old computer - G1 video card fried?

I have an Asus G1 that I bought 3 years ago (mainly because of reviews on this forum!). It has an NVidia GeForce Go 7700 in it. It's been a nearly perfect laptop until this past year or so when I installed Vista and began having some problems with the computer freezing during games. Yesterday I had logged into World of Warcraft for about 2 minutes when the screen went all crazy and jagged and it froze. When I restarted, it went into a reboot loop. I started it in Safe Mode, downloaded a newer version of the video card driver, and installed it. After a couple more tries I got it to boot up normally, but just after it loaded my desktop it began to do crazy video things - the screen had huge jagged pieces, polygons, crazy colors, etc. I moved the mouse around and the screen went black. I rebooted and now it will only show a greyish screen. I tried pressing F8 as it booted but I get nothing.

Am I totally screwed? I am not very technical but if there's any way to salvage this, I am willing to try. I would also welcome advice on how to save my hard drive contents (most of it is backed up but not all).

And finally, if my computer is dead, is there a current comparable Asus model that is good for gaming? I really enjoyed this computer while it lasted. Thanks everyone for your advice and patience.

 

Well, I have managed to boot it into Safe Mode after a few hours and that's as good as it gets. I believe it is definitely a problem with the video card itself. When I try to boot it normally I just get a blank screen and then blue screen loop.
At least I can back everything up. I have done more research and it appears that the GPU is known to be defective and there have been lawsuits and everything. I got nowhere asking for help from Newegg, and I doubt Asus is going to bother with it, so I guess I am stuck looking for a new laptop. I will be avoiding both Asus and Nvidia this time around.

 

Hmm, this may not be helpful, but we have had a whole lot of HP DV series notebooks in for chipset repair due in large part to the Nvidia based chipsets that they use.

This link helps to explain it a little, though it is a bit hard for me to understand everything:

Why nvidia's chips are defective - The Inquirer

I don't know if this article is 100% accurate, but it appears that this could be a problem with the nvidia GPU silicon solder balls breaking from the chip body. The article talks about the glue that normally holds the GPU in place and how its melting temperature was below spec which has caused many problems for notebook owners.

This could be unrelated, but there isn't really a fix (well I've heard a possible fix (if it's completely irrecoverably dead and you have nothing to lose), is to heat the silicon GPU...the only things is I could see this going wrong very easily, so would highly recommend a bit more research before attempting this).

 

The G1's 7700 doesn't suffer from the solder issue. That began with the 8000-series, and mainly with the 8600m GT in the Asus G1s. If you feel comfortable opening your laptop and checking for loose cables, do that. Otherwise, the G1 is 4-5 years old, which is pretty ancient for a gaming laptop. Avoiding a brand because your laptop died is a pretty silly move. You might as well avoid Intel because of the Pentium fiasco, and Microsoft because of Windows ME. I can probably list something for every brand you can think of.

The current Asus gaming line is the G51 and G73.

 

DailyTech - Dell, HP Lists Reveal Defective NVIDIA Mobile GPUs

Seems this might be a problem with GPU's going back even to the 6000 series; I get the impression that it was thought initially that the G80 & even the G90 series would be free from this problem but were later found not to be.

I would hope (perhaps Naively) that laptops would be built to last at least 5 years, lasting longer if cared for (The battery wont last, but the hardware should, perhaps you might need to replace the harddisk drive in that time, but the rest of the parts should last).

 

Figuring out which NVIDIA GPUs are defective -- it's a lot -- Engadget

I was also under the impression that earlier chips were defective. That article includes the Go 7700. I have had the computer barely over 3 years, just weeks past the extended warranty period (had I bought it, which I didn't). I was hoping that a $1700+ laptop would last a bit longer than that. I knew it wouldn't last forever, but I didn't want to have to trash it so soon...I had a behemoth "gaming" Clevo from 2002 that might still be running had I not lost the power adaptor - and it had far more problems during its time, and far cheaper/crappier hardware. I wouldn't mind if this was something I could replace, but it appears to be a pretty much impossible repair Oh well, live and learn.

 

Ouch. I had that happen to my behemoth gaming clevo/alienware back in christmas 06. Geforce ultra 6800 burnt out. (It was replaceable, but out of stock and the 1 year warranty I had ran out...two weeks before it died).


Now I'm on a G1 too.


My G1's fan has been acting up for ..half a year now at least (making a loud noise like it's either struggling or something's being hit by it).


...well crap. I don't need to hear this. (Though I've been relatively lucky. Besides the fan and the rubber feet coming off...and one of those silver things on the side for the hinges coming off too , this guy has lasted for the second half of college).


I'm planning on replacing my G1 with the Envy14 ('cause I want some battery life with my gaming and switchable graphics with a radeon 5650 and i5 sounds like it'll work).


for comparable Asus. G51...G53 whenever it shows up (does it exist yet?). Stuff like that for a replacement for the G1 series.

There's the G71/73 stuff too..that's where the G2 series went to I think (the 17inch version).

 

I wouldn't write it off completely. We have a repair agent that we send laptops back to that can repair these chipset problems for around $250NZ (roughly $170US - apparently it needs the investment on their part of a $50,000 machine initially). The issue is that we sometimes get the same laptop again with the same problem; but in some other cases they simply replace the chipset.

Why not try to talk to ASUS to get a quote on the repair and mention that your chipset falls into Nvidia's faulty chipset timeline, be adamant but honest in your descriptions, perhaps they might already have the equipment to fix this common problem fairly cheaply.