DV9000 video card damaged by driver update?

I have a DV9000 with a GeForce Go 7600.

I was browsing the HP drivers yesterday when I noticed that a new version of the GeForce drivers was available for my system, released on April 28, 2009. Their site describes it as: HP Link

The install appeared to go smoothly most of the way, when all of a sudden my screen became colored noise, and then went black. The system was not apparently responding either, as pressing the power button, which I have set to suspend the system, did nothing. I powered off the system, and now every time I start right after the part where you get the Windows logo with the moving bar, the screen becomes colored noise, and then goes black.

I started in safe mode, using the default VGA drivers, and everything is apparently working okay. If I uninstall all of the NVidia drivers in safe mode, then I can restart to normal Vista which starts normally except that it's using the default ugly VGA drivers, but it'll immediately try and install drivers for my GeForce, and tell me I have to restart. When I restart, everything is screwed again.

Now here is the incredible part. I have a Windows Home Server which backs up my system every night. When I reformat and then restore my system to a state from before I installed those drivers, I still get the color noise and then black screen when I start.

What the heck could possibly be going on? It doesn't make any sense to me that this could be happening even when my hard drive is in an identical state to before I installed the new drivers. Could it be that the driver installation made some type of an undisclosed firmware modification?

I'm planning on testing this by doing a reformat and clean install of Vista and seeing if the problem comes out again.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Edit Update: Problems remain even on a clean install as I detailed below. At this point, I'm 99% sure there has been some type of hardware or firmware damage. If anyone else has tried the 04-28-09 update, file number sp42635, let me know your results, positive or negative.

 

I suggest you try the v179.48 (7.15.11.7948) graphics drivers that are provided on NVIDIA's website. They are much newer and there is native support for the GeForce Go 7600. Even though NVIDIA lists them as beta, they are in fact WHQL Certified and stable to use.

For Windows Vista 32-bit
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista_179.48_beta.html

For Windows Vista 64-bit
http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winvista64_179.48_beta.html

 

Unless anyone else has any advice for me, I'm pretty sure my computer has been permanently damaged by the drivers in some way.

Clean install of either Vista or Win7 works with standard VGA drivers, as soon as any nVidia drivers are activated, same symptoms, color noise and then black screen. I even did a clean install of Vista and then an install of the old drivers that used to work fine on my system, and same result.

It's hard to imagine what this could be other than some type of damage to the 3D acceleration part of the video card.

Unfortunately, my system is out of its ordinary warranty. I'm going to have to look into what else I can do, since this is complete and utter bs that installing a driver straight from HP could have this result. I'm wondering if this is another manifestation of the design flaw that resulted in the extended warranty here:
Link
If so though, HP has for whatever reason not included my laptop's part number in that list.

 

Update, just tried it with Linux now as well, same result. I can boot into Ubuntu, works fine. As soon as I enable the nVidia drivers and 3D acceleration, color noise covers my screen. It doesn't become black in Linux though. Ulgh.

 

You were bound to get bit by the defective NVIDIA chip problem sooner or later. I'd guess that installing the new drivers lit up enough of the chip to finally do the trick.

HP has been replacing AMD NVIDIA boards under an enhanced warranty program:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01087277
Intel NVIDIA boards, not so much, but escalating to a HP case manager is sometimes effective when they know that you know what the problem is.

Newer HP notebooks usually use ATI instead of NVIDIA.

Some people have had success reflowing the NVIDIA chips, basically hitting it with a heat gun to melt the solder a bit and letting it cool. Search this forum for exact instructions. It's a high risk, last ditch fix.

 

brianstretch, you're absolutely right, I'd forgotten about the defective nVidia mobile chip problem. Now that I think about it, that's absolutely what happened. Twice in the past week or two, I'd observed very, very minor artifacting on my Windows desktop and thought, uhoh, never seen that before. Small distortions in the image, but they went away after a few seconds, so I just shrugged it off. In light of the fact that the chip now died, it all makes sense.

Any idea why HP has been covering the AMD boards but not the Intel boards, when the problem lies with nVidia chips?

 

They covered my notebook under the warranty extension and replaced the motherboard in September 2008. Just call them and explain the problem in details.

 

Less system boards to repair? Blame it on AMD since they run hotter

 

i had this same problem, but it just started happening one day (not because of new drivers)

I just sent it in to HP and got it fixed (under warranty)