P-6860FX 8800M GTS dying/dead?

I'll make this short and sweet:

Was playing a game, 6860FX froze, color was distorted on LCD too, so I hard boot. BIOS screen had vertical lines at far right, tons of horizontal lines right before the Windows 7 splash screen. Desktop was distorted, everything was extremely slow. Uninstalled current drivers, restarted, Windows 7 installs default VGA driver, high quality videos are choppy, games won't start.

Windows does not recognize the 8800M GTS (Error code 43). Error message every time I go to the Nvidia Control Panel saying "the display is not connected to an NVIDIA GPU". I have tried numereous driver uninstalls and installs with no luck (videos still choppy and no games will start) using cominbation of Windows uninstall and Driver Sweeper.

Video card shot? Do I need a new motherboard? Is it worth it to get it repaired on eBay?

Thanks

 

You need a new board, the video card's shot. At this point, you might be better off just getting a new laptop. I may be interested in purchasing the dead laptop off you though. I could use it for some mods.

 

You could ask a qualified pro BGA repair company to solder a more powerful g92b core onto your board.

It would be 200$ max and potentially give you a more powerful future proof laptop.

 

I had a place on ebay quote me $115 with free shipping to fix it. They said as long as I haven't had it fixed before they have a 95% repair rate with P-6860FX's. If it ends up being too much then I'll shoot you a PM mbarry.

niffcreature, what repair company would you recommend? Also, you recommend having them put a more powerful video card in if they end up having to replace my current card?

Thanks

 

I believe you could ask the company if they had any problem with using a different g92 rev B core BGA in place of your original which is probably the g92-700-a1.

Even if you didn't know much about all the g92 cores you could make the assertion that a g92-751-b1 BGA could be used in place of a g92-700-a1 core.

This is essentially what I sent you in PM. Please post back if you decide to do this!

 

You could also try baking it yourself. Many of us have baked our mother boards to fix the GPU with good result.

 

I'm going to do this thanks to your help.

Is there anyone you would recommend? I just called up a place that seemed to fit the bill "professional Ball Grid Array (BGA) repair" and they were essentially a soldering house and that's it. I pay to ship my laptop to them along with the GPU, they replace the old one and solder the new one and they send it back to me. They would charge $225 for this service which seems really expensive considering I still have to pay for the new GPU and for shipping everything to them.

The G92-751-B1 BGA chipset link that you sent me doesn't give me prices. I guess I have to email them. I found one that didn't have a minimum order of 10 pieces. I'll email that company.

How much money should I be expecting to spend on the G92-751-B1 BGA chipset and the replacement service?

I have honestly no experience in this whatsoever as this is the first laptop I've ever owned and the only time I've ever experienced this issue before, so thank you for your help niff!

This just seems really scary. This is my only PC at the moment and if it dies in this process then I'm really screwed. What is involved? What do you think niff?

 

Alright I just got off the phone with Arndt Computer Services and they stated that as long as I can find a compatible GPU to replace the current one then I'll be good. They charge $225 for everything (shipping both ways and the resoldering of the new GPU chipset). He wanted to make sure that if I replace the GPU with a newer version that it be compatible with the current pins and PCI-E version built-in to the board. He also stated that replacing with newer can be scary as the newer version could run hotter than the older version, but he says as long as it is the same family of chips then I should not have an issue. He also said that it is possible to replace with an AMD chipset but I would want to make sure the memory was on-die just in case it wasn't compatible with the off-die memory on my board (I don't know if that's the case or not as I haven't checked).

Now the hardest part: finding the part you recommended, niffcreature, and getting it at a good price.

 

Dev, There's one of the replacement chips, on ebay at the moment for 99.00 "buy it now".

Seer

 

About 4 hours of work. There's a disassembly guide in this forum. You have to take the whole computer apart to get the motherboard out. Remove all the plastic shields (save them to re-apply after your done baking), the BIOS battery, the heatsinks, the memory chips, everything but the bare MB with soldered chips. Wrap tinfoil around the MB to act as a heat shield for everything but the GPU (cut out a small square in the tinfoil over the GPU). Preheat your oven to 390degF, then put it in for 10 min. Turn off the oven, open the oven door slide out the baking tray and leave it sit for about 20 min to cool off. Put everything back together again (you'll need to re-apply new thermal paste on your heatsinks).

It should last for at least a few months before you'll need to do it again. I did it three times to my P6860-FX and got about an extra year and a half of life from the GPU. The sucssess rate is pretty high, and there are a number of posts to this forum written by others who have done the same thing.

 

Thanks Seer. Do you have a link? I honestly don't know what to search for to find the part I need to replace.

Thanks Starcub. I would definitely do it if I knew that it would fix it for at least a year. But with people including yourself only seeing a few months at best I just don't want to invest that much time into it. Thanks for explaining the steps though. If someone wonders upon this post with the same issue and wants to do it they'll know how to now.

 

Alright, I would first like to thank niffcreature for all of his/her help thus far. I have yet to hear back on whether it would be possible to obtain a modified BIOS to use with a different, faster, upgraded GPU.

Arndt Computer Services has agreed (with niffcreature's diagnosis) that my GPU needs to either be replaced or reballed. I have been unable to find an exact GPU to replace mine with so I am left to reball. Either one of these services would have a much higher probably of fixing the issue versus reflowing the GPU. The price for this service is $215.

 

Personally, I haven't been able to start in safe mode for years regardless of how many times I reformat and reinstall windows. Now this things favorite thing to do is to get lost and think it's in the 50's by running the screen in black and white only. No matter how many drivers I change too, it still loves black and white. I've given up. XPS coming in next week. I will say I'm excited for a nice new laptop, but I'm kicking my own rear for not buying the new MSI GT683R on newegg... I'm going to try and return my XPS and avoid the 15% restocking fee. If unavoidable, I'm faced with the decision of forking up 15% or just buying the MSI and holding off on building a desktop and just using it as a dedicated gaming rig only and then the XPS for everything else.

If I was you, I would be all over this situation as an excuse to buy a new laptop. This thing has served me well, but for me, its time to replace it.

 

Chase, you make a good point. I found a service on ebay that is currently on sale for a few more days that can reball and reflow my P-6860FX for $138 instead of paying $215. Do understand that I upgraded my CPU to a T9300 2.5Ghz and replaced the dying HDD. To keep a long story short, I don't have the money at the moment to buy new, so I'm willing to pay $138 to have a fully functioning P-6860FX. It works great for me. I can play every game out right now, albeit at medium settings, but that's okay with me.

 

I've got the same problem.
The same Gateway P6860-FX with the same VGA 8800m GTS
I was playing The Witcher 2 and suddenly the game had frozen and the green dots appear on screen. I restarted the windows and nvidia driver has stopped working.
Same lines on the bios boot screen and the same ERROR 43 on new NVIDIA DRIVER.
I reinstalled the windows (installed a new fresh copy) seven x86 ultimate.
At first windows installed it's own driver, then i downloaded the newest driver from nvidia.com and installed it, but there was the same problem
Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)
GPU Z can't identify VGA bios. also NiBiTor 6.02 is dumb

_http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/821/99032401.gif
_http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/unledkb.jpg

only the EVEREST identified the VGA

Specialist in the Service Center told me that i can reflash VGA BIOS
Please, explain me is that device problem or BIOS reflash helps?
Thanks in advance!

 

I think I have the same problem. My 6860 just started having some hiccups in games yesterday and then tonight it would freeze. Later tonight the screen would turn red/pink with all these dots everywhere and freeze.

I tried uninstalling the videocard driver and that worked but then when I reinstalled the nvidia driver it would give me the same thing when the computer restarted and freeze. The only stable way to use the computer is with the default windows video card. I tried two different nvidia drivers and both do the exact same thing. I even tried reformatting and that was a bust too.

I've had this computer for three years so I guess it was just time for the video card to die. Too bad. I really love this laptop and don't want to get a new one, but I don't see playing many games on it without a video card

 

Oh, I have another question. So assuming our videocards are dead - but we are still using our computers with the default VGA driver... how long can we expect our computer to continue to display like this? This laptop is a little too big to use as a portable device but maybe I could use it as a crappy secondary internet browsing machine or give it away to someone to use for that purpose. I wouldn't want to do that if it's just going to completely go blank in a month or two though.

 

Last question - I hope. I was looking around a little bit on the forums and found an article about external GPUs. It doesn't look like our notebook would be capable of that and it would probably be a modification I wouldn't much want to do anyway for such an old laptop - but just thought I'd ask to make sure if it was possible or not.

I am looking at the Sager NP8130 laptop atm. Too bad though, I really loved my 6860.

 

The laptop I am using right now has an 8600M GT with more or less the same symptoms (BSOD followed by a corrupted display even in the BIOS after using Nvidia's drivers). I first ran into this last November and have been using VGA drivers since then. It has worked perfectly fine for more than half a year other than the fact that you can't play 3D games (flash games still work great) and you can't use Windows Aero.

 

Althernai
and what about my questions?

 

I do not know. I don't own this laptop; I just wanted to share my experience of using a dying GeForce 8 GPU with VGA drivers. If I had to guess, I would say that you have a hardware fault and flashing the vBIOS is not going to help you, but I can't guarantee that.

 

Thank you Althernai - I hope this laptop has as much as luck as yours and my computer decides to keep working with VGA. At least it's not completely useless. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be completely happy with a PC like this that still browses and does all the things it is still capable of. Maybe I can find someone who could benefit from a laptop like this when I get a new one.

Kokaini - I am not sure because I am no where near an expert in this field but I assume that based on the symptoms your video card suffered the same fate as mine. I am not sure about the bios flashing but I would think that it's a hardware fault and flashing the bios wouldn't help. The only solution I've read in my limited investigation is to open up your computer, take it apart and "bake" the GPU in the oven as I guess this refreshes the solder connections and might give you a temporary fix. But as I said, I have no idea really hopefully someone else will chime in.

 

Baking is probably the only possible "fix" and it's temporary at that. Any of you guys with the dying P-series laptops willing to sell them? I like to do mods and would like some more cases/parts to fool around with.

 

Mine is now showing the same artifacts in VGA mode on the screen.

mbarry - everything is tip top about my laptop and I've taken very good care of it - I would say it's in excellent condition as far as keeping vents clean, keyboard clean and not oily, screen clear and shiny. I don't know if that helps. Probably you just want to grab the ram and what not. I think I might try this baking thing to see if that works. What is the value of the laptop to you for parts?

 

Same happen to me 3 months ago. Laptop is fine in 2D but crashes quickly when i try to use 3d mode (any game using).
Since Dell production cycle is long as hell (M6600 ordered), I decided to give my mobo a bake and use the 2 months of freedom (wife and kids on long vacations) and play some World of Tanks on my 6860FX.
I have already tried disassembling it when artifacts strted. Thought that fresh paste will help. It didn't.
Although not easy it aint impossible. Having the tutorial you guys mentioned it will be easier to get it back together again.
My question is: even if I cover mobo with tin foil with a hole for GPU, is it not going to burn all paper labels on the mobo? And what about that black piece of plastic foil that is on the mobo? Is it not gonna melt?
It is 200'C we're talking so, figured better knowing before trying. Anything else I should be especially careful with?

When cutting out the hole in tin foil for GPU do yous do that on the other side of mobo as well or is it enough to uncover the chipset only?

 

I don't recall seeing any paper labels on my mobo. However I did peel off the black plastic covers stuck to the mobo as I figured they would fall off anyway and make a mess. Make sure you keep the black plastic covers so you can re-apply them later since they insulate components to keep them from shorting. Only cut a hole over the top of the GPU. Make sure you remove all the heat sinks, the ram modules, and the bios battery -- you want the bare mobo only. When you cover it with tin foil, don't mash the tin foil down on the mobo, in fact I lift it up a little from under the opening before putting it in the oven. Insert GPU top facing up and level. When it's done cooking, leave it sit on the oven rack for about 30 min to cool down.

FYI, the hardest part of the whole process is working with the thin ribbon cable that connects the mobo to the power button. You have to be real delicate with it and make sure that when you try to insert it that you slowly apply force to both sides of the cable all along the cable as close to the tip/connector as you can get or it will flex and likely break.

 

Thanks v.much.
I'm not afraid of disassembling. I'll be extra careful. It is the oven I am afraid of...
Don't wanna toast it completely or f... something up worse. I am already preparing myself mentally for this ... Oh, I hate disassembling laptops that are just not made to be serviced easily. Just, not to compare with business laptops I usually fix.

 

My newly reballed laptop should be here by Monday. I will let you all know if it fixed my issue. If not, at least I know I can get my money back (hopefully w/o a fight).

 

Where did you send it, and what's the damages?

 

A seller on ebay called L2 Computer Inc. for $137.50

 

It is fixed. Played a good 5 minutes of HL2 and a full game of SC2 no issues. Watched 6 minutes of smooth video playback of a HQ video rip. I will let you all know if it decides to act up and revert back to way it was before. For now I will give it a week before I rate them on eBay. Best $137.50 I've spent in a while.

I would like thank niffcreature for his assistance as this wouldn't have been possible without him; as well as seeratlas & Starcub with their responses though I never went either of those routes, someone else very well might.

I would not like to thank Nvidia for cheaping out on the solder causing me to invest more money into keeping this thing running. I will, and I hope everyone else that has this issue, will avoid Nvidia in their next purchase. This sort of thing should never happen and people need to be made aware that Nvidia cut corners at the cost of the customer.

 

I'm going to take my laptop apart and "bake" it and see what happens. Wish me luck

 

Good luck. If that doesn't work you can always try what I did. Worth the cost imo.

 

devdevil85
and how much time do they have for guarantee?

 

Just got done baking mine and putting it all back together...

Amazingly... it worked. My screen is back to being all pretty without the massive amounts of artifacts and aero is running again and my computer detects my video card. I haven't tried gaming yet. Will probably see how this works for a little while first.

Amazing though! So happy!

 

30 days. If 60-180 days I think it's 50% off and nothing afterwards. I'm only doing it once. If it doesn't work I'll post it as I wouldn't want other members getting screwed. $137.50 + shipping is too much money.

Congrats Rotz. Just understand that what you did is only a temporary fix. It might last you a day or a year, you never know. Either way, you fixed it for free and that's what counts. Let us know how long that fix lasts.

 

devdevil85
Did they change the damaged part or they had just fixed it with stationary device?
(this means that they will take this chip in microscopic preciese and put it back)

I can fix it with Hot Air Gun Station. But i must know the preciese temperature in celsiuses and how much time it will need baking.

 

Was it reballed with new solder, or just reflowed?

 

They reballed the existing GPU. I have no idea at what temp they set it after that. Sorry I couldn't help.

 

Reballed using new solder

 

No seller listed on ebay by the name you gave, got a link?

 

Gateway MOTHERBOARD Repair P-6860FX P-7805u UC7807u | eBay

Option #2 is always baking if you have the time/motivation. I didn't know it would actually work, but it seems another guy got it to work. I might have tried that though it would've taken a lot of time and effort. But it would save you some $$, though I don't know how long it would last.

 

I would make sure it's not a software issue first. Reason I sat that it cause it does sorta sound like it might be. Worse case scenario, you have one of Nvidia defective chips. In which case, the cheapest thing to do is have it reflowed. Doesn't required soldering anything in or out of the board. I fix them all the time on HP DV9000, 6000, 2000, TX, Gate way MT, FX, Asus (that have nvidia cards), among a few others. It's a common problem that can be fixed most of the time. Preventing the issue from happening again requires a good thermal paste on the GPU, maybe a copper plate, clean fan/heatsink, laptop cooler would also help.

 

How much do you charge to reflow? If you don't do you know someone who does reflow and how much they charge? The only place I could find worth the money was the place I listed off eBay.

 

I'm having a problem with my 6831FX that sounds similar to what is being discussed here. I was playing a game when the laptop just hit a BSOD, but the content on the screen was different. It said something about a piece of hardware having failed and asked me to get in touch with the hardware vendor. Additionally there were alternating dots and dashes covering the entire screen in perfectly straight rows and columns.

I rebooted the system in safe mode and saw vertical red stripes across the screen where you're supposed to choose the safe mode to start in. Once Windows started loading the stripes went away and the dots/dashes reappeared, but only on the part of the screen that had the Windows animation/loading bar displayed. After the loading was done, the same dots/dashes reappeared on the entire screen. Funnily enough, some parts of the screen were clear of these artifacts (it appeared that the parts of the screen where the wallpaper was a consistent tone/colour didn't have the artifacts).

I checked the device manager and it shows that there is no driver installed for the video card. Wierdly, HWMonitor - CPUID doesn't show any hardware on the system. Display is identified as running on some generic video card, not the 8800M.

I haven't used the laptop since then, nor have I attempted to start up any game lest I cause extra damage. Is this the GPU dying or a software issue? Unfortunately I'm in India, so there's no way I can ship it to the ebay seller listed by devdevil85 economically. Help!

 

Sounds like you need the same service or at the very least a reflow. You could try baking it. Check the first page and you will see instructions on how to do it. Just understand that it more than likely won't be a permanent fix but it's better than nothing, right?

 

mdudeja - You described the exact situation I was experiencing. With the color description and dots and dashes and when they went away and when there was what seemed to be solid red bars vertically when loading windows.

I took my laptop apart completely following the sticky thread in this forum about taking apart the FX series and then took off some additional components from the motherboard before wrapping it in tin foil and putting it in the oven for 12 minutes @390 degrees. My oven doesn't really work though so it is way inaccurate (the gas constantly goes on and off when it's turned on... wish I could troubleshoot my oven like I did my laptop) but it still worked anyway. I guess it isn't super super sensitive and precise.

Hope this helps. I believe I did that the 11th of June. It's now the 19th and still working fine.

 

Seems I'll have to get my hands on an oven somehow. Not good. Oh well, off I go. I'll chime in again if it works out.

Thanks for your help devil & rotz.

 

Just updating. Still working and playing games strong since I baked it on the 11th.

 

G92-751-B1,brand new chip, ic electronics products, buy G92-751-B1,brand new chip, ic electronics products from alibaba.com

You could get this shipped directly to the reball company. And as devdevil85 revealed to me, they will probably give you some sort of discount to use the solder balls on the 751 BGA.

If you didn't know, this is the 55nm g92 revision, and the gtx 260m core with 112 shaders.
Its the original solder balls that cause this problem, but its also the underfill which means even after a complete reball it may happen again with any A1 core.
The b1 revision solved it entirely of course.
Performance would be nearly doubled.

This isn't possible for the 7805u. Those 9800m gs/gts are g94 based. BUT you could do it with something like the gts 160m core, wouldn't be a performance gain except for overclocking. Wonderful Brand NEW G94-706-B1 (nvidia computer chips) products, buy Wonderful Brand NEW G94-706-B1 (nvidia computer chips) products from alibaba.com It would run a lot cooler.

This one probably wouldn't require any modification to the BIOS.
The thing about the BIOS with upgrading a g92 core, it would probably work without any modifications. It might just be weird, act strangely, and you'd have to find some good drivers.

Its basically the same concept as flashing a fx 3600m to a 9800m GT, except its even simpler, because with MXM cards you have the PCB to deal with.

FYI, the 3600m is nearly identical to the 8800m GTS. So with the 9800m GT vBIOS you are missing 32 shaders. It works. It shouldn't work any differently with an 8800m GTS vBIOS and an extra 48.