help! my video card might have died (pavilion dv9730nr)

Hello guys, first post here... it looks like a good place to post this in since we're all HP owners and probably everyone around here knows more about computers than I do (not that I'm a complete ignorant but...). Anyway, my problem is the following: I bought a dv9730nr about a year and a half ago and never had any problems with it until a week ago. I was playing PES 2010 and suddenly, after the menu screen the screen went to black, everything froze and this weird "color" barcode appeared on top of the screen. I freaked out and rebooted the laptop, but it didn't even show the bootsplash and the "barcode" still appeared on top of the pitch black screen... after a couple of tries, I could get it to show the bootsplash and actually managed to system-restore it. Then it crashed again and I had to repeat the process.

When I actually got it working, I tested it again with a different game, and this time it gave me the nvlddmkm driver error and a BSOD. After the reboot, there was this ugly barcode again, so I had to repeat the "process" (rebooting time and time again until bootsplash appeared). Though it worked for a couple of days, yesterday I tried to watch a video and it froze, no nvlddmkm error, just the black screen and the color barcode. It took me hours to get around that and when I thought everything was fine (as fine as things could be, anyway), surfing the net and watching some images... bam, the screen went to black and I had to force a shutdown. Again, ugly barcode on top after I rebooted... but this time I have been trying since yesterday to get around it and do a system restore but to no avail - every single time I reboot, there's this black screen with those vertical color lines.

Oh, and I should clarify: the screen isn't really "black", more like dark grey with really faint color lines. The strange barcode on top starts as grey with a lot of vertical color lines through it (pink, yellow, blue and green) then it gradually turns white only to dissolve to black at the end. This "color-changing" thing takes about 5 minutes, then it's just black and nothing else happens.

Bear in mind I can't boot. I can't go into BIOS, nor start in safe mode, nor do a system repair/restore/format.

so... what can/must I do to fix this? I don't want to lose my stuff (I have lots of things that I couldn't backup for different reasons) so if there's a way that manages to keep my data safe... I'd be relieved!

System specs:

1.67 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5450 featuring Intel Centrino Processor Technology
Memory 3072 MB
Video Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
Hard Drive 320 GB (5400 rpm)
Windows Vista Home Premium

 

Sounds a lot like your video card died. What kind of warranty do you have? What I would recommend is that you take the hard drive out of the machine and put it in a USB enclosure, then copy all the data to somewhere safe, a desktop machine or something like that. Do that before you send the machine in for repair work, because there's really not much of anything you can do yourself to fix it I believe.

 

it only came with a 6-month warranty. I'm not from the US, and the store I bought the laptop from only sells "open box" and refurbished models at lower prices.

 

It looks like your nVidia chip died. However, you probably did not lose any date on your harddrive and should be able to retrieve it either by fixing the existing laptop or swapping it into another working laptop.

There a lot of threads here and elsewhere talking about your possible problem. Try googling "nVidia chip fail."

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=443115

 

I had the same problem on ZD7000. I found a place in Florida that promised to fix any laptop problem for $150. When I got the repaired HP back, the invoice read "reflowed and refluxed video module" I did a YouTube search & found several, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR8L3B3eDr0 that made me glad I didn't try it myself. The company was kinda' screwy with paperwork, so I am not recommending them, just offering a trouble-shooting suggestion.