Display problems and crashes: please help!

I use a Latitude D630 with an NVIDIA Quatro NVS 135M video card. I generally run my computer with dual screen support using an additional monitor.

Last week, I returned to my computer to find the image looking all scrambled, the resolution low, looking like it was in safe mode. It said there was a problem with the display driver and needed to restart. I restarted, everything seemed to boot up normally, but as I would perform operations in Windows, the screen started to mess up and the machine would lose display or freeze completely (I still can't tell which it did).

After continually having to manually turn off and boot my machine, at one point at startup it mentioned that the volume on the C drive was dirty and needed to do some clean up. It took a few minutes, but then booted normally. I'm not sure what happened there.

This continued to happen. I thought that maybe outputting to two screens was too much for the machine, so I undid the monitor, and voila - it seemed to work properly for a day or two. Then just tonight, the same problems occurred. Scrambled screens would come up and the machine would lose it. Had to manually restart.

Does anybody know what might be wrong with the machine? Should I uninstall and reinstall the video driver? I checked for updates and nothing else was available.

I'm starting to get really worried that there's some kind of motherboard issue.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

Looks like you're the latest victim in a long list of Nvidia mobile GPU failures. Check if any of your artifacts appear on an external display - if they do, your GPU is definitely on the way out. In this case, the only thing you can do is replace your motherboard, but I think all D630s should still be under warranty at this point... (unless you somehow voided the standard 3-year warranty)

 

Sorry - I don't quite follow. What do you mean when you say "Check if any of your artifacts appear on an external display" and how does that determine whether the GPU has failed?

 

Those are the the artifacts. Checking with the external display eliminates the possibility of a problem with your LCD screen and relevant connectors, and you can more or less be sure your GPU is dying.

 

Okay, I see.

Yeah - the artifacts appeared on the external display as well.

I updated the System Bios (which seemed to be about 3 updates behind) and then found that there WAS actually an update to the driver that I wasn't aware of (so my old driver was about a year behind).

I haven't had any problems YET. Are you reasonably certain that this is a problem with the GPU?

If so - I DO have a warranty. What are the protocol involved with sending in a computer? How long does it take typically to replace the part? I'm just curious because I need my computer for my work.

Do you know if there's anything I could have been doing that contributed to the GPU being worn down? I'm just curious if there's anything I can do to avoid this in the future.

Sorry to burden you with questions. Thanks so much for all your help - it's been very useful!