New DV6t 4650 Video Card Problems! Please help!

So I just took the wraps off my new DV6t. I live in Japan so I had to wait two weeks while my parents spent $150 dollars to ship it to me, but it finally got here and...

There's artifacting everywhere. Little pink boxes appear even when I'm mousing over things in the file explorer, and when I opened up the catalyst control center (and it shows the two 3D scenes for comparison) there was artifacting like crazy!

I tried uninstalling the drivers, but the pink boxes still continue to spawn in random places on the screen. Then I went to ATI's website but apparently they don't hand out drivers for the mobility 4650... so I had to go to HP's website and get the same stuff I had before. Nothing solved... does anybody know what the problem might be?

 

I don't think a virus would come pre-installed...

 

I bet its your driver to your video card and not a virus!

 

Right, but if you read above, I already uninstalled and reinstalled the display driver that hp provides. Nobody else (not even ATI) has a driver out for the mobility radeon 4650 under vista.

 

I think you have a defective graphics card. Can we see some pictures?

 

Yeah some screenshots would be nice it would also tell us two things. If it doesnt show up in the screen shot then it narrows down whats wrong with the card though that doesnt really matter. Just curious to see if the vram is affected.

 

Hey guys,

I took some screenshots of what's going on here. If you could take a look and let me know what you think, I'd really appreciate it. I hope to god it's not a faulty hardware issue.

 

If you ask me and i could be wrong Straight up the video card is bad. Those arent even rendering artifacts its just straight up junk and its showing up on the screenshots which means thats how it sits in the vram.

Its super unfortunate given your situation but like anything mass produced you run into a few duds. I would see if HP has warranty support for people abroad so that you can get it taken care of in japan.

However if you have some time to burn try doing a system restore and grabbing all the latest updates before you start making calls.

 

Bad video card, improperly installed heatsink on the GPU... unless you can boot up a live Linux distro and have its GUI work without glitching I'd assume it's a hardware problem. If you want to do a clean Vista install just to be thorough see the sticky in this forum.

 

What I don't understand is, I can play 3D games with no problems. For example, I just played two hours of Fallout 3 and I didn't see a single blotch or glitch. And right now, in Windows, no glitches either.

But I'm sure if I boot back up again tomorrow I'll see them again.

What's a live distro? Is that like the preview version of linux you use when you don't actually want to put the OS on your hard drive yet? And if so, any recommendations? I thought Ubuntu used to have one but now there doesn't seem to be one in their downloads section.

 

Yes. I like Fedora:
http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora
Fedora is a bit "bleeding edge" but that's probably what you want for a new notebook.

There could be a poorly soldered component that's causing intermittent problems? A software problem is still technically possible.

 

Has it ever happened while 3D gaming or while Booting up (eg BIOS screen)?

Ubuntu downloads in the site are Live discs, so you can run the OS off the disc.

 

I've never seen it happen in bios, at least not yet. And I tested out the 3D gaming idea again just now. My desktop was filled with squares, then I launched Fallout 3 and the main menu looked like the fourth of july. But, when i actually got into the main game with the 3D engine it all went away like magic. I played for thirty minutes without a single pink/green square.

 

I see.. try a different driver, this time use Driversweeper in safemode. Sounds like its only occurring on 2D and Low power 2D

 

Thanks for the suggestion, flipfire, but there don't seem to be any other drivers for my card under vista out there. Even on the ATI website, they only offer a driver download for the mobility radeon 4000 series under Windows 7! I wonder if I should try to install the RC and see if it works with those?

 

First, I strongly suggest to boot up to BIOS, since you are using an HP notebook, all you have to do is to tap F10 key on the keyboard, after turning on the notebook and once you have seen the HP logo on the screen. If this issue is present in the BIOS of your computer, then we can conclude that this is a hardware issue.

Also, another way to identify if this is a hardware issue or not is to perform a System Recovery in your computer. Because there are a lot of cases that the windows vista and the drivers of the computer is not properly installed, because the OOBE (Out-of-the-Box-Experience) setup of Windows Vista is interrupted. This usually happens on stores, where the notebook is purchased. So I strongly suggest to do a system recovery in your computer. I believe, if in case you called HP for this issue, if you have said to them that you have performed system recovery, those Tech support guys would conclude that this is a hardware issue. Just make sure to have a copy of your most important files in a flash drive or an external HDD before you proceed on doing this.



To perform system recovery:
1. Press F11 key after turning on the computer.
2. Wait for the computer to boot to the recovery manager.
3. After you have seen a message that says welcome to the recovery manager, click advanced options, and then select system recovery.
4. Follow the set of instructions and the whole procedure would take around approximately 2 hours.

Click here for more information.