HP dv8000 Screen Death

My parent's dv8000 did something strange today. Suddenly, the screen was all distorted and then went black. I think it got some BSOD but I can't really get that info out of them. Now when it starts up, the screen fades to a bright black (i.e. it has power to the screen but nothing else). It also continually reboots, making me think that windows is having issue starting up under the covers. The research I have done points me to an overheated/fried video card. My parent's take care of this thing like it's made of gold, always shutting it down and essentially never running anything but IE on it (no games, etc).

My question is, would windows be doing this reboot thing if it was just the video card? I'm tempted to replace it myself, it's out of warranty and paying several hundred dollars to get it fixed by someone else seems like a waste.

 

Did you try unplugging and taking out the battery, then holding down the power button for 10 seconds, then 20 if it don't work the first time.
Or trying to boot from the recovery disc/ O/S installation disc?

 

I did take out the battery and hold down power - is there any significance to holding it down 10 and 20 seconds? Perhaps I need to read an FAQ somewhere. In terms of recovery disk, I'm probably going to have to grab one from online, that's a good idea.

 

Reset, it's worked for some and it can't hurt to try.

 

The fried GPU problem is with NVIDIA chips. I think you have ATI?

Try something simple like booting off a MemTest86+ CD. Or just see if you can get into BIOS setup? You might just have a broken Windows installation and/or bad HD. Sometimes CPU heatsinks aren't mounted properly and redoing that, along with cleaning off the old thermal compound with Arcticlean and replacing it with Arctic Silver 5, will help. The service guide will walk you through that. Or the heatsink may just be clogged with dust.

 

You could try to see if it boots to a Linux Live CD, which would point to a Windows error if it does. If this starts as soon as you turn on the computer that seems to me a hardware issue somewhere.