M6300/FX3600M video/artifacts/freezing problems! Please HELP !!

Hey people. I have a 3 year old Dell M6300 with FX 3600M, 1920 x 1200 screen. In the past 2 days I have been getting some serious problems with my image. First I started getting black screens with warnings that the video driver has crushed and recovered. I thought a new drivers would solve the issues thinking that it's a software problem. I did update the drivers, and everything seemed fine as the problems only occured when the windows was loaded.
Today I got some really weird artifacts on the screen and the screen went black with no other way of waking up. So I hard-reseted the laptop and I noticed that the artifacts are now visible on the BIOS also so it's a hardware problem for sure.
Right now I am using it to type this message but I have some big vertical blue lines on the whole screen that sometime fliker. Usually if I refresh an image I kinda get a flikering from the screen also ... I am in France right now on a trip, so I wouldn't rule out a physical damage or anything but I have a very good Belking carrying bag and I never hit it or dropped it so far.

What can be done ? Any idea on how this can be fixed ? I suppose the only SANE way to go is to purchase another video adapter off ebay or something. Could it be anything else ? Maybe the video adapter is misplaced from it's plug or something ( although it seems highly unlikely ) ?

PS. I recently purchased a replacement battery for it as the original one was annoyingly telling me that it needs to be replaced and was holding about 30 mins of usage time. The new battery is not OEM but I suppose this wouldn't have anything to do with the video issues as it seems to be working perfectly so far and the battery - video seems kinda over-streched.

P.S.S - if it's the adapter that needs replacement, what other cheaper cards could I fit in here ? I found that I recently don't use the laptop for heavy 3D applications or games anyway so I could live with a lower end card - but which ones would fit in this model ??

Thanks

 

Check if the artifacts appear on an external display... then you you know for sure that your GPU is hosed.

You can use any GPU for this chassis (M6300, M90, M1710, and E1705/9400) going all the way back to the X1400 from the E1705/9400, but they're all stupidly expensive for what you get ($100 for just the X1400) such that you're most likely better off getting a new laptop.

If you do get a new GPU, don't get an Nvidia card - all of the Nvidia cards for this chassis are affected by the BGA solder issue and may not last very long.

 

Thanks for the reply.

A bit of an update. There was a time when the problem went away on it's own. I was looking at some pictures and everything just went clear with no stripes. However, after one restart ... everything came back. If I try to watch a movie now, even a regular xvid, the FPS is quite low, as if the video card is not even installed. I also get a yellow exclamation mark on the FX3600 in the device manager so it's 100% a GPU issue.
If I try to hook the laptop to an external device, via VGA for example, I get no signal on the cable. If I press FN + F8 as usual to change the display, the laptop's display get's black as it should but I get nothing on the external display.

From what I can tell, if I am watching an image with lots of colors, the stripes are only visible in the brightest areas and do fade out in the darkest ones, I don't know if this makes sense.

Could you please tell me some specific video cards models that could fit in here ? nVidia or others. I found that a replacement FX3600M would cost about 130$ on ebay, and to be honest it's not that much considering that other MUCH MUCH lower end cards ( FX1600 ) are getting close to 80-100$. However, I could probably be happy with something way lower, as lately I am not working with 3D applications or play games as I used to in the past. I use it mostly for web and some HD video watching. I am very disappointed that such a HIGH END professional card has this shameful problem.

I really expected a lot more from a $3000 Dell product.

PS: if I do get another card, could I try and save this one by "cooking" it ?

 

I'd just join in on the word of warning on the used replacement cards from ebay. They're rather overpriced and you can't be sure in what condition exactly they are. E.g. a friend had an Nvidia 7900GS (not sure if this series was one of the officially affected ones, but considering their number and prices on eBay, I'd say they're probably going out in large numbers) die on him on his 4-5 year old Inspiron. So, not wanting to ditch the laptop away, he bought the same one on eBay and it died on him within a week (rather frustrating)..

 

No output to an external display is also indicative of GPU failure... I mean basically anything that fit in an Inspiron E1705/9400, Precision M90/M6300, and XPS M1710 will work - you can't use cards from the older Inspiron 9200/9300 or the XPS M170.

You can definitely try to bake your current GPU, but my baking experience with these junk cards has been that they still won't last very long before you have to bake it again.

This too. Honestly consider getting a new machine without a 2005-2008 Nvidia chip.

 

Hmm.. Now I'm worried about my FX3700M.. Should have bought a spare Radeon when I've had a chance..

Come to think of it, it's possible that my friend bought a "baked" card, e.g. someone's buying fried cards on ebay (sometimes sold for replacement parts) and can try to get them to working order with baking and then sell them for substantial price difference. I mean, I found it weird that it died within a week until I read more about this baking thing..

So, if buying a used card on ebay, it would pay to search for sellers who offer some basic warranty (e.g. a month or two) with the cards..

 

And we're back

I got it to work again ( God knows for how long ) using the bakery method

I had it for 7-8 minutes in the oven, 200 Celsius ... and voila ... everything returned to normal. I have to add that currently I'm on vacation in France ( I live in Romania ). I stay at a friend's house in north of France and I have done this whole procedure with a flat screwdriver that I found around the house and I had to use a pile on to get it a bit smaller and sharper so it could open the philips screws. I know I should have waited to get home where I have my tools but I don't have a oven with a temperature set back home and my friend has one here so I couldn't wait and got on with it )
To be honest I am a bit surprised this whole thing actually worked, although it seems to be a huge success on a large number of people.
I don't know how much will this work, but at least now I know what to do. I will have to open the "animal" when I get home anyway, as I have to tighen up the screen hinges a bit ( I didn't want to open the screen here ) plus I have to change the thermal paste on the GPU and CPU. The one mounted originally is such a piece of **** and I already have heat issues with the CPU as is.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions and hopefully I won't have to rebake it too soon I might just keep an eye for a different spare card just in case. I love this laptop, it's really a nice machine, the screen is great, now I have a new battery so I will be holding on to it for a bit with the reserve of having to cook the GPU from time to time.

 

For anyone else needing a precise how-to on this fix-it method, here is one that I myself wrote and which is proven to have worked twice. It employs a heat gun in place of an oven: How-To Guide