Dell 1420 Video Artifacts and Freezing

I have an Inspiron 1420 on my hands that is having display issues that seem to be hardware related. This machine was brought to me by it's owner to diagnose an issue where the laptop would lock up and need to be powered off occaisonally (usually during multitasking). When I got it, I was using it for a bit and noticed that it was running really hot; the palm rest was almost too hot to touch. I took off the bottom cover and found the tiny thin heatsink was clogged with dust. After cleaning it out and replacing the thermal paste with some AS5, I booted it up again and all was well and it was running much cooler.

Fast forward 1 week. It's owner complained that it locked up again. This time I took it and ran an overnight Memtest (which passed) and the next night, I tried stressing the CPU with OCCT. At some point during the night, the laptop hard locked again and the screen showed multiple colored blocks (artifacts). I restarted it and during boot at the Win7 logo, there are many artifacts like a scrolling line of brightly colored blocks alongside the logo. The laptop now only boots into Windows about 50% of the time. Other times it locks up completely with artifacts on screen.

Any ideas? Does it sound like it's motherboard is shot? It has the Intel integrated video.

 

This definitely sounds like a GPU issue... are you sure you have the IGP motherboard? Also, does it do the same on an external monitor?

 

As stated above, does it do the same thing externally? If yes then you have a defective motherboard/RAM, if no you have a defective LCD/inverter.

Are you sure it is the Intel Crestline GPU? 1420 is infamous for housing the defective Nvidia chips.

 

Yeah, I'm positive the laptop has the integrated Intel GPU. I hooked it up to an external monitor and it still won't boot with artifacts all over the screen. Looks like it's shot. I already told it's owner and a new Acer Timeline X is already on it's way.

Thanks for the replies!