Help! Laptop trouble

[MsDarkstar]

Hey all, I'm hoping I can maybe get a little help here. Please forgive the wall of text you're about to encounter, but I figure I should try to give as much information as possible.

I've got a Dell XPS M1330 (running Vista) laptop that, until a couple of nights ago, I haven't had any trouble with. It's my main computer & I play World of Warcraft on it (ya, I'm a WoW geek). A few nights ago while in game, my screen pixelated & froze. CTRL+Alt+Del didn't work, couldn't tab out either...had to hold the power button down to force a restart. When it rebooted the screen was black then multicolored pinstripes faded in until the screen went completed white then faded to pinstripes again, then black and froze. I forced a restart again, this time the display was somewhat pixelated & it sent me to a Windows Error Recovery screen. I opted to try to launch the startup repair. It ran, restarted, and worked normally. Had no problems for the next couple of days.

Last night my system was running fine until I tried launching WoW. It froze my system at the login screen, all pixelated. I went thru the same motions as I had previously, got it working again. Launched WoW, got all the way to where I log in my toon and froze again. Screen went black, but I could hear the game sound still. Finally had to force it off again, and went thru all the same routine again (the stripes, pixelation, etc) only this time when I tried to repair it, it gave me the stripes again at restart. I forced it to restart again & eventually got a blue screen error that said I had a device stuck in an infinite loop. Tried restarting again, repeatedly, but kept having the same issues. Tried running the repair, but it kept failing at restart & finally failed to repair at all. I also tried doing a system restore to Dec. 5 which successfully restored but failed again at restart.

If I force it off & on enough times I'll finally get the Dell splash screen which gives me the option to F2 or F12 for boot or setup. I'm not sure what to do from there though. Should I choose one of them? I've also done the F8 trick to get something to happen...it beeps at me, then sends me to the repair or try to launch normally option. I'm thinking that I need to get into safemode to check my video drivers (my research keeps pointing to a possible corrupt drive that needs reinstallation) but I'm not sure how to accomplish that.

Any suggestions? For what it's worth, I snapped a pic of the infinite loop error just in case it had important info on it - thing is, I don't know what's important or not! lol.

[bretthexum]

Yikes, I can try to help. Send me a private message if you'd like. Many times the XP repair should fix these... makes me wonder if something failed in your video card.

[Martin]

i was thinking video card, too.

i'd be curious if it fails on any game that utilizes the 3d rendering capabilities of the video card... -M

[MsDarkstar]

I dunno. I'm pretty boring. I check email, okctalk, cakewrecks, peopleofwalmart, facebook and wowwiki, and play WoW. LOL that's about the extent of my computer activity. I've never had any trouble with the system til a few nights ago while in WoW. Got it fixed (so I thought) and it ran fine over the next few days (playing WoW) until last night when it went lame again. Now, I can't get past startup.

[Martin]

gotta ask... is it under warranty? -M

[MsDarkstar]

I wish It's just under 2yrs old.

[fuzzytoad]

was it an nv4_disp infinite loop?

does it have a GeForce 8400M GPU?

if so, that video gpu is probably shot and since it's integrated on the motherboard, you're outta luck.

There's something you can try though.

grab a can of air. remove the bottom panel of the laptop to expose the heatpipe and fan, look here if you don't know what I mean: Documentation

spray out that fan and anywhere else you might see dust. spray out all the other airslots you see on the laptop and put it back together.

Also, if you have the bad habit of letting windows decide which graphics driver is the best one, do this: Once you're back in windows go to nvidia. com and update your graphics driver. Windows-update Nvidia drivers are notorious for causing infinite loop crashes and other nv4 BSODs

[MsDarkstar]

I've attached pics of the various screens I've been getting. The blue screen shows the infinite loop one. Right now I'm at the third pic, not sure what option to choose. As far as the GeForce 8400M GPU goes...I have no idea.

[bretthexum]

yep, its the as nv4_disp infinite loop. We've had a few people on my tech forum look at this also. I'm really thinking the video card is hosed.

Plus - even better... it has the built-in Dell recovery partition so you can't even try a true windows repair.

[fuzzytoad]

yep, its the as nv4_disp infinite loop. We've had a few people on my tech forum look at this also. I'm really thinking the video card is hosed.

Plus - even better... it has the built-in Dell recovery partition so you can't even try a true windows repair.

Looked some more into this myself as well. Looks like a large number of people have had the video gpu die on that model XPS, which can't be fixed by anything short of a motherboard replacement.

I'd still try blowing out the chassis and heatpipe fan, and replacing the video driver though. I may not work and evidence online shows that it probably won't, but I've revived many "dead" laptops I've bought from Ebay with a screwdriver and a $4 can of compressed air.

[bretthexum]

Looked some more into this myself as well. Looks like a large number of people have had the video gpu die on that model XPS, which can't be fixed by anything short of a motherboard replacement.

I'd still try blowing out the chassis and heatpipe fan, and replacing the video driver though. I may not work and evidence online shows that it probably won't, but I've revived many "dead" laptops I've bought from Ebay with a screwdriver and a $4 can of compressed air.

Agree its worth a try. Had a comment on my forum to get rid of Vista, and reload with 7 lol...

[MsDarkstar]

Thanks for all the advice guys. After running about a million updates today I got my old laptop back in service enough to do some slooooooooow web surfing. I finally managed to get Windows to load, updated my video drivers & everything looked great...then it cratered on me & now I can't get past the pinstripes.

BUT! There's good news! Finally got to talk to the fiance about it (he's the one that gave me the laptop) and he said "Umm...baby...did you call Dell? This should all be covered under the warranty." I used my dad's computer to do a live chat with Dell support and they condemned my motherboard. Warranty is covering it, and they're sending out a tech to my house on Tues or Weds to replace the motherboard, the LCD screen & the keyboard (I figured while they're at it they can fix my sticky spacebar!).

[decepticobra]

I've got a Dell .

nope, cant help you. youve already messed up from the start.