M5550 - vid card dead?? need help ASAP!

hey guys i really need some help here.

my comp has a video issue, when it boots up some text is misspelled and I see what looks like artifacts on the alien head during the boot screen, when it comes time to enter my password at the windows log on screen, all I get is a black screen and I can see my mouse pointer and am able to move it around. When I have to do a hard power down, and I get the option to boot in safe mode, i can get to my desktop fine. I cannot start windows under the normal conditions.

I originally thought it was a windows vista malfunction, so thought it was an opportune time to upgrade to 7 Professional. I did a full install, reformatted the drive, I was able to get to my desktop but when I tried to download drivers for my vid card to up my resolution to normal, i got the same issue again. screen went black.

After speaking with the alienware tech rep, he said that my vid card was bad and gave me a couple websites that sell the oem cards.

my card is an Nvidia Geforce Go 7600 mxm2 slot. I CANNOT find this card for sale ANYWHERE! does anyone know what else I can put in there that will fit? Will an 8600M fit? or even work? Ive read about the 8600 card having issues with windows 7.

Thank you in advance for any and all help you can provide!

 

http://www.ztronics.com/en/m5550i-r3-series.html

they got you gpu there


I ordered a x1800 gpu from there for my m5790 from that site and i had no problems...

 

http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/Uniwill.html

Look for the m5550 model on the chart. There's also a guide on this page that you can follow to help put in the new video card.

 

ztronics was one of the sites the alienware tech told me to go, as well as laptoprepairparts.com

ztronics lists the card on the page, but it say that this product is currently not available.

i have also been to mxm-upgrage and saw the option to upgrade to the 8600M card, but i would need to downgrade to bios 2.06, which does not allow me to use 4GB of memory, which i was planning to upgrade to at the same time i change out my vid card.

lol, im stuck!


edit: well, ive looked around ebay and found many 8600m GT cards for sale for only $80. for that price i may sacrifice having the 4gb of memory in order to have functional comp. whats the best way to downgrade my bios. and will i be able to run windows 7 Pro on the downgraded version properly?

 

oven trick?

 

i came across that, i think ill try it out later today.

im middle pack on this comp knowledge, i know enough to be dangerous, and i dont know enough which makes me even more dangerous! lol

 

Make sure you check that the GPU board is lead free.

If that works, you should keep the GPU cool or it will die again.
Undervolt it, use good thermal paste. Turn up the fan speed.

 

the comp has been running really hot prior to this, so ive mcgyver'd my cooling pad up to get some more cooling.