Source
r/techsupport•
Cardon

Red dot artifacts, BSODs on NVIDIA driver. Is my GPU fried?

I've had a Gateway P-6860FX laptop that I've been using as my main gaming station for a couple of years now. It has an NVIDIA 8800M GTS card, which is soldered to the motherboard.

Anywho, last night while playing, I lost video on the laptop, and it BSOD'd, complaining about being unable to reset the display driver. I turned her off, cooled it down, and then booted again, to no avail (same issue).

I can boot into safe mode successfully, though artifacts continue to exist. I'd updated to the latest drivers, but those have not seemed to help.

Does anyone have recommendations as to the next step to take? I'm afraid the GPU is shot, rendering the laptop nothing more than a paperweight :'(

Posted Jul 8, 2010, 3:24 PM UTC

26
fishy007•

If you get artifacts while in a 'DOS' environment (ie: booting up the computer or in the inital phases of an XP install) then your laptop is on its way out. If those screens are clean, it's likely a driver issue with windows.

Gateway is unfortunately known for having issues like this. :(

2
cockblockingteats•

Nvlmkk driver or something? Had a similar experience with an 8800 recently and after 10000 different methods a full format and reinstall of OS sorted it. Of course I'd hate to reccomend thisand it be wrong so take my advice at your own risk.

1
CardonOP•

Thought about just doing a clean reinstall and seeing what happens. It certainly is a possibility. Annoying, but not hard.

1
[deleted]•

You didn't tell us which operating system you are using.

If you have another computer available, try downloading a Linux LiveCD. If the artifacts appear even in that environment, I'd say you have a fried GPU.

1
g2g079trusted•

Try underclocking the video card.

1
itsmegoddamnit•

I had a similar problem with my 9800M GTS and it was due to the drivers which sucked for both vista and 7. And we are talking about the original drivers over here, straight from the laptop producer (Gateway) or from the video card producer (NVidia). After 3 months of artifacts and getting really pissed off, I stumbled upon: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ . I used the custom drivers found over there and I've never had any problem since.

Just to make sure I didn't write the above in vain, do the artifacts appear while you are outside windows as well? If so, it's a bad sign. Try reinstalling windows as you said and keep us up to date :-)

1