m6809 Display Dead?

I have had my m6809 for sometime (2 +years) and I have loved it every step of the way.

For the first two years of ownership I did some heavy duty gaming on the rig with Far Cry, Everquest II, and WOW.

Now I am having all different kinds of display problems. At the on set of the problems I thought they were driver related and I tried nearly every driver I could get my hands on.

What does my m6809 do?
It will sometimes have fuzzy lines running horizontally running through the display until they get so bad that the CPU freezes.

Other times I get screens that look like a Nintendo emulator is booting up and there is just strange patterns of lines and bars making up the display.

Sometimes the display will just go dead (black) and the CPU will keep running, sometimes the display will go dead and the CPU will freeze and reboot. The problem is not just related to the m6809's LCD because when I use an external LCD monitor the same problems exist.

Is this a fried mother board? Could it some how be a driver issue? Would flashing the BIOS of my motherboard help? Or is the ATI on board hardware toast and the mother board needs to be replaced?

Has anyone had this problem?

 

Yup. Sounds like the graphics chip is fried. Mine did the same thing when it died, I had to take it in for service (an m6805). Have you been overclocking at all? See if you can clean out any dust or anything, and reapply paste to the heatsink for the graphics chip and the processor. Other than that, it looks like it may be hosed. Sorry

 

Hmm, overclocking doesn't seem like a good idea anymore if it fries your GPU. I think I'll stick with my long-lasting integrated nVidia graphics thank you.

 

Thanks.
That is what I thought.
After the problems were happening all the time, last night I tried to take the thing apart but decided against it after I realized it wasn’t 100 percent straight forward, But what I did do was give every opening and vent a serious sucking with a vacuum. Surprisingly this did make a difference. I thought for about an hour it corrected the problem but it ultimately did revert back to freezing up. However instead of the freezing up happening almost instantly it now happens much later.
Any chance a good cleaning from my IT department could cure the problem or is it still fried and just needs to be clean to work the little bit that it can?

Edit: No overclocking, no need to.

 

How much did it cost you to get the GPU fixed? Was it fixed via gateway/emachines?

 

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread167247.html
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread68948-9.html
interesting reads

cheers ...

 

I did a clean install of Windows XP Pro and the same problems happened, So I called eMachines corporate office and paid my 240 dollars for them to ship me a box to fix said problem.

I will keep you updated.

 

This doesn't sound very good. Mine ended up being major major problems and was never properly repaired. It took me over 20 months to obtain a refund from the vendor, and I purchased a different machine. Mine was an M6811.

You can go through my post history on this forum for the story.

I hope you get it fixed without major issues. Since the GPU is on-board, they may replace the board. If that is the case, you'll probably get a Gateway board. This will invalidate the CD key on your eMachines restore DVD with the OS. You will need to make a big stink to get them to replace this DVD with the Gateway one or make them give you a set of XP cd's.

Good luck!