Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 Ultra Problems

A couple weeks ago I put my laptop (a Dell XPS M170) beside my bed cause I had to use the MC Alarm to get up cause I had to be up at like 4 AM and I don't do well with the beep beep alarms. Anyway, I plugged it in and sat it on the floor on top of (for lack of anything better) two Arizona tallboy cans laid longways (the feet sat on these) with a chess set box underneath (in case it happened to slip off one of the cans). I also left the screen partway up. Well of course I left it on overnight for the alarm, but when I got up to go to the bathroom, I checked it and it was froze. The screen was off and it was unresponsive to the mouse or keys. I held the power button until it turned off then turned it back on. The Dell BIOS screen had lines on it and the WinXP boot screen did too (although slightly different and wider). After the boot screen went away, the lines stayed on the screen went lenthwise and corrupted. Then after about 5 seconds the screen shut off but the computer stayed on. I turned it off and back on again. Same lines on the BIOS (oh yea they don't stay on the screen as they would if the screen itself was screwed), but after the BIOS I was presented with a screen saying "Windows did not start successfully...yada yada." I selected safe mode and it booted with no problems. No lines or anything on the login screen or anything in safe mode. I uninstalled the vid card drivers then restarted. Same lines on the boot screen and BIOS screen, but it booted into Windows normally. I reinstalled the vid card drivers from my USB backup of them and restarted. No lines on any screen, Windows booted fine. I first noticed problems when I went to play a video file. About a minute in the screen and sound froze and I had to reboot with the power button. Then when I tried to play Halo, my save would load just fine then almost right after starting to play I got a distorted pink and green game image (not to mention it freezing and me having to restart). FS2k4 even froze (but with no weird colors). Well after a couple days it started to act fine. I could play vids and games with no problems, so I thought everything was cool. Then about four days ago, I went to play Halo and after loading the save it froze again exactly as it did before. I hard rebooted again and guess what greeted me? The same lines on the screen. I booted into safe mode again and repeated what I did before to solve the problem but it didn't work. Last night, I selected Last Known Good Config from that "Windows did not start successfully" menu. It loaded Windows fine (thank goodness), but running on the basic PNP drivers at 800x600. Videos play fine with no problems. Only thing is now when I install the Nvidia drivers, it boots into Windows fine but doesn't recognize them as being installed (except for the fact that I don't get a "New Hardware Found" prompt at startup). I can boot into Windows normally now but I have no choice but to run in 8x6 (well I could run in other things up to 1600x1200 but it stretches the picture, fyi with the Nvidia drivers installed it should be able to go up all the way to 1920x1200 which is native for the 17'' screen).

Here are pictures of the boot and BIOS screens, as well as the desktop:

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/18wosmodshop/HPIM0461.jpg

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/18wosmodshop/HPIM0455.jpg

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/18wosmodshop/HPIM0458.jpg

 

When you see artifacting present on the BIOS its a pretty good bet the card is now starting to fail. Your other symptoms seem to support this as well. At least this has been my experience. Sorry for the bad news.

 

That's what I figured. I was wanting to upgrade to the 7800 GTX anyway. Guess this is as good of a time as any lol. I'm still trying to figure out how it would suddenly go out. I mean it was working perfectly fine before that night. Does anyone know where I can get another 6800 or 7800 other than eBay?

 

Besides Dell themselves or eBay, you can try Google shopping. Usually you can turn up quite a few hits for these super-obscure Internet shops that may or may not be trustworthy. In some rare cases Amazon will also have someone selling these things.

 

Well after doing some research, I found out that it's more expensive to get a refurbished one from Dell than it is to get a new one on eBay. What I've also come to realize is that it would actually be cheaper or about the same price to buy a whole nother complete working M170 with the 7800 GTX on eBay than it would be to buy another 6800 or 7800 and pay to have it installed (if it was a desktop I'd put it in myself, but my experience with laptops is limited). I may go that route instead.