Computer Malfunction! Help!

My Dell Latitude D630 has been malfunctioning for about the past to weeks and has gradually gotten worse. At first I thought nothing of it when my laptop froze..I just rebooted it up and everything would be fine again. This was a few months ago. Then my laptop would shutdown randomly. Now to the present.. my screen is completely distorted with striations across the screen usually a pink tinge horizontally or sometimes yellow vertically. Everytime I boot it up my desktop screen will have a negative photo quality effect to it and the screen is horizontally split in the middle where the bottom half looks exactly as the top half (about two inches to the far right of the screen is black and blank strip and runs down that side). Whenever I try to go on firefox or internet explorer, the webrowser will shut down within 15 seconds.. and when the pink striations appear I have about 30 seconds before my laptop system completely shuts down.

I have hooked it up to an external monitor and the picture looks exactly the same the screen on my laptop. This may be a video card malfunction but I'm not sure.. I have also tested, taken out both DIMMs and reinserted them one at a time in each slot, taken out the hardrive, and optical drive, and battery to try to determine the culprit.

I have no idea what's going on. I'm a college student and it's essential for me to have access to a computer at all times. I'm currently borrowing someone's computer but I'd rather not make a habit of it especially when I'm taking intensive courses in English where I must write and do research papers.

please help, i'm so frustrated. Before when the problem occurred I would boot up my system with diagnostic testing.. usually it would rectify the problem and my picture and browsing ability will be just fine. However now my screen is unreadable so I have no idea what I'm looking at anymore. Moreover, I did try pressing F8 for the safe mode options and I would choose the last good configuration option.. this would also rectify the problem temporarily but I find now that when I use it the picture quality is just the same as it has been when the problem occurs.

 

heres a super awesome idea try calling dell sounds like your notebook is defective in some way

 

i did.. they're taking forever and they're not really giving me anything to work with.. i'm in contact with one of them and I've done everything they've wanted to.. i've sent them tests results and everything.. i'm just awaiting a reply back saying what i should do next. but i was hoping i could get some opinions from other computer experts on this site while i'm waiting..

thanks for the help

 

128MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 135M

That's the problem. It sounds like you have tried everything I would have suggested.

The video card is fried.

 

sounds like this seems to be a common resolution.. i don't know much about computer hardware and their functions but would a video card malfunction prevent me from getting on the internet browser and just shut down the laptop almost instantly? I was wondering if it was a combination of things.. at first I thought it was a virus.. and then a hard drive malfunction.. and now it's a video card malfunction. could you please clarify if the video card would actually do all those things or would it actually be a combination of hardware malfunctions?

thank you so much for the help!

 

Well, depending on how the video card failed it could confuse the operating system and drivers.

Granted, I fail to see a connection between a browser crashing and a video card failure...but start with what you know is failing.

 

Well to make sure that it isn't some software problem, you can always try reinstalling your system (yeah it's annoying and make sure to back up). However, it does sound like a hardware problem to me. I suggest for the time being, you should manage your time well and take advantage of your school's computer labs. All colleges should have computer labs.

 

The easiest way to check for OS problems is to book from a Linux live CD.

John