Any hope for my Acer Aspire 5680?

The nVidia GeForce 7600 decided to take a dive a couple of months ago. After running Sim City 4 for a while, it froze up and when I tried to restart it, the screen turned into a runny mess of vertical lines and refused to boot properly. The GPU most likely overheated and called it a day.

The nvddklm.sys driver will not load under any circumstance, no matter what version drivers I install. I even went so far as to remove any and all traces of the old drivers and installed new ones. No dice. The screen problem started exactly the same time that the 7600 clocked out.

I've heard of people temporarily resurrecting their dead video cards with the "stick it in the oven and let the spice.....ahem.....solder flow" trick. But after seeing this post, I'm not even sure if my vid card's the removable MXM type. I haven't completely opened the laptop up, so I'm not all that sure as to where the GPU is or how to best remove it. If it can be removed.

Any suggestions on how to approach this issue? Everything else works in tip top shape and the computer still boots and runs with standard vga drivers and an external monitor attached. I'd hate to just chuck a laptop that has so many salvageable parts.

 

If the notebooks boots with no problem and works with standard VGA driver the GPU is not dead. Clean install of Windows would be the only way to ensure that it's not a driver problem.
That said someone I know had to send a notebook back to Acer because the GPU wouldn't boot with any ATI driver but it worked with standard VGA driver.
It turned out that it actually was defective but not that defective that it wouldn't run at all- just enough not to run properly
If it's the case with your notebook you're probably left with office machine for the reminder of its life.

 

I don't think it's gonna be sent back to Acer any time soon, seeing as it's about 3 1/2 years old and long beyond any warranty period. The Acer originally came with XP and it's also Vista compatible, but I've been running 7 on it for months with no problems.

I forgot to mention that on a couple of occasions, the screen came back on with all of the graphics problems sorted (no lines at bios screen) and it even took a driver update, but any time an application called for a good amount of 3D processing, the laptop freezes and goes back to it's semi-dead state. It happened once after switching out hard drives and again during regular use (with the aid of a CRT monitor).

I could take another stab at a clean install of Windows XP and see how it goes. I won't expect any miracles, though.

 

Neither would I. It doesn't have to be XP BTW- of Win 7 worked fine just do a clean Win 7 install. If it still fails to accept nVidia driver and work with it I think it's wasted.

 

Hi XL2007 > I have a Aspire 5680 and I need a VGA driver that my Windows 7 64bit will recognize for the GE Force 7600 video card. Right now it will not accept the XP driver or the 32 bit vista. I can't track down the 64 bit vista driver for the VGA at this point if there is one.

What VGA driver did you install in the first place to get your video card workingo on Windows 7? Do you have a copy of this driver? I REALLY need something here, any help you can give here is MUCH appreciated! If you have that driver handy perhaps it can be FTPed somewhere? I'd even be willing to pay $10 or something for the efforts if asked.

Also, I don't know how to private message on this site, so hoping you will see this, or another member with PM messages will get this to you.

Thanks!
Aspireing One ~

email: [email protected]

 

Have you checked nVidia website- because this looks like a proper driver.

 

Mr. NBR Moderator - Can you please send me your home address so I can come kiss you?

Thanks! Worked!