Sony Vaio FW21L Display Driver Timeout

Hello everyone. Recently I have been receiving a ridiculous amount of BSOD's. Today alone I have received at least 15 of them and they all display the same message "There was a display driver timeout". It always happens randomly and I can never repeat the exact situation. It just BSOD when it wants.

The error code which appears is:
atikmdag 0x00000116 (0x86eb9510, 0x8f228c14, 0x00000000, 0x00000002)

I've tried ringing up sony and they have told me twice to uninstall the display driver which did not work and then said to run a hardware diagnostics test but i received a BSOD while performing this.

If anyone could help I would really apreciate it.

Jamie

 

Unfortunately this is a major problem with ATI cards - their forums are literally swamped with that error code, and if you Google it you'll find you're not alone: http://www.google.com/search?q=atikmdag+0x00000116

If you've only just uninstalled/reinstalled without any luck, then go to the Sony support page for your system and download the latest driver for your system. Get it from the Sony site - it'll be certified for your system. If you get it from ATI or somewhere else you could have more problems since you can't be sure if it's certified for use with your configuration or not. Once you download it, uninstall the old one first, then install the new one.

If the problem has just started, then think back to any changes you've made to your system recently - Windows updates, driver updates, BIOS, firmware, anything that changed the previous configuration of your system before it started. That should give you a clue as to where the problem lies and maybe how to get rid of it.

However, judging by the internet remains of others with this problem, I'd be back on the phone with Sony reaming them if your system is still under warranty.

 

Cheers forthe reply mate. Updated news:

I got the BSOD again and so i restarted it as usual but after booting up nothing appeared on the screen. I spoke to sony and they told me to do full system recovery which I did. But then after the part where itrestores the OS the same thing happened. I tried booting in to safe mode and it said tht i could not use safe mode while installing Windows.

In the end I sent it off for repair on the 27 Feb. Just got a phone call today (05 March) from the repair centre saying that the screen is broken and needs to be replaced. The parts for the screen do not arive until 12 March.

Now what sounds strange to me is that before I sent it off I could still see the boot screen and Windows Error Console so I can't see how the screen would be the problem. The screen also worked while booting into safe mode.

I just don't want them "fixing" the screen when that weren't the problem in the first place. I've been looking on the internet about the error code I was receiving form the BSOD and there literally hundreds of causes but in my opinion I thought it was the graphics card failing.

However I'm really confused on this one. Are sony right that the screen is broken even if I could still see the boot screen before I sent it off?

I'd be grateful for any ideas