m6805 Video Card Dilemma

I bought a refurbished m6805 laptop from tigerdirect.com for a great price about four months ago. The machine ran wonderfully. I even played Doom 3 on there for awhile with only mild hiccups. Just recently, however, I was working on a term paper, and my screen color quality shot down to 4bit and the resolution went down as well. Up comes this window saying there was a device failure. After rebooting a couple times I decided it could be the video device drivers. So I reloaded them, but the same problem came up. I then did a complete system restore and that also didn’t solve the problem. By that time the screen started having bouts where it would blank out and weird colors would cross the screen. I decided to test the system on an external monitor to see if it was the screen. And the same faded out colors were on that screen also. My only other option I thought was that it had to be the video card. I talked to a few people and after hearing some other points of view, saying that they also thought it was the card, I started my quest on what I could do to replace the card.

I saw that someone else had similar problems here:

http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10104

I haven’t overclocked my card so it can’t be that. And my warranty is already up because it’s refurbished, so I can’t turn to emachines. Since the card is wired to the board I’m going to have an interesting time.

Does any body have any advice on what I can do?

So far, the two options that I could think of were:

1. Replace the motherboard with a new one
2. I found a place that has a pcmcia to pci extension…I guess I could possibly have an external card this way.

But I’m hoping there is an easier way. Any insight would be helpful.

 

Ouch! It sounds like your screwed...
However, you might try a few things first.

1. Reinstall motherboard drivers and video drivers- sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. I have seen rare cases where reinstalling the chipset drivers made the gremlins go away. But, if you did a complete system restore with the CD's (not system restore in windows) then you have already done this.

2. Bend over and grab your ankles- Call eMachines customer support 801-401-1419 and return it for repairs. They probably won't sell you a motherboard without taking your old one out so they can refurb it. Replacing the video card isn't an option (provided that you could even find one) since it's not user replaceable. The pcmcia to pci extension won't work either because of the power requirements needed by the video card through the pci slot.

Good luck with eMachines customers support. Let us know how much they quote you for repairs.



-Airdog
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M6809 • WinXP Pro SP2 • Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.0ghz • 80GB • 1.2Gb pc2700 • Radeon 9600 • 802.11g Wireless • DVD±RW • USB 2.0 • Firewire • 6 in 1 Media Reader