Damaged onboard memory, a bios mod to reduce it and possibly disable bad part?

I received Amilo Xa2528 laptop today. It does boot and function otherwise well except for the graphics. Image has artifact patterns but with Windows XP's generic driver the system works fine, artifacts are not increasing. This laptop has GeForce 8600M -based GPU which is known for its unreliability, but in this case I suspect bad ram. When I installed drivers the problems got worse and XP did hang.

Is there a way to disable the bad part of memory and make the machine to work, perhaps a bios mod?

EDIT: Here is a screenshot, artifact patterns are now different when booting into safe mode by pressing F8:

http://lolled.net/kuvaus2/out.php?i=6588_DSCN8618.JPG

 

I don't understand why you would suspect bad RAM... Have you got anything on mind? I would say it's the graphics card. (I don't mean to sound mean or anything...)

Though to test out your RAM theory, which the more and more I think about it makes a little bit of sense, you could remove one of the modules and see if that makes a difference, if there is only one in there, well, replace it with another one and see if that works. If not, then graphics card, for sure. Or even you don't need to remove anything, just download the program below, burn it to a disc and run it, that will soon determine whether it's bad RAM.

Memtest86.com - Memory Diagnostic

 

Yeah sorry, I meant VRAM of the GPU but I did type it wrong, RAM sticks both work fine

I don't know exactly what kind of problems the famous Nvidia 8600M failure displays, if it is bad VRAM I guess there's nothing I can do, but if it is the basic symptom of the GPU chip becoming detached maybe I could attempt to reflow it with a heat gun (which I ordered today btw).

This is how it looks like when starting Windows Vista installation:

http://lolled.net/kuvaus2/out.php?i=6622_artifaktii.jpg

 

The bad GPU has bad packaging materials that cause the electrical connections, over time, to warp and eventually break. What you are seeing is a symptom of that problem...the GPU is on its way out.

When you do not have the vendor drivers installed, Windows falls back to a generic driver than (from what I understand) is a CPU based renderer that just passes the final output through the GPU.

If the GPU memory is bad, there isn't much you can do to reduce or eliminate the problem. You can't really just reprogram it to use half the memory! Not to mention you don't even know which memory chips are bad let alone what you would have to do in order to "turn them off."

I'd say that if you just got that machine, get rid of it. Return to sender.

 

If it is the GPU which has become partially detached, I am actually hoping to be able to fix it. There are many videos in YouTube where users fix their computer by reflowing the chip back, an example:

YouTube - Everex XT5300T XT5000T Laptop Repair Guide (Turns on, Black Screen, nVidia)

However in my case the display is not completedly blank which makes me wonder if it is really the VRAM that is damaged and not the chip itself. I don't know if there is a way to tell the difference in such cases. There are many stories about Apple's Macbook Pro machines affected by this and images are matching the symptoms I have.

Inquirer confirms apple macbook pros have nvidia bad bump material- The Inquirer

"If you recall, Nvidia has been in the spotlight all summer for failing chips due to bad materials and thermal stress. The end result is that bumps, the tiny balls of solder that hold a chip to the green printed circuit board it sits on, crack, and the computer it is in dies"

And in the YouTube video that dude is reflowing the chip back.

EDIT: This laptop what I am inspecting is just a project, so I will give it a try anyways

 

Gotcha. Just don't like to hear about people getting ripped off . Solder reflow might just work, but it is a lot of work to prep the board.

 

Well I actually have already made an auction about that machine, selling as defect and suspecting GPU failure, but if no one has made bid when I receive that heat gun I will try and see what happens

This is how the screen looks after installing Nvidia driver:

http://lolled.net/kuvaus2/out.php?i=6623_garble.jpg

Very similar what you see when you Google Macbook Pro -problems:

MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz Logic Board Failure? (pictures) - MacRumors Forums

Also, this thread contains pictures and same kind of symptoms as with my machine:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=90875

 

Okay, update to this. I received the heat gun and did some heating and atleast for now the picture is artifact free. I'll have to test further. As a noob, I did make one error by upping the heat setting to quickly and/or I did keep the heat gun too long for one place as the hole where the battery hooks up did melt little and now the battery cannot be placed in. It was however only tiny melting and it can be fixed but still, not good. The heat gun which I bought is a bit more powerful than what they use in YouTube-videos (2000W vs. 1200W)

But it seems that this laptop, like many others, have detaches Nvidia chip.

http://lolled.net/kuvaus2/out.php?i=6914_fujitsu.jpg
http://lolled.net/kuvaus2/out.php?i=6922_noarti.jpg

 

I should say talking about the heat gun, anyone in the US near a Harbor Freight Tools, they generally sell a 1500 watt heat gun for 10 bucks or so. Ive used the heck out of myne.