Friday, June 29, 2012

Nvidia G8400 / 8600 Faults

I created this post a while ago while i owned a Dell Vostro 1310 notebook. It may be dated but some of you will probably be experiencing these problems if you bought your laptop 2-3 years ago.. read on if you must.

Does your laptop have distorted video playback or freeze with random characters on the screen?



NVIDIA lost a lawsuit and availed 2million to replace the faulty chips in the US.. but thats the catch, in the US. That leaves customers in Africa with an expensive door stopper.

Since this is a support blog, I will provide some temporary fixes that worked for me and give insight on a permanent fix.






THE TOWEL TRICK

1. Remove your hard drive, RAM and Battery from your laptop,
2. Wrap the laptop in a  towel or two, Making sure the fan is completely blocked,
3. turn the laptop on and leave it until it turns itself off.

**What does this do? The fault is with the ball solder points between the graphics chip and the motherboard. Wrapping the laptop up raises the internal temperature and kinda melts the joint providing a reconnection.

NOTE: The same trick has been known to sometimes temporarily fix the XBOX360 red ring of death.

BIOS UPDATE

This will only apply if you are not yet experiencing the problem stated above. This does not fix the problem but may prolong the use of your laptop.

Some manufacturers, including Dell and HP, released BIOS updates that keep the fan running longer thereby regulating the temperature of the graphics chip more effectively.

YOU TUBE

If you are comfortable with reballing and soldering, this is your place, there are plenty of example videos online.

HOW I BRICKED IT

Yes, I tried to reheat my graphics chip with an industrial heat gun, just for a few seconds and it was fried.. so please, don't try that