Laptop graphic card trouble (?)
Hello Ppruners!
It seemed like another normal day: Vista running, browsing pprune; stepping away for about half an hour an then found this machine in matrix mode. Black screen with vertical blue dotted lines. Laptop was frozen. Restarted, initially same issue in normal mode while loading, and then it would freeze. No problems though in Safe Mode. On start-up I noticed some graphical distortions (logo) which were also present when I accessed the BIOS.
The Sony VIAO has a power mode switch: Stamina or Speed. I moved it to Stamina and ...no problems! It starts up normally. I did notice through a freeware program called "Speedfan" that the temperature of my GPU is no longer displayed. I am glad that my lappy works in Stamina mode; I am in the process of making a complete backup.
Since I am suspecting my graphic card to be malfunctioning, I wonder if any of you know a software diagnosis tool for my graphic card. Do you have any other suggestions in pin-pointing the problem?
Thanks,
7 7 7 7
Sony VAIO VGN-SZ780
NVIDIA GS8400 (but says Intel chipset now ???)