NP9262 Dual 9800M GTX: Artifacts on Screen, Help!

Lately my NP9262 has been crashing with a BSOD or hanging at the screensaver. I hardly ever remember a BSOD before this. Im running Vista 64bit. Now the display drivers are not detected and working. And when I restart my laptop, I see white dots all over my screen during the startup screens... I do not overclock anything...

About a month ago I cleaned out my vents, I dont see why my card would fail now or overheat.... Any suggestions?

 

Unfortunately they just did. The good thing is that probably just one one of the cards is defective. Try to remove each on in turns and see which one is defective.

 

its been almost 2 years since i got my laptop, ive read about others experiencing this and the culprit being nvidia's solders

if thats the case then baking or upgrading is my options?

i feel real bad since i spent $4k for this laptop and its only gotten me 2 years...

 

Before you do anything drastic, you'll need to identify which GPU is malfunctioning first. Open the machine, and remove a GPU. Also remember to remove the SLi connector from both GPUs which is located underneath them.

Test each card individually to identify the trouble maker. I don't think both have gone bad.

 

hmm ok, i cant just disable one gpu in the bios?

both cards dont even show up in hwmonitor

ok i removed both cards, and the SLI connector. It seems to read only the card in the 1st slot (end slot) as the main card, so I put the other card into that slot and the artifacts stopped and the card was detected.

I wonder if I can put back to defective card in the 2nd slot and connect them via SLI? will try

If I was getting artifacts in my upon startup main display, that means it was the primary card right, the 2nd card is only used in SLI modes isnt it?

 

Correct, I would try to switch them like you said, just to try it. Then I would run a game, and see if it artifacts, but either way, it's most likely one card that is bad. Baking usually does well, I have read a lot of people baking their 8800GTX cards, and I'm sure I've seen someone have success with baking a 9800 also. I agree though, 2 years is pretty sad, but hey, it's just one card, and even if baking won't fix it, you can get a 9800mGTX quite cheap these days.

 

I second baking. I've baked an 8800GTX before and it's been working perfectly for the past 6 months.