Need Help Dell Inspiron 9300

i have a dell inspiron 9300
pentium M 2ghz processor
nvidia geforce 6800 go
1 gig ram

i've had the laptop for 3 years if not more
all of a sudden im playing a game computer freezes, and screen turns into a puzzle keeping the image in the background.

i shut the computer off, tried turning it back on right away but the screen turns on but stays black, ecu seems to be running and fans are going.
so i shut it down and try again in an hour, it boots up fine.

I updated video drivers, installed atitool, computer was running at normal temp.. then after 20 mins same thing happens. and ever since I cannot get an image. the computer turns on but the screen just stays black(checked connection and seemed fine). tried plugging into external screen, nothing. im starting to think my graphics card or somehting messed up

any help would be great
thanks nick

 

How hot is your computer feel? This sounds like sign of heat. Where is the computer when it is on? Is it on your lap or table?

 

If it is hot to you, then I would buy just a can of that compressed air and blow it in every crack to see if that helps. There are fans on your computer, but dust and junk start to stick on them. That is why the air might help.

 

i let computer completly cool down before starting up and even have it on a cooling board on a table, have had it over heat once before, and didnt look the same, any other suggestions, i have clean it and maintained it quite well

 

The same thing is happening to my 9300 at the moment. I was playing WoW, then the game artifacted and froze. I restarted the computer with the boot screen and Windows loading screen having artifacts followed by a blank screen. I manage to get video working by booting into Safe Mode by hitting F8 but it it's only a quick fix. As far as I can tell, I think my video card is dying or burnt out.

 

exactly what happened to me, playing WoW and shut off, started back up in safety mode after an hour, then after 20 mins same thing happened and havent been able to get an image, computer starts, screen lights up but stays black, i think im getting an XPS M1730

 

The exact same thing happened to me. This may or may not apply to you, but here's what I figured out based on what I've read and what happened in my case. It's not a heat issue. The laptop doesn't get that hot in 20 minutes. It turns out that the problem is the motherboard, or more specifically, the power jack. It's weird, you'd think that the computer would shut off or start to run off of the battery, but that's what happened. The power jack started to come loose when someone tripped over the power cord, and over time, that's what happened.

You'd start the computer, go for about 20 minutes, and then the screen would freeze. I found out that I could also induce those same symptoms just by jiggling the power plug behind the laptop. I was sure that that was the cause, since I replaced every other part with a spare.

Well, in any case, it's been 2 months since your problem started. Were you able to get it fixed? Did you end up getting a new computer instead? I'm really curious, and would love to hear.

Hope that helped =/

 

Do you have an external monitor to test the video output? Definitely blast the fan out though because it is amazing how much stuff will build up over time.