5793 Flicker and Video Issue

Greetings, I've have a recent issue with my 5793 that started the other day; random flickering whenever I play a game or watch a DVD. I took the back off and cleaned out the fans really well but it still seems to be keeping up and did it again just a bit ago while playing Mahjong and listening to music.

I downloaded Prime95 and CPUID HWMonitor to do some testing to see if maybe the computer was overheating, but didn't really have much in the way of issues. The hottest component was the mainboard which seemed to max at around 68c, though I only ran it for about 5 minutes to see if it would flicker again.

This isn't the only issue I've had with this laptop. When watching any video, it seems to have small pauses every few seconds. It's been doing this for a couple years now and since this is more my wife's laptop than mine, I didn't look much into it because when I tried previously, I didn't receive much in the way of answers.

Webcam, biometrics, and infrared haven't worked in years. I've tried using Sagers website for updates on drivers for them all but they have such poor support. :\

Battery is also pretty much fried as it holds a charge that lasts about 10 minutes, so it has to constantly stay plugged in.

In any event, if anyone can help figure out what this flicker issue is, I'd be greatly appreciative. I've come to terms years ago that the rest of it is pretty hopeless.

 

So it just blue screened again with the following:

"hardware malfunction parity check memory parity error"

Any ideas?

 

Try running WhoCrashed and posting the crash dump. For the flickering you can try reseating your display cable between the motherboard and the screen. I'm not familiar with that model, but I think NBR user Theriko has guides for multiple models.

The memory parity error (depending on whether whocrashed ties it to RAM/GPU) could indicate a failing memory stick or video card.

 

Tries using WhoCrashed but there was nothing in the crash dump results. I've not cleaned the page file on this computer in a while so not sure why it wasn't written out, but I'll check it again if the computer blue screens again. Thus far, it's only blue screened twice, most of the time the display simply flickers, and usually only when either a video is running or a game is playing.

I checked the display cable and everything was fine there as well. I'm thinking, judging by the comments I found made about this error and shoddy soldering nVidia did on the 8800, that it's the video card going down the crapper. I tried to take a look at it but my experience working on laptop hardware is pretty nil so I'm not sure how to go about taking the thing apart so I can get a better look at the video card.

 

have you tried hooking it up to another monitor. That would determine if it is video card related or something with the monitor/cable.

 

Odds are its a dieing video card. As for the constant pausing while doing anything with video, if I recall correctly its a issue with the motherboard or some component polling the battery. Been a while since I've used one of these laptops

 

Yah, I can honestly say this is my first and last experience with Sager. The lack of support for pretty much every hardware option on the laptop (webcam, biometrics, infrared) and shoddy battery life (literally 10 minutes after being pulled from the power brick) was enough to make me decide this before. I'm thinking I will stick with Asus in the future.

Something else I noticed is that one of the fans doesn't seem to be pushing much air, but the funny thing is the temperatures were all manageable and nothing off the wall high, so not sure. I also tried pulling the fan out and that was a no go. Not sure what is holding it in place, but all the screws were out. Stupid thing still wouldn't budge.

 

That was one of the first things I tried.