Hi, I'm a new poster here, I have had some trouble with (i think) my graphics card on a pretty new dell m1330 laptop. A couple days ago i was playing an old game, it froze and the graphics spazzed out, the comp froze and shut down. On restarting it, i couldn't even get the boot sequence to display, only black with coloured vertical lines. Switched off and restarted a couple times, same deal. Tried shortcut key for diagnostic boot, diagnostics displayed perfectly, ran through with no probs, and the comp worked fine for a couple hours, then went black again. Now, sometimes it starts fine, sometimes it only shows vertical lines, but it won't stay on more than a few hours. the card is NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS. Do I need a new card, or is it a different problem? Thanks
Welcome to HWF Because you're having problems with viewing the boot sequence, that indicates that it's not caused by a malfunctioning graphics driver. This indicates that the card is indeed damaged somehow? Do you have a spare graphics card that is known to work correctly?
I don't have a spare graphics card to test it with unfortunately. I asked some techies and they seemed to think it could also be a monitor problem? but since I can't get into the computer I'm not sure how I can set up an external monitor?
