Acer TM3200 Display Problem

hello everyone,
i've been having this problem with my laptop over the last few weeks and have not been able to fix it on my own. It happened while gaming (playing BF2). Everything was playing fine, but then all of a sudden my screen went to hell (see attached picture). At first the lines on my screen were permanently there, but now they come and go randomly (which is weird).

From the different forums i've asked around, all signs point to my gfx card dying. Here's my laptop's specs:

*Acer TravelMate 3200
*Intel Pentium M @ 1.5 Ghz (Intel i855GME)
*512 MB DDR-SDRAM PC-2700 (166 MHz) [DDR-333]
*Ati Mobility Radeon 9700 - 64 MB

I have had the laptop since early 2004, and have definitely used it to the max. I do not plan on investing in this laptop anymore to fix it as it's an outdated system anyways and i'd rather put that money towards a new system.

Here's what I have already tried:

1) Updated Ati drivers = updated sucessfully but did not solve the problem.

2) Installed RivaTuner to try and underclock the card = graphics card does not have any underclocking capabilities, so increasing voltage to card/underclocking is not an option.

3) Opened up the laptop and cleaned out dust = at first I thought it was an overheating issue, but the problem persisted. HWMonitor indicates normal operating temperatures.

Here are a few things to note:

1) The garbled images register in screen shots, so it's not an LCD/VGA out problem. Since the garbled image is showing up in screen shots, this points to a problem with the video memory, right?

2) The second attached screenshot shows how only certain spots on my screen were affected. This is not always the case, but how can some parts of my screen be fine, and the other half bad?


Any advice would be appreciated! To tell you the truth, I still plan on buying a new laptop to replace this one. I still want to make sure i'm not getting rid of a working laptop because of something I could have easily fixed.

Thanks!!

 

sorry, I am bumping this because I haven't received any advice on this one....anyone??!?

 

Your video memory is damaged.

 

any way to fix that or is it a physically broken piece of hardware?

 

Provided that what TRF-Inferno said is true, it's a permanent condition. It sounds like a reasonable explanation to me.

Does it do this when you're in BIOS? Or when you're on the windows log on page?

 

well it hasn't occured recently because I have not done anything on my computer that would require use of the graphics card. I have stopped gaming and now I only use my laptop for web browsing, word, msn, etc.

But yes, when the problem first started, it would show up randomly everywhere: BIOS, windows startup, windows... sometimes everything would look perfectly fine except for a few icons on my desktop which were discolored and shows the vertical lines through them.

Is there any way to test the card for physical damage, or is there something I should look for when I open up the laptop? (burn marks, cracks, etc.)

 

It does sound like your graphics card is dying. Sorry, I really don't know what to tell you. It's beyond my knowledge base.

 

hey, no worries! thanks for the replies though!