pavilion dv5 display crashing issue

I have a HP Pavilion dv5 laptop which is just over a year oldand seems to have developed a serious display problem since I bought it.

I have only started using the HDMI port on this model since around october and notice I often get a terrible bug when using it.

i can be watching somethin gon a monitor via hdmi or simply have something connected to it and at random the screens (laptop and external) flicker on and off. I get the popup speech bubble style error in the taskbar saying a "Device Driver has Stopped Working"

Sometimes it recovers but most of the time the screen crashes as does any audio or anything else playing and a scattered mixed up mess of a screen gets locked into view. The only thing i can do then is restart the device.

pic of the screen
http://tinyurl.com/yjsmb49

problem is I dont know how or what driver I need to replace or how to fix this. Any advice?

System info:
Pavilion dv51112ea
AMD Turion X2 Mobile ZM-82 2.2GHz
4GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit

 

That's a classic symptom of bad video RAM. Do you still have a warranty? Then send it back along with that picture and a description of the problem. Also make sure to save all your data before you do that, as they usually format it when it comes in.

 

Hi,

thanks for the speedy response. unfortunately the laptop is just outside of the 1year warrenty. I have just emailed HP.

Should I insist that they replace the machine then? I think under EU law electronics might be covered for longer despite the 1 year thing but I'm not sure.

Is this definately the only thing that could be causing this?

thanks

 

That type of artifacting is only caused by bad/overheating/overclocked video RAM. I've voltmodded my fair share of cards and seen that type of screen distortion quite a few times.

Try an intensive 3D benchmark such as 3DMark06 on the built-in display (without HDMI connected), and if it fails the same way then the video RAM is definitely the culprit.

 

Before jumping to conclusions, I'd check your drivers. Some drivers don't work well for some reason. On my build I got those problems on certain driver versions, but some versions worked well. So I'd check into trying other drivers, older, or newer, and see if that fixes anything. If not, go for warranty.