X80MV Graphical Glitches

[charliebruce]

Hi all,
My brother bought a laptop (X80MV if i remember correctly) a few months ago, with no O/S installed. I then installed Vista, but occasionally I noticed slight graphical glitches on start-up, which soon disappeared. However, as of recent I've noticed these glitches more. The graphics card is an nVidia 9800M GTX and I've tried it with 2 different graphics driver versions. The worrying part is, that these glitches are also visible on the BIOS screens, as well as before boot-up. These happen when the computer has been booted from cold. The actual stability of the machine, and the result of rendering is not affected, however specific shades of colour have issues (near-blacks have green vertical "noisy" (flickering at I'd guess the refresh rate of the screen) streaks, and shades of green have purple "noisy" streaks).

These glitches appear whilst in a game, on the desktop or on Vista's bre-boot splash screen, which is why I might suspect a video BIOS issue, or cold joint (since the issues seem to disappear after the computer has warmed up). Also, on boot-up, the screen resolution is often "kicked" into a low resolution (640 by 480 or 1024 by 768, on a screen with native res. 1920 by 1200).

Photos of the graphical issues can be found at:
http://charlie.cheesebase.co.uk/laptop-graphics/
Note: Very large files, and plenty of them!

Any advice on the potential of fixing, or is it just worth sending it in for repairs?
Charlie

[Mike]

Methinks that needs to come back into us by the looks of that screen shot and what you describe - It can't be driver related as you say it's happening on POST. If you PM me the order number I'll be happy to generate a return number for you on Monday when I'm next in.

Mike

[charliebruce]

No problem - I'll drop you a PM. Do you think this will be a video bios, or cold joint/hardware issue? As I said, it has absolutely no impact on the system's stability, the only effect it has on the OS is the resolution "kicking" issue.

[Mike]

I'm not entirely sure tbh - there afre quite a few things it could be, from a slow failing of the graphics card as a whole (i.e. not being detected properly and thus not being identified by the driver and dropping the res), to a gfx memory problem, to a screen problem (again, driver (monitor this time) not recognising the monitor and dropping the res to a low one). This list goes on. But it certainly needs looking at.

[charliebruce]

It's on its way to you now (if it hasn't already arrived...)