6800 Go video card/driver problems

So basically, I was playing gta san andreas on my laptop when it froze suddenly.

I restarted the computer and now it has red lines running across the screen.

http://img99.imageshack.us/my.php?image=130120081804gb9.jpg

After it reaches the boot screen some yellow lines appear on the screen.

http://img99.imageshack.us/my.php?image=130120081806mz8.jpg

Then the screen switches off completely but windows still loads up ok while the screen is off.


I can't get anywhere past the boot screen so I tried reinstalling windows which worked but I was left with the same red lines across the screen I had before and there were now small blue lines on the wallpaper once windows loaded up.

When I tried to install the video driver after i'd installed windows again (I tried it with the dell driver from their website and modded driver 84.25 from laptopvideo2go) it would install ok but the next time I reboot I see those yellow lines again for a second and the screen switches off completely.

At the moment I've got windows installed on two separate partitions, one which works fine without any video driver installed but I can't play games, just use the net & play music etc. The other I made to try different drivers & figuree out the problem but those yellow lines come up each time & I end up reinstalling windows again but now I have no idea what to do next, can someone help??

My laptop is a Dell xps m170
2.13GHz pentium 4
Geforce 6800 Go Ultra graphics card

And I'm running xp home edition.

Hope that makes some sence, thanks

 

Maybe you've got dead pixles? Something similar happend to my Dell Inspiron 9300 which is practically the same as your XPS M170, but with mine all I got was a long vertical dotted red lines across the right side of my screen.

 

If you want to see if it's the screen (LCD panel) or the panel wiring that's the problem, try connecting an external monitor. If the problem shows up on the external, then it's either the GPU or a driver issue.

 

I tried plugging an external monitor into the laptop but I can still see the lines across the screen. I took the card & heatsinks out & they were clogged with dust so that might be part of the problem.

 

Were you overclocking?

 

Sounds like a hardware issue to me - hopefully the unclogging fixes if not, it's time for a replacement GPU

 

Probably wouldn't be wise to replace the graphics card unless somehow you can find a killer deal. Might as well buy a new laptop than drop a couple hundred bucks on an old graphics card. Yeah I would try updating the driver after you finish cleaning that thing out and see if that helps. Also, considering it's an XPS, don't you get some special awesome warranty? Or is it only for a limited time...