T43p - Dying monitor and/or ATI FireGL Card?

[marc_s]

Hello all,

Upon booting my laptop this morning I noticed that the black IBM splash screen had fragmented vertical green lines (actually more of a series of green boxes arranged into lines) running down it and that the lines remained on the screen as the black Windows XP startup screen proceeded to load. Before I was greeted with the blue login screen, however, I got a BSOD with an ati2dvag "the device driver got stuck in an infinite loop" error message. To restart I had to power off via the power button, but I continued getting the BSOD upon restarting.

I started Windows in safe mode and uninstalled the ATI driver. Upon restarting, I could now log into standard Windows without getting any BSOD, however the blue and green lines remain (screenshot):


I'm now using the default Windows display driver - I tried reinstalling both the same ATI driver I previously had and installing the most recent one as well, and, even though the drivers appear to install successfully, I once again get the BSOD when the computer restarts and attempts to use the ATI driver.

So what I want to know is what exactly might be failing - is it the LCD screen, the video card, a cable connecting the two, etc.? My laptop is a Thinkpad T43p with an ATI FireGL V3200. I suspect it might be the video card at fault but I'm not sure - I've used the laptop for more than 5 years of very intensive 3D modeling, CAD, and graphics work and in the past year or so I've been noticing more quirks and errors that seem to be graphics related - 3D modeling programs crashing more frequently when handling complicated and polygon-heavy meshes, AutoCAD responding very slowly to complex line drawings, freezing and temporary hangups in 3D/graphics programs, occasional screen garblings when opening and playing movies and games, etc. The problems were still rare enough that I brushed them aside, but now I'm wondering if they're all related to the video card. But isn't a FireGL supposed to be designed to handle graphics-intensive applications?

In the end would it be more cost-effective to get a new Thinkpad (I still need a laptop to do intensive 3D modeling work and the prospect of getting a new laptop with a better graphics card and more memory is enticing) or would it be cheaper to replace the motherboard (I don't think I can replace just the GPU chip), LCD, and or cables on this one?

[Harryc]

Plug in an external LCD, does it fail there as well? If yes, you have a GPU problem.

[marc_s]

Plug in an external LCD, does it fail there as well? If yes, you have a GPU problem.

That's the first thing I thought of doing, but with the default Windows driver I don't have the option of using an external monitor:


Fn+F7 also doesn't work without a video driver. And of course I can't install the ATI driver to try plugging in an external monitor because I then wouldn't even be able to log in to Windows - I'd get a BSOD.

[Harryc]

Try booting up a Live Linux CD with the external monitor

[ajkula66]

Your GPU is on its last leg, I'm sorry to say.

I've seen this type of behaviour, and it's not the LCD that is going out.

[marc_s]

Try booting up a Live Linux CD with the external monitor

Doh! I should have thought of that earlier. I just booted Knoppix Live and connected to an external LCD... and the same distortion appeared on the external monitor.

I guess ajkula is right... it's the graphics card that is dying. Any guess as to how much longer the GPU will keep running? (It's disappointing that it only lasted ~5 years)

[Harryc]

Any guess as to how much longer the GPU will keep running? (It's disappointing that it only lasted ~5 years)

Hard to say, but it's use is pretty limited as is no?