big problem on my elitebook 8760W - Flickering screen.

Hello.

Since English is not my native language, although I have read a lot of discussions on 8760W, I am not sure that this issue has not been addressed here.

My computer is an elitebook 8760W / 2820qm, 24gb ram / quadro 3000m / HP fullHD IPS screen. It runs under windows 7.

For a few months my screen was flashing from time to time, and I had to turn it off and on again.
Now it does it more and more often and I can't work with it anymore.
It is not the same concern as those who have flinckering under Windows 10 because the image becomes completely unreadable.
Here is a video of the effect:



it happens after a few minutes, even if windows does not start (I stay on the bios for example) and I have to wait then sometimes an hour before I can restart it. The computer is plugged into the mains, I never use it on battery.
It doesnt depends of the position of the screen (not a bad contact of the lcdpanel).
The fans are runing smoothly and it happens even before I ask any heavy calculation to it. (doesnt seems to be a overheating problem, but...?)

I am a little handyman and I can open it to repair it, but I do not know what can be broken .... the bios? the screen himself? a problem of overheating ?, battery? a connection cable to change?

I hope someone could help me because I really was in love with that old machine!!

 

I have experienced similar thing with my 8770W, although it was more than a year ago since the last incident.
Have you tried the following procedure:

1. Remove the battery from laptop
2. Press the power button for 3 seconds
3. Re-install the battery
4. Power the system

 

Looks like a loose or damaged LCD/video cable to me. Does the picture change with lid position? If not and it comes with a discrete GPU it could be a bad video card. Is the issue present when using an external monitor?

 

Hi.
Thx for answers
I'm not sure it can be a battery issue because it happens even with battery unpluged.

As moving the lid position doesnt affect anything (it doesnt make flickering, and doesnt stop it when it happens), I think it is mostly a gpu problem.
Last time it happens, I let my computer coold an hour and then put it in very cold place (+4°C). After that, I power it on, and the flickering problem occurs after a very longer time than usual.
So I think it's a cooling problem on GPU.
I just command a new fan, and when it arrive, I will clean the radiator, change the fan and change the thermal paster with a very good one. I will tell you if it fix the problem.

 

Not flickering, but I've had screen freezes, going black, driver resets on two of these.

It's the graphics card, specifically the VRAM/VRM cooling - the stock pads are terribly installed and they go really dry after a few years, most likely losing their heat transfer properties. The heatsink seems to warp from heat (or maybe it's like that from the factory), because new pads don't fit as they should.

I had to mix 1mm, 1.5mm and 2mm pads to get proper contact for all components Elitebooks and ZBooks.

I'd say buy new thermal paste and pads, and *make sure* that everything touches the heatsink - you can look from the CD drive side and the front with a flashlight while the laptop is disassembled. If there's space between any components and the heatsink, reinstall them. Put a 3-4mm large piece of a thermal pad under the end of the graphics card, too, as it bends quite a lot.

Overheating can damage the VRM components or VRAM, it could be that something already failed, which would require a full replacement of the graphics card (they're pretty cheap tbf).

 

Before anything else, just plug the laptop in a desktop monitor or regular TV.

If there is no flickering, then you have faulty LCD cable, or in the worst case bad panel but that is rare.

 

Some news: I carefully changed thermal paste and pads on CPU and GPU (thermal pad are not easy to find, even in Paris, I had to command them), I changed the fan for a new one from HP spare, I cleaned all dust inside the laptop and ...it doesnt boot anymore.
After some investigations, one of the four memory stick where faulty. I think I damaged it with static electricity by removing it.

I tested the laptop few hours in heavy calculations, It seems now runs smoothly but only with 2x8gb + 1x4gb sticks of ram instead of 2x8 + 2x4gb.
So I think the problem was thermal disfonction.

The new fan is a bit noisier than the stock one.