Author: AdamC Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: [Hampshire] Laptop display borked.
A couple of years ago I bought a Novatech laptop which I duly
installed Ubuntu on. I've had trouble free computing from this machine
until last weekend.
The kids were playing a game on the laptop (nvidia GPU) and then
complained that the display 'went all funny'. When I looked the
graphics were all corrupt across the screen - lots of flickering and
indeterminable output. I hard powered the machine down. When I
restarted it, I got pretty much the same output at bootup, and then
the screen went completely blank. So, I hard-powered down again, took
the battery out after disconnecting the mains. After taking off the
underside cover, nothing unusual could be seen or smelt. I thought
that I would try to let it boot and see what state the machine was in,
so put the cover back on, inserted the battery and plugged in the
mains. I ssh'ed from my wife's machine and despite there being no
visual output, linux had booted and was on the network. So I shutdown
again while I googled around. Most of google seems to point to a
graphics GPU problem. I left it a while and then booted it up again,
and the display was back to normal. I was chuffed but still
suspicious. However, I carried on using the machine for extended
periods through the week without any noticeable problems.
This weekend, the problems have started again. This time the machine
boots, I can see BIOS and grub loading, but it is split six ways across the
screen and corrupted. I've even had it once where it booted with a
good screen to
the Ubuntu splash-screen, but then got a totally dark screen (albeit
powered as it's slightly giving out light). So the problem seems to be
intermittent. However, this time the machine doesn't seem to connect
to the network, as I can't ssh in to it and it doesn't appear on my
ADSL router as a client. I've tried plugging in a VDU but that reports
that no signal is being received.
What are the options with dodgy GPUs? Can they be replaced? I've never
had any dealings with repairing laptops before (like I said 2 years
have been uneventful so far). Or is it time I bought a new one (which
I'm very reluctant to do).
