FL90 just died - what could happen?

Hi. Until today I considered my FL90 as very reliable. Runnin over 682 days. That was at least 5500hrs with no issues. It was even able to run GTA IV @ 21FPS

So as always after 8hrs of work I gave him a few hours to chill. That were the last 8 hours of his life I just wanna know what killed him. Was it g86, cpu or something else. So please let me know if you had similar failure symptoms. Just to let you know cpu and gpu were not overclocked.

The symptoms: When lappy starts fans seem to work fine as always - they are spinning at max rpm and then slowing down. I can hear that dvd and hdd are working. But system is not booting. I can see blank screen and that's it.

I read that all g86s are bad gpus. Is this a result of gpu failure? Please let me know what you all think.

 

It's most likely a mobo failure. Mine crapped out in December with similar symptoms.

 

It might be the GPU, did you see something abnormal the last time you pushed it over the edge, some artifacts, temperature issues?

 

Blank screen as in backlight on but nothing on the screen?

 

@Ayle

Blank screen as in turned off lappy so no backlight is on.

@Layne

I haven't noticed any artifacts, but recently it started to freeze very often. No rebooting, no blue screens - just freezes while surfing the net and doing regular work in win (so no demanding cpu/gpu work).

@dtd00d

Should I be able to confirm that it was mobo after taking a closer look on it? Some blown up chipsets or so?

 

I don't know if it's a blown chipset or what. I think it has something to do with the BIOS. AFAIK a dead GPU would still boot into Windows and all that, while a dead mobo won't POST or do anything with the HDD after spinup. It also won't beep at you if it's missing something, say like RAM or the CPU or something.

 

Try removing either stick of RAM and see if it boots. I've yet to see an Intel CPU go belly up in my warranty job with Intel-based barebone laptops.

 

It appears that GPU died.

Now here's a tricky question: I have an opportunity to buy 8600m GS [mine was GT]. Will it work straight away after replacement or should the FL90 BIOS be somehow modified for this?

Also does anyone know whats the difference between:
1) 8600m GS VG.8PG06.003
2) 8600m GS VG.8PG06.001

Is it just older/newer ID or what?

 

It probable a newer revision.

 

I assume so too. So it should work straight away after replacement? Anyone tried this? I know that GT -> GS downgrade is not so common but I can't find any GT on my domestic market.

 

If you you can try before you buy, I'd advise that you do that because so far only 2 persons have managed to install different graphics card in their ILF90: me and some other guy and in both case the card had non standard VBIOS...

 

Unfortunately I cannot test it before buying. Let's say it has different VBIOS than expected. Compal works with:

VGA BIOS Rev UMA 1447 / NV P478H2 / NB8P(60.84.42.00.15) / NB8M(60.86.39.00.13) - BIOS < 1.10

VGA BIOS Rev UMA 1447 / NV P478H2 / NB8P(60.84.42.00.23) / NB8M(60.86.39.00.26) - BIOS >= 1.10

Let's say that VBIOS on that new GS will be different - will Compal boot and allow me to flash it in DOS or will I see black screen? What were the consequences of your non standard VBIOS card upgrade?

 

For my part, the HD3650 had incorrect clocks in the vbios that lead to crash when trying to switch to 3d, that was fixed by flashing a non vendor specific bios and the card worked perfectly after that until I went overboard with my OC'ing The other guy(too lazy to look up the name) apparently had an engineering sample FX770 that required some hacking around to get something displayed on the screen... Basically it seems like his laptop screen was detected as a secondary display and thus the laptop wouldn't activate it at boot.... If the vbios is incompatible, you'll get a black screen that's all.