Need help, Sager NP8170 - BSOD/

Hi Guys, sorry to bother you with this. My roommate is currently doing some contract work over in afghanistan and has been having some pretty major issues with this Sager laptop i reccomended he buy before he left (my personal sager has been utterly perfect, but anyways). He sent it back to the states to i could try to figure out what the problem is and fix it or get it fixed. Sager has been pretty useless in helping and just wants us to send it in on our dime and let them run tests without knowing even ballpark what it will be to fix it.

Anyways, moving on. The symptoms are as such: during gaming the screen will start artifacting, then it will fart to desktop with an error saying the video card driver crashed, and shortly after that it will BSOD. This also happens while he will be listening to music or watching vids on the computer. He has updated the firmware, tried multiple versions of video card drivers, all to no avail. Personally it sounds like a bad video card to me, but i know jack about laptops so i wouldnt even know where to begin to verify that, or if it can be fixed/replaced without having to send it to the manufacturer.

He described the artifacting as such:

"...basically random squares of the display would show wrong colors. For example one of the more noticeable ones is a green screen color square.
So take about a centimeter square and randomly dot it with green screen color and then rinse and repeat with other colors, size and location is random, through about 10-20% of the screen before the display would crash then soon after BSOD."


Any help you guys can give me would be fantastic. It would suck to have to turn a 1700dollar lappy into a paperweight ya know.

Specs on the system are:
GTX 560M GPU 1.5GB GDDR5
i7-2630QM
8gb ram
win 7 home prem, 64bit

Not sure if this helps, but he also wrote down the error:

Nvidia Windows Kernel mode

driver V 285.62 has crashed.



Blue screen info:



Stop: 0x00000116



Nvlddmkm.sys - address FFFFF8800F3CC9C8 base at FFFFF8800F257000

DateStamp 4e99233b



Disable BIOS memory optoins such as Cashing or shadowing.

Stop: 0x00000116 (0xFFFFFA80096C6010, 0xFFFFF8800F3CC9C8)



Model P170HM

 

welcome to nbr

is the lappy still covered by warranty and when did he actually buy it and was it direct from sager.

artifacts can be dying graphics cards but ive only seen them die with vertical lines. if you could get a picture of the artifacts on screen it would sure help the community give a defo answer.

in the mean time download who crashed from my signature below and run it which will give a bsod dump report and then post that here.

another thought could be a temperature problem as im guessing its very hot in Afghanistan. it might need the vents and fans cleaned out if its more than 3-4 months old. could you also download core temps and nvidia inspector from same link below and run them and post the temperatures here.

its all guess work at the moment but hopefully someone will be able to help out.

 

MrDJ's link is so helpful. It does sound like a driver issues causing that. Download driversweeper which is in the bottom link and install it. Uninstall the Nvidia drivers like you normally would, reboot in safe mode, run driversweeper to clear up any left over files, reboot then reinstall the drivers. You can try the ones that originally came on the disc or try the latest ones from Nvidia, according to your posted dump report it looks like you're still on 285.62.

 

The warranty is out, its about 2 years old, warranty was for a year.

As for the rest of the testing, the laptop is in transit to the US right now. Shipping from over there is slow so it might be a couple weeks before i have the laptop in my hands and can do those other tests etc.

The info in the original post was what i asked him to email me as to what the problem was. I was figuring it was prob a bad video card, but wasn't sure since its a laptop.

We thought it might be a temp problem too, but where he is in afghanistan is actually up in the mountainous area, so its not really too bad, and actually gets reasonably cold at night (40's, etc), Also, i should mention it had this problem from reasonably early within its life, it just wasnt as severe/frequent.

I guess ill have to postpone the trouble shooting till i have it in my physical hands.

Just on a side note, lets assume it is the video card, is that something that can be user replaced or would i have to send it back to sager?

 

Also, feel free to upload the minidump(s) so that we can skim over it. I'd like to test out Windows Debugger.

You can replace the card if it comes down to it. They're pricey though. The 560M will run about $150 - $300.

 

then next step i was going to suggest was the driver clean in safe mode that Hutsady mentioned.

if it does turn out to be the graphics card you could try the free option first of the baking method in an oven but this can be only a temporary fix for maybe a month or even a year, no two bakes are the same.

The Oven Trick (repairing your broken video card with an oven) | Overclockers

http://forum.notebookreview.com/zep...znote-6224w-but-works-all-brands-modells.html

when you do receive the lappy resurrect this thread and we will try to advise as best we can.