.DriverHeaven.net as this will allow the drivers from the ATI site to work on a notebook.

http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/

Good Luck!

-Vb-

 

I sent the laptop for repair, and it came back in two weeks. The shipping note with it didn't say what was done with it, so I mailed the support. They said that the mainboard had been changed. Well, I used the laptop with clean install for few hours, and the gfx went bad again and shortly after that the computer froze totally. This time I managed to have a real digicam nearby.. If they really did change the board, it's interesting that noone else seems to have this problem, or at least is not whining about it in any forums.





I think I should've just done this :buyIBM:

Edit: as a side note, interestingly the laptop left with bios 3c17, and came back with 3c17. Either they had old mainboards in the shelves, the new ones are not equipped with 3c22 which has been out some time now, or, they just didn't do anything to the laptop.

 

You never know with service calls...sometimes the tech does the old, well it's not happening for me thing. Just call them and request a fix again. If they give you any crap, file a complaint with the BBB Online.