1420 problems

I've had this thing for a little over a year now. Played a bunch of games on it since I got it. Mostly source, with some other lowend stuff. I had been playing Fallout 3 a lot since it came out. I guess that wasn't such a good idea. While I was playing a few days ago, the game froze up with a bunch of artifacts. After that it was pretty much fine, but would do it every so often. Now, I can't play anything rendered realtime without really bad FPS, artifacts or BSOD. I've reinstalled the driver about 4 times now but that doesn't help any. Is it safe to say the graphics card got damaged? What do I do if that's the case? I was on a budget when I bought it and couldn't afford any improved warranty. Which means my "Limited hardware warranty" ran out about 2 months ago.

 

It's not your fault, probably the 8400m GS. It's probably one of the defective ones. I don't know anything else you can do. That's why you always buy the warranty, I found it out the hard way too.

 

I'm gonna try some windows related things tomorrow, since I did use a driver from laptopvideo2go when this happened... But since it probably isn't that, what exactly should I do to get it fixed? ebay wasn't exactly brimming with them. Not sure how to take advantage of this either.

 

It should still be under warranty and it sounds like the GPU went bad.

 

What is your idle temperature? I believe a lot of the failing GPUs had higher idle temps. Otherwise, I would run the dell diagnostics (hold down Fn key when powering on). Write down any error code that you see, and if you still have some warranty left, get in touch with dell. You are unfortunately in a tight spot however, as you may need to get a new motherboard installed.

Otherwise, it might be time to buy a new computer.

Oh yes, last time I checked, you could always extend your warranty if you wanted to . . . I am just not sure if you can do it once you are out of warranty.

 

I always find that new games require new computers. Maybe the software companies are really employed by the computer companies. Get everyone to buy new systems.

 

Sounds like GPU to me as well. If you have it, run the diagnostics CD and see if you get any errors. You can get it from Dell's support site if not.

You are in luck if it is a nVidia. There is an extended warranty of sorts for the nVidia GPU in the 1420 as well as several other systems.

It basically adds 12 months to the end of your original warranty.

I can't post URLs yet, but google "dell nvidia warranty" and the first article should be one from the Direct2Dell blog describing the warranty details.

 

about that extra warraty . . . I do believe that there is still not any real official document or disclaimer aside from the blog. Some people on the board have gotten in to some scraps trying to get that honored.

I am just putting that out there in case you get a hard time. I would converse via a chat session so that you can paste the link to the blog if the rep claims to have no knowledge of the GPU defect.

 

If you do get any kind of static, save the case/ticket number and go here:

https://support.dell.com/support/to...lcare/outstanding_issues_tech?c=us&l=en&s=gen

This is a group that handles unresolved issues.

 

Thanks everyone. I'll contact them soon.