Video card, needs constant reseating/adjustment.

I've been having this problem for a couple days now, sometimes when I'm typing, or if I shut the laptop and move it somewhere, the video card becomes unseated, causing green artifacts, or locking up the system and making me restart it. Sometimes if I'm quick enough, applying pressure to the "gvb" area of the keyboard will reseat the video card, but it is becoming very annoying to have to do this every couple of hours. I've tried opening it up, removing the card and reseating it, is there anything else I can do? is there a way to clean the connectors before putting the card back in?

For the past couple days I've been running the laptop with the keyboard off, and when the green artifacts start showing up sometimes applying pressure to a certain area, or tilting the card slightly will help fix the problem..

Dell inspiron 8500, geforce 4 4200 go.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

Well there is nothing really there that I can think of besides maybe thermal creeping. Which will cause the card to contract or expand out of place. The reseting of the computer will bring the temp down just enough for the contacts to re-seat.

All I can think of is try and find a way of bracing the card into the slot...which could be a bad thing. If the card is replacable look for a replacement on Ebay or something, it shouldn't be that expensive.

Hope this helps.

Welcome to NBR.

 

This is very strange. If it has warranty I would use it. If it doesn't I would open it and fix it (hopefully). Strange is that by pressing you can fix the issue? Usually cards don't work that way. Maybe your LCD connector is loose or something? If you move the screen does it change then?

Cheers, and welcome to the forum!

 

Thanks for the replies, and the welcome

Thermal creeping sounds like a somewhat plausible cause, I'm starting to think that maybe there is some oxidization on the connector pins, or something preventing them from fully connecting to each other, and thermal creeping would explain why when the computer is completely cold, i need to slightly tilt the card to get it to connect, and when it is hot tilting no longer works, in that case i usually have to apply pressure somewhere else to get it to register..

How would i go about cleaning the connector part? I'm hearing both a dry clean erasor, and contact cleaner will work, but i dont know where to get contact cleaner, or how much it costs.. and whether those are the correct solutions because the connectors are different than that of a desktop pc.

The computer is about 2.5 years old, and its not under warranty anymore.

 

A dry erase marker is a bad idea....it could cause a static-electric charge which could fry the board.

 

Ha!, no sorry, i meant a normal erasor. just not wet... not like i have any wet erasors...