Severe graphical corruption all over the screen, graphic card seems premanently damaged.

[SOLVED!!!!]

What the problem is right now:
- severe graphical corruption is displayed all over my screen at all times (most noticeable with a black/dark background, see photo attached) (the LCD screen itself is fine though)
- the graphic card is basically not working/not being recognised:
- Direct X seems to be broken/unavailable; dxdiag shows all vaules in the Display tab as missing or "N/A", my max resolution now is 1280x1024 (used to have 1920x1080)
- Device Manager lists my GeForce GTX 485M with the yellow "!" sign, the device status in properties says "Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)"

What I tried to do:
- uninstall Nvidia drivers 327.23 and install 331.58, obviously that did nothing
- Startup Repair (did nothing as well)
- disable/re-enable the graphic card in Device Manager (did nothing as well)

What I'd like to find out:
- is my graphic card really permanently damaged as I expect?
- what might have caused it?
- where is my graphic card located in my Clevo x7200 laptop? I did check the full version of the pdf manual, but couldn't find it.
- Must I buy a new graphics card now? Up to what model can I upgrade?


Prior and up to when this problem happened:
I used to often have crashes with the graphic card while playing games. Sometimes the game would crash to the desktop and I would get the message about the nvlddmkm.sys driver having stopped responding and having recovered. Some other times the game would just freeze and the audio would loop, but doing Ctrl+Alt+Del and then Esc would usually let me return to the game without the game crashing completely.
The actual graphical corruption itself, instead, it has been very rare over time. Usually as soon as I saw it I used to reboot my computer since I know that it would eventually crash anyway.
On friday night I was playing APB Reloaded and the game froze with the audio looping as it often happens, I did Ctrl+Alt+Del and then Esc to return to the game, but this time after that the system got stuck on a black screen for a while and eventually rebooted itself.
At that point the computer kept crashing for 5 times or more in a row while trying to boot, I got the blue screen of death a few times and I managed to take a picture of it (for the info) with my camera (see other attachment).
I was promted to do the Startup Repair but it didn't help. By booting in safe mode I was finally able to get into windows, and now I can get in windows without any problems, however I do have all the symptoms described at the top of the post.

System specs:
- Clevo x7200
- Processor: Intel Core i7 960 Quad Core Processor 3.2GHz 8MB Cache 45nm
- Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 485M 2GB GDDR5, 384 CUDA Cores, DX11 & PhysX
- Memory: 12GB Triple Channel DDR3 1333Mhz 3x 4GB DIMM
- Hard Drive: 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300
- Operating system 1: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
- not sure what motherboard model is


I'm not sure what's the most appropriate section to post in.
Thanks all in advance for your help!

 

a 485 is quite an old card so its lasted you well.

not sure if thats a dying gpu or not. there has been quite a few posts with that sort of artifacts. a dying or dead gpu will have lines like attached.
few things to try
update the audio driver as im sure ive read on here before it can be the cause of a crash and then sound loop which could then affect gpu while in game.
download who crashed from my sig below for anymore bsod which gives a much better dump report.

what sort of temperatures are you getting while gaming and when was the last time you cleaned your fans and vents out with compressed air. monitoring software in same sig below.
a thermal repaste might also be needed.

if it does turn out to be a dying gpu then theres always the baking method to give it a new lease of life. could last a month or even a year. The Oven Trick (repairing your broken video card with an oven) | Overclockers

 

2-3 years is considered "old" for a graphic card?

Anyway, it's not a matter of updating the audio driver to fix game crashes. It's not what it is about now. I can't even launch any game now, as the system does not recognise a graphics card being installed or working.

"download who crashed from my sig below for anymore bsod which gives a much better dump report." --- I don't know what you're talking about here.

I don't monitor the system temperature (I have a program called SpeedFan 4.42, but I don't keep it running), so unfortunately I don't know about that.
I do clean my fans periodically though, about every couple of months I would say, there usually isn't much dust clogging the vents. I do not use compressed air though.

I don't know about putting graphic cards into ovens, but like I said I'm trying to find out where my graphic card is located in my Clevo x7200 laptop.

 

Wait, does the x7200 support an iGPU?

The 485m is still a very strong GPU and I wonder if this could be due to something as simple as a loose connection.

 

About checking if the GPU is properly inserted, yes, I did want to check the physical status of the graphics card, but I don't seem to be able to locate it or reach it. I just spent the last 2 hours unscrewing everything I could. I removed pretty much everything, keyboard, bezel above the keyboard, dvd drive, battery, fans.. I could see where the RAM, CPU and HDD (actually a SSD) were, but not the GPU. I suppose it's a lot smaller than I expect it to be. I saw a circuit board beneath one of the heat sinks, but I was not able to reach it.

Not being able to find/reach the graphics card in the laptop worries me, because if I have to resort to replace it with a new one, how am I even gonna do it?

 

Try oven baking the GPU.

These older cards love to be roasted... it gives them a new lease on life
:thumbsup:

 

any idea how hot and for how long the oven needs to be? I've seen these suggestions pop up quite a bit but without exact details on the procedure =P

 

its all in the link i posted above

 

Has anybody actually read my posts?
Are you guys just trolling?

I can't find where the GPU is.

Also please read the rest of my very first post if anybody wants to help me out. I basically can't use the computer in this status.

 

Here you go....

 

Thank you FouchSoftware!

This confirms that the circuit board that I saw last night beneath one of the heat sinks is indeed the GPU.

I tried to reach it but I couldn't unscrew screws 2 and 4 (see photo), they were too tight.




(it doesn't let me upload the second photo, so here's there's links to the photos uploaded on tinypic:

http://oi39.tinypic.com/312whnl.jpg
http://oi41.tinypic.com/10zy9as.jpg)

 

Here, it let me upload the other photo in a new post.

I wanted to ask, is there an actual procedure or guide that I can follow to remove the GPU?
I saw some posts of some users having upgraded their GPUs, so I guess maybe they did follow such guides too?

 

From what you've described and the pictures you've attached it looks like it could possibly be a bad install of the driver. If you can in safe made, download a driver sweeper program and then re-install the driver manually if you can. Also, I'm wondering if this is an issue with the card not being recognized because the connection from your card is damaged possibly over heating or other reasons. Not matter what, to physically check your you've got to get those screws out, also, from the looks of your fans, it needs to be blown out anyway. I highly suggest buying a set of eyeglass screws with an end that rotates on you palm like the ones here 11pcs Precision Screwdriver Set for Eyeglass Watch Clock Jewerly Repair | eBay, you can put some serious pressure on them and still turn them. However, when you pull the graphics card make sure you have two things, thermal paste and a good solvent to clean with, re-seating the card will do nothing if you don't clean it all up.

PS: I have a 485m as well and I've found the it doesn't really like the new drivers from Nvidia as much as some of the late 290 series drivers. Also, a graphics card isn't necessarily old by 2-3 years, but it is definitely obsolete. However, that said the 485 is still a very decent card and performance wise isn't too far behind the newer setups now.

 

Thanks anthonyhm, I'll give another try at unscrewing those two remaining screws.
My concern with forcing them is that, for what I've seen, when they are too tight, the screwdriver simply erodes the inside of the screw (the part where the screwdriver gets in), making the cut of the screw larger and looser and having like this even less friction with the screwdriver.

I don't have any of the cleaning material you mention, but I'll try to get it. First I'll see if I can actually unscrew things out.

For the driver sweeper program, I have one called DriverSweeper 3.2.0, is that fine or do you recommend me else?


Regarding the drivers though, I doubt that this last particular driver installation went bad, as like I said I had brief moments of graphical corruption various times before, for maybe a year or more, but I always quickly fixed the problem by rebooting the computer. This time, however, it's permanent. (before however I never had the graphic card not working/being recognised at all)

I don't recall having any problems with the card within the first year of the computer's life though. I wonder if this time period matches with the beginning of the release of the drivers that the card "doesn't like much", like you say.

 

igorant, to what I see now I can say that you better bring laptop to some specialists otherwise you risk with making even bigger damage to your once very pricey laptop in the past. I would suggest to disassemble the laptop only if you are a slightly better than someone who already used scredriver for disassembling anything else.

As about you you don't even have needed instruments for that.

NEVER USE SMALLER OR BIGGER SCREWDRIVER THAN THE ONE WHICH YOUR SCREW NEEDS! This is the golden rule I guess. Proper philips screwdriver set costs about 4-5$ on eBaywhich is much cheaper than any part of your laptop which you are trying to fix, right?

Now speaking about your laptop again. When you bought such a computer's combine have you ever thought that you should know basics of using it? There is a desktop CPU inside it and there surely is a reason of why does it have 3 fans inside (while some of them have even 4). Have you ever checked the temperature? I mean when yo saw that BSODs or errors countless of times have you done anything to fix that or at least find a cause?
Because now you ask what happend and if you haven't checked the temperature then it is pretty easy to guess what is happening with your laptop.

Baking GPU as cheapest solution but not the safest and easiest. Buying new GPU as much better solution. Selling your laptop and buying newer one for average price (which gonna be the same or even better in terms of performance) as the best.

P.S. Besides 480m is NOT a2-years old GPU. It is 3 years old one so probably you bought slightly outdated laptop at the time of buying it.

 

you can find the driver cleaners in the nvidia link in my sig below with a safe mode walkthrough.

 

I have not seen the blue screen of death countless times, I do not state that anywhere in any of my posts.

I don't have a 480M, I have a 485M. The GeForce GTX 485M came out on January 5, 2011, it is not even a full 3 years old yet.

Thanks!

 

@ignorant, Good that in the big mass of important information you can find something that you don't need to even pay attention at. It shows how sharp and watchful is your eagle eye and that makes me wonder how could that be that you didn't find GPU itself at the beginning?

You had a sign of either too much overclocked OR too much warmed up GPU. In another words something that made your GPU unstable and those signs would be driver crashes, BSODs and artifacts. Do you think that if you have just 2 out of 3 that makes a difference? Or maybe that you had just 1 of 3 was still OK?
I don't have such sharp eyes like your but I clearly see lots of dust on the heat-sink itself and on the every blade of your 3 fans. Something tells me that you never a) checked temperature; b) cleaned fans; and surely 3) repaste. Here you may see another example where even 1 out of 3 is important because you wouldn't do b) and c) if you haven't checked a).

This is offtopic but I will say anyway. Your GPU is 3 years old. Maybe not full 3 calendar years but 3 technical Evo years. In the Middle of 2011 (half a year after your 485M release) was released 5XXM series. In the Middle of 2012 was released GeForce 6XXM series based on totally new architecture called Kepler. And Mid of 2013 equals 7XXM series. This surely doesn't help fixing your current GPU (which you need to ship for reballing or fix/break at home) but at least you gonna know some info which helps you in terms of what GPU to buy or what notebook.

 

I saw your other post and answered it, looking here you are getting correct advise, I would avoid cross posting about a single issue in multiple places as it will cause confusion and clutters up the forum.

 

I have followed MrDJ's guide to manually update Nvidia's drivers.
I have uninstalled, rebooted in safe mode, used Driver Sweeper 3.2.0, then installed the drivers that came out just today, the 331.65.

Still nothing.

There's various things I need to mention, though.


1) I am certain that the problem is specifically on a hardware level. I mean, I can see signs of graphical corruption on the very very first image that appears on my screen when I turn it on, that is before Windows or any drivers are even loaded.

2) For some reason, the graphical corruption seems to have toned down quite a bit. If you see the attachment on my first post on page 1, there's a photo of a completely black image in MS Paint that I used to show the severe graphical corruption (which at that point was most visible on a dark/black background). Now if I use the same black background, I don't see any of it. The graphical corruption is still present in all parts of the screen though, it just shows more or less depending on the background color.

3) Right now I'm in Safe Mode. This is because, for the third time since this problem with the graphic card first occurred on friday night, Windows failed to boot in normal mode, at all. I get to the Windows logo forming up from the 4 colored orbs, where it says "Starting Windows", but after that there's just an endless black screen.

This is the behaviour I got on the first night that I had the graphical corruption and the computer got stuck. I unsuccesfuly tried to boot Windows for 4-5 times (having to hard reset on the black screen every time), until I tried to go in Safe Mode and I was able to log in Windows. After that I was able to boot in normal mode again.

Then this happened again (second time) last night upon restarting Windows. Same thing, unable to launch Windows until I went in Safe Mode first and then in normal mode again.

And now for the third time, while installing the drivers again, same problem. The only difference this time is that after going in Safe Mode first, after that I still could NOT successfully boot Windows in normal mode, so I was forced to go back in Safe Mode (and I am right now).

I'll try to reboot now again and see if it lets me go in full mode.

This worries me a lot, if I'm stuck in Safe Mode there's even less things I can do!!

 

well that sounds like a few problems i had on older laptop and it turned out to be 2 bad sectors on hard drive. had to scrap the drive after about 15 attempts to log in.

 

Sorry guys, I didn't see the replies before posting again.

@James D: Okay let's forget for now about this discussion about if the card is 2 years or 3 years old and if it's "old" or not.
And yes, maybe there's some dust on the fans itself, but the vents, the vents are clear, as I periodically clean them out. That dust on the heat sink itself, does not seem excessive to me. Either way, I don't know if it has been a case of overheating. I'd like to add that the bottom of my laptop is open and elevated a couple of centimeters from the surface it lays on to facilitate air flow.
And no I have never had anything overclocked.
About checking the temperatures, like I said, I have a program but I hardly have it running or check it. But the problems I had with the GPU don't seem to be correlated to the heat, as sometimes I would turn on the computer from being completely cold, start a game which does not require much processing power, and the problem would happen like in the first 2 minutes.
About the material that I currently don't have for cleaning out the computer properly, sure, I'll try to get them when I have a chance to do things more properly.


@Meaker: thanks and sorry, I'll keep the discussion exclusively here from now on.

@MrDJ: I have a Solid State Drive, actually. Would your case still apply?

 

nope. forget that idea then.

 

I am officially stuck in Safe Mode!

Windows now won't boot in normal mode. I tried 3 times and it just gets stuck on a endless black screen after the "Starting Windows" message appears with the Windows logo. I had to hard reset every time.

In Safe Mode I don't even have sound. This is getting worse and worse ;_;

 

no idea whats happening then.
no idea if this will help but try a EC reset.
remove mains and battery and press power button for 20 seconds.
plug in mains and try and reboot without battery.
no good
remove mains and try battery only and reboot.

what part of the world are you in. it might well need to go in for a full service.
forums are great for user help but when all the users are not in front of your computer it sadly ends up a trial and error procedure.

 

I did the EC reset, managed to log into windows in normal mode, but..... prepare for it.... it was on 640x480 in 256 colors!! And it could not be changed!!!
Rebooted, trying to get in normal mode, got the black screen, hard-resetted, now back in Safe Mode again.
I would upload a photo of my screen in 640x480 in 256 colors, but I just realise that in Safe Mode I can't use the SD card reader.

I didn't try with batter only yet, I doubt it will do anything but I can try.



I'm going to get some more suitable screwdrivers to get those two screws that are preventing me from reaching the GPU out of the way.


I need to get to the GPU and take it out.



(@MrDJ: I'm currently in Spain)

 

that sure is a strange one.

if you was in the uk i could of given you a couple of places to send for repair

me just got back from spain/ibiza last week. wish i could of brought the sun back with me.

 

I lived in UK for four years. After 2 years in Spain now, there's no way I'm going back to UK

Anyways.


I DID IT!
I went to my landlord (he lives above me), I apologised for disturbing at such late hour and without notice and I made him give me a bunch of different screwdrivers. I finally got the last two screws out. I removed the heat sink, I unscrewed the two screws holding down the graphic card, and it tilted out by itself, making it easy to remove.

I had a good look at it, nearly no dust on it, didn't see or smell anything burnt.

I placed everything back in place, tried to boot normally, still black screen.

In Safe Mode the graphical corruption seems completely GONE (for now), however I could still see it while booting (like I said, the graphical corruption is visible on the very first screen that appears when the computer is turned on, even before getting to Windows).


So, what am I to make of all of this? That the GPU is simply internally damaged in some ways?
Should I just proceed and see what I can replace it with?

(At least now I feel like I can change a video card by myself. I guess everything is an opportunity to learn.)

 

Read your post thoroughly. Not trolling at all. Your symptoms are indicative of dry solder joint and an oven bake of the gpu may /may not help. It's a unique way to salvage the card and it works assuming that you have not damaged anything else.
Do a search for oven baking gpu.
Here is a very good thread on it. Should be stickied
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/385857-baking-gpus-oven.html

 

well done. now youve removed the gpu before putting it back in place you need to clean off all the thermal paste and add new thermal paste BEFORE turning it on. turning on with old or no thermal paste at all will cause even more damage.

this will give an idea of how to add the thermal paste

 

Everything works now
everything works now
omg omg
guys it works

 

Sorry, I guess a more proper explanation of what happened is due. I was just too excited to see things back to normal I made a post like that (and wow the forum even censores abbreviations like w.t.f.)

So basically the last time I saw some graphical corruption was when I last booted in Safe Mode, before going into Windows. Once in Windows, I didn't see any. I rebooted, trying to go in normal mode again, and I did not get the black screen.

Once in Windows again everything was normal:
- no graphical corruption
- resolution back to 1920x1080
- Device Manager does not detect a probelm with the display adapter
- Dxdiag.exe correctly detects DirtectX and all other display features


I didn't try to launch any games yet but I'm sure they work fine.

The only thing that is off right now is the font of everything, don't know, seems taller, not sure what settings to check (the DPI seems to be at 125% as it as always been).
[EDIT: Nah, actually this is my not being used anymore to see the font I always used! It's usual one, just seemed strange at first.]


Now I can post that hilarious photo of my computer in 640x480 in 256 colors if you guys want.

So basically I fixed all of my terrible problems by taking out the graphic card and putting it back in.



@tron2^: In my first post I stated that I was trying to locate my GPU in my laptop (among other things), and when I was told to put it in the oven, I felt trolled because clearly I cannot put my GPU in the oven (which I doubt I would actually do) when I'm asking where I can find it.