DV5-Z hardware failure?

So here is the issue.

I have the following system:
HP DV5-Z CTO1000
AMD Turion ZM-80 2.1Ghz @65nm and .950 Voltage
3GB PC26400 RAM (Samsung 2GB, Elpida 1GB)
ATI Radeon HD 3200 w/ 256MB shared memory
Windows 7 Ultimate

In normal use (meaning browsing the web, listening to mp3 music, watching h.264 video, using MS Office, etc) there is absolutely nothing wrong with the machine. However, after a few minutes of light gaming, such as the Sims 3 or World of Warcraft on low settings, the entire system locks up and shows the following screen. The only thing that remains functional is the caps lock button, which lights on and off when pressed. No alt+tab, no ctrl+alt+dlt, nothing else.








At first I thought this was an overheating issue, as placing a desk fan near the heat vent made the problem delay. Instead of deathscreening a few minutes into playing the game, I could get a good hour or two of functionality. But even with the desk fan in a cold environment, the problem still occurs.

I also do not think it is the fault of W7 because I had been running the Beta OS fine since February, and did not experience the problem until May. I installed the final version of W7 in October.

All my drivers are up to date, I have run clean scans forever, and am not a novice user. But is anyone out there experiencing the same problem or something similar? Is there any ideas to fix the problem? Please help

-DJH

 

Maybe you pushed undervolting a little too far? Bring it up 0.25V and see if that helps.

Verifying your memory with MemTest86+ wouldn't hurt, though it doesn't catch everything.

 

I'm gonna say that the GPU is gone. We are back to the heat destroying components again. Try changing the volting back and see what happens, but I don't think you are going to see an improvement.


Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but with that HD3200 card, doesn't the whole board have to be replaced?

 

If the GPU is fried then yes, you'd have to replace the motherboard, but it's unlikely that's the problem given that it only happens under stress. Flaky GPUs are mostly a NVIDIA thing.

 

Yea.... I just got done making HP eat their DV5z model for reasons described above. Until you really look at the way this model has been designed, you wont understand it.

 

Running Memtest now. So far so good. The other thing I forgot to mention is that I ran a couple of GPU stress tests before (I can't remember the name right now, I ran them a few months back. I think it was the one with the fuzzy ball), and it was stable for quite a few hours, with no desk fan. Still have no idea.

 

Do you think that stress caused ur GPU to fail?
Is that even possible?

 

Doubtful. The crashes starting occurring before the stress test. I was using the test to determine if the GPU was the cause.

 

Very interesting. I bumped up the voltage a tad and all went well until a very peculiar blue screen came up. Minidump attached.

From what I can tell now, this could be a hard drive failure of some sort? Experts?

 

Don't know, but see what the HD test tool in the HP BIOS says?

 

Try using the HDMI and see what happens. I'm curious at this point.

 

The way the screen looks, i'd say it's failed video RAM. I've had it happen on a HD3870 desktop card.

 

Just finished running Furmark. Crashed about 3 minutes into the stability test. Same deathscreen. Will run the HD test tool now. Thanks everyone for the help.

 

Did some more tests. Memtest and BIOS test can't find anything wrong, but I still get the same deathscreen using the HDMI out into a monitor. I bumped down the settings on everything, limiting hardware to maximize battery life and the problem goes away, albeit with reduced performance.

Bummer

 

I have seen this same exact issue before but not on my dv5z it was on my previous acer which had a ATI xpress 1100 IGP. It would happen only when I tried playing games or if I was placing the video card under stress.
Acer eventually solved the problem with a BIOS update and a ATI driver update and I never saw the problem again.

You said your drivers are up to date but is your bios the current one available for the dv5z (F.37)? Also I am not using the dv5z's ATI driver I am using the ATI driver for the dv6z instead, it is a slightly newer driver and it works just fine.

 

BIOS is up to date, but I haven't tried the driver from the dv6. Will attempt to do so now and report back. Many thanks

 

It's because there is nothing wrong with the system RAM, it's got to do with the video RAM.

 

Interestingly, the driver from the dv6 boosted the performance on the furmark test considerably. But alas, she still died about 1 minute into it. I guess the last thing to do would be to replace the RAM sticks and hope that is it.

edit:I may be mistaken, Th3_uN1Qu3, but I thought that the entire video RAM of the Mobility Radeon 3200 was shared, since it is an IGP. Can you confirm?

 

Google "ati", "cripple" and "furmark" and you'll see why. Oh so it's an IGP... Then it's the video chip itself. Warranty time.

 

Unfortunately, I'm all out of warranty by just a few weeks. At least the desk fan system can keep it going until I can either find a more permanent solution or get a replacement.