video card problems

So last night I was reading a book on the internet, nothing strenuous on the gpu at all, and all of a sudden, I get little red square shapes in various spots around the screen, it all goes black and comes back a few times while an error message is flashing in the corner. I didn't get to see the message very well, it said something about a kernel, because it goes black right away and only flashes back for a quick second. After doing this a few times, the computer restarts. 3 times it did this, then I managed to get it started in safe mode and backed up all my pictures to an external (just in case).

Today the taskbar on the bottom has washed out contrast, but the main desktop picture seems to be fine. I'm wondering if the video card is on it's last legs? I'm also wondering if I can go ahead and update it from the NVidia website just in case that might be an issue? I seem to remember something about it being supposed to get the drivers from Asus instead, but I don't know if that's the reality or not.

It's a G73 with NVidia GTX 460M, windows 64bit, driver version 261.14

Given that it's about 2 years old now and there's no service center anywhere near me really. What's my best option if the video card is dying, send it away for a new video card or buy a new computer?

And to think I got warcraft time for Mother's day, gonna have to hold off adding it I guess.

Thank you for any assistance you can offer me.

 

I say your video card is screwed. That said if you have an external monitor run that. If same problem then likely the GPU if looks fine then display.

The "red" things I think are artifacts and that is GPU. The G73's I think have GPU issues.

On the other hand if just a thermal issue can you clean the dust inside?

If you send in for repairs I believe a MoBo swap. It does get expensive. What other specs do you have?

The cost of a MoBo swap could make replacement the best option on a 2 year old unit. But not knowing the cost I can't really say. $500 I might $1000 no way.

 

I don't have an external monitor unfortunately.

We did a dust clean up just a little while ago, the gpu was overheating and causing the whole system to shut down, I'm thinking that may have caused some damage maybe.

Other specs,
I think 6gb RAM (no idea what speed ram)
1TB HD broken into 2 500's and partitioned in a bad configuration.
i7 (not sure what speed though either)
I hate to think of computer shopping again, it's so hard to find anything decent here, I even had to order this one.

 

I bought two G73-JH with the AMD card. The first G73. My brother is having your problem also.

I do not know if thermal paste can be done on that model? I can speculate that if it could it might help. Thermal paste breaks down over time. If a repaste is possible it both might help and been the issue. But I do remember back in the day when the internal components themselves separated or maybe more correct; micro fractured. That is my main concern as I think that would make the MoBo toast.

Just to make you feel better I doubt your dust cleaning caused the problem. Already overheating.

Someone who knows please post.

Good luck.

 

Oops, reread what I wrote and realized it was ambiguously written. I think the overheating may have caused some issues, not the dust cleaning. It's been running very cool and quiet since then, so the artifacts popping up and the restarting was completely out of the blue last night.

 

Artifacts aren't a good sign, but they could be caused by an updated or corrupt graphics driver stack. You wouldn't be getting kernel messages about a defective LCD so don't bother with an external monitor.