okay so its not a laptop as such
its on of those hybrid media PC things where its all inside the screen
been getting flashing screens and occasions where the screen goes black
then it started creating blue lines on everything
the screen goes bright and it appears the PC is using onboard GFX (see pic)



the card (are they actually cards on laptops?) is an Nvidia Gforce 8400 GT

Im guessing the card is on its way out?
im using as recenty a driver i can.its a Vaio and i can only install a vaio driver
dont know if they use specific hardware on the sony PC's?

The 8000 series laptop graphics are infamous for it. The heatsink is not properly in place so the chip overheats and eventually breaks (similar to the Xbox 360 rrod).

colin79666 said:

The 8000 series laptop graphics are infamous for it. The heatsink is not properly in place so the chip overheats and eventually breaks (similar to the Xbox 360 rrod).

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dang
to be fair the PC has been on 24/7 for probably 3 years or more
so whats the deal with these things? do they 'just' slot in like PC cards in a standard slot
or is it going to be a pain?

depends, but unlikely. The 8400M is generally just sold as an IC. Unless you can solder BGA stuff then it's not easy to swap out.

I think some Sony laptops have them on cards, so it may not be all lost - crack it open and have a look.

arc said:

depends, but unlikely. The 8400M is generally just sold as an IC. Unless you can solder BGA stuff then it's not easy to swap out.

I think some Sony laptops have them on cards, so it may not be all lost - crack it open and have a look.

Click to expand...

will do
its an utter pain to strip down as well

Good luck .

And yes my dads HP media laptop had a Geforce 8400 gfx which knacked in 14months but killed the whole mobo (I'm assuming cause its integrated).

Although a really common fault (100's of internet posts about the same laptop) HP washed their hands so it was up to me to change the motherboard .

ChrisUK said:

Although a really common fault (100's of internet posts about the same laptop) HP washed their hands so it was up to me to change the motherboard .

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Dell accepted liability on the XPS M1330 (I have one) and extended the warranty on the GPU to 3 years. Also did a bios update which kicks the fan in earlier. Good video showing a Dell tech replacing a XPS M1330 motherboard - serious stripping required!

Stripping laptops down isn't too hard

A bit of patience, some force, some delicacy and thought and you can easily get them apart and back together. A guy at work had a couple of lines across his LCD on his laptop and I found the same machine which had a faulty motherboard (graphical corruption!) and had the screens swapped over in about 5 minutes. Motherboards are a bit more of a job but if you take your time and look at which screws go where you can't go wrong

Say that once you've done my Dads HP. I've done 100's of different laptops over the years without difficulty and this was by far the hardest especially without damaging anything. Took me over 2hours start to finish I recon and I still had screws left over :chin:

ChrisUK said:

Say that once you've done my Dads HP. I've done 100's of different laptops over the years without difficulty and this was by far the hardest especially without damaging anything. Took me over 2hours start to finish I recon and I still had screws left over :chin:

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Ah yes. Consumer HP's are buggers to work on. I've done a few HP and Dell enterprise machines and they're decent to work on

had a think on this
think im gonna fire off a letter on SOG for a product sold with an inherant fault
the PC is just over 2 years old and retailed for about £1200
i paid about £700
eg
http://www.nvidiadefect.com/i-won-my-case-maybe-this-will-help-someone-else-t170.html
worth a shot

custard said:

had a think on this
think im gonna fire off a letter on SOG for a product sold with an inherant fault
the PC is just over 2 years old and retailed for about £1200
i paid about £700
eg
http://www.nvidiadefect.com/i-won-my-case-maybe-this-will-help-someone-else-t170.html
worth a shot

Click to expand...

Good idea. You will also want to look at this: http://esupport.sony.com/perl/news-item.pl?template=EN&news_id=349

colin79666 said:

Good idea. You will also want to look at this: http://esupport.sony.com/perl/news-item.pl?template=EN&news_id=349

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lol i was just about to post that
looks like i might be covered
however we shall keep it quiet that Ive had it open to swap hard drives

wel here we are

Sony took the PC back and repaired it under warranty
came back today,all good?
well no.
they have repaired it, but have fitted a motherboard with no extra graphics
this leaves me a windows 7 graphics rating of 1 in 2d/3d,and a machine that while specced with a Bluray drive,is now incapable of playing Blurays :doh:

custard said:

wel here we are

Sony took the PC back and repaired it under warranty
came back today,all good?
well no.
they have repaired it, but have fitted a motherboard with no extra graphics
this leaves me a windows 7 graphics rating of 1 in 2d/3d,and a machine that while specced with a Bluray drive,is now incapable of playing Blurays :doh:

Click to expand...

Nice NOT

306maxi said:

Nice NOT

Click to expand...

lol,pretty much
Im considering what my options are here with Sony
I think my saving grace is the Bluray drive and its inability to work now
without that the PC would have still worked as a PC

Surely they need to rectify that?

ben said:

Surely they need to rectify that?

Click to expand...

well this is the issue
they have fixed it,but have taken the machine to a lesser spec
and rendered one of its major features(at the time) of Bluray unusable
the issue is see is that they may genuinely not have a part to fit to the machine

I'd be demanding they either get it up to spec, or give you a different one then.

PC World's repair policy for example, was they would fix it - or give you one of equal spec - they'd never downgrade you!

wrong part will have been ordered or received. Happened all the time when I worked for a Toshiba/hp/ibm repair place