T61 Random Green Screen distortions/ Crashes

Hi All,

I have been a happy T61 user for the past 2 years almost. A couple days ago, i developed this issue when i was playing a game. The screen was showing green tint with lines in horizontal and vertical directions. After a couple seconds, the laptop restarts. To check if this happens in Safe Mode, i logged in next in to Safe Mode, when the same happened, except that the OS did not crash instead i could continue working inspite of the distorted screen which would randomly get better and become worse. I have screenshots attached which describe the green screen i see. The Event Manager seems to have no record on the crash/restart.
More details:

T61 (T7200, 2 GB OCZ DDR2 557 RAM, 80 Gb 5400 rpm Hitachi HDD, 14" 1400x 900 pixels screen, NVS Quadro 140m w/ 128 MB RAM)

OS: Win XP Professional 32 bit

Some times, when i restart after a crash, i just see a blank screen but the compute would boot up just fine. Once i reached Win XP welcome screen, i can log in and press Alt-f4 to shutdown. All this being done with the display being powered up (back light on) but no information on the screen. HDD activity would be normal with no error beeps during boot up.

Can you please help me trouble shoot this issue? Thanks in advance.

Vijay

 

I think you may have a overheating or fried video chip. You can try reinstalling the latest Quadro drivers from Lenovo, but since you had the issue in Safe Mode, I'm doubting that's the issue.

Make sure you have the latest BIOS for your T61, which may ramp up the fan speeds a bit to try and keep the GPU cool. If you're a true hardware geek (note: I disclaim all responsibility) you could partially disassemble the unit, clean the GPU, and replace the thermal grease between the GPU and its heatsink, which might help as well. While you're in there, make sure you blow out any dust from where the fan exhausts.

 

Wonderful and thanks. I had my doubts on the overheating issue too. I did forget to add this one other data, Temps measured using the utility Speedfan when i was having this crash issue. After an over night shut down, things have been under control with no crashes.
I could not help but wonder if my SpeedFan readings were right yesterday (Attached is the screenie from Speedfan report when i had my screen trouble.) The core seemed to have temp of 90C which astounded me. I seldom have had such high core temp inspite of my continued workload (games, number crunching, image processing etc). I was wondering if my cooling fan fell dead.

Anyways, I will go ahead with the dis-assembly and see if this solves my issue. i shall get back with more details in a couple hours.

Vijay

 

Cleaned up my fan which seemed to some dust accumulated on it. The lappy has been running stable with GPU temp at 53 C and CPU cores at 40 C.
Shall try and stress them with my usual game and see if it fails then.