purple screen of death?

I've got a Gateway p6860fx laptop and I was playing wow last night when my display suddenly turned a solid purple color. I rebooted and whenever I enter my password at my windows 7 login screen, it'd do something for a few seconds then go purple again.

I booted into safe mode, and it worked fine. I removed my video card driver and rebooted the machine and it came up fine (really low resolution of course). I downloaded the latest nvidia drivers and installed them, rebooted and now I can't even get to the windows 7 login screen. It goes black after the windows 7 loading splash screen. I can still get into safe mode just fine though.

I've got windows 7 installed on this machine and I haven't made any software/driver changes in weeks. It just happened out of the blue. Any ideas what might be wrong? I'm kinda reluctant to get it serviced by best buy (where I bought it from) for obvious reasons. I'd prefer fixing it myself if I can.

TIA!

 

What were your temps like... it almost seems like the video card cooked itself. Not sure 100% though.

 

Oooh good question, I didn't check. What software can I use to check? Also, is there any diagnostic tool I can run to test out the vid card?

 

HWMoniter

Another question. Have you ever cleaned out your system (from dust build up)

 

The cleaning out I did do (from the outside though. I spray out the vents. I'll try to open up the laptop when I get back into town and clean it out from the inside as well).

 

I don't think this is a reflow issue as those GPU's wouldn't even get to bios let alone safe mode. As mentioned it could be the GPU or dedicated video memory is cooked. Do you use powermizer? also have you tried to boot off battery as I think that throttles the GPU and memory.......

 

Did you always let the notebook breathe? If you were playing on soft surfaces then more than likely you cooked the card.

You can try reseating everything. (RAM, CPU, Cables, etc) to see if maybe a connection is causing the issues.

But the way its sounding it the GPU is cooked

 

Hmmmm slow cooked GPU,sounds yummy, with some barbeque sauce how many Weight Watcher Points is that...........

Seriously though I hope you can get it up and about again but it sounds like the chances are slim if the GPU is done. At least you have VGA mode to get the data off of it, that is way more than most get with a fried GPU........

 

It might be fixed ("fixed") with reflow. Mine (also 6860) has had cases where it booted as far as Windows login before deciding to fail.

 

Indeed. Mine worked in normal apps as well. It was only after gaming that the GPU decided to go haywire. Eventually it wouldn't post, but it took a while for the problem to progress to that stage. Going on about 4 months now since I cooked my mobo, and still working in games.

That said, I'd check the temps first and possibly re-apply the thermal paste to the GPU as it does tend to form air bubbles and dry out after a few years of use.