Video hardware issue with Z60m…Help

[crazyz60m]

Hello All,
I have a Z60m that I have owned for a little over a year. My problem is my ATI X600 128M PCIe internal video device. Since I have owned I has locked up every month or so but now it’s doing it all of the time. When booting it shows a light random dot Pattern on the boot up screens and finally a very fine dot pattern on the screen, everything works for a while then it locks up and goes to the BLUE screen and reboots, then tells me I have recovered from a serious error, I go into the detail section and it points to the video card driver or hardware. The only way I can get it to stabilize is to go into the hardware manager and disable the ATI device, it works but the screen resolution is very bad.

Does anyone know if the ATI video card/device is removable or is it soldered to the motherboard? If it is the motherboard I doubt it is worth the 500 dollars or so.

Any help is genuinely appreciated. I really hate to scrap the Thinkpad.

Thanks,
Larry

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

The video card is soldered to the motherboard and there is no removing it.

If you have any warranty left, you should return the unit to Lenovo.

If not, you'll be looking for a mobo repair or replacement.

Good luck.

[crazyz60m]

Thanks for your feedback, it is the news I expected//feared. It is sad to recycle a computer that is otherwise perfect. I opened the top of the computer today and couldn’t locate a removable video card/chip. Oh well…

Thanks
Larry

[ajkula66]

What's the exact 7-character code of your machine?

If your laptop is out of warranty, you may want to contact forum member jamiphar who offers motherboard repair amongst other services. I've had work done by him and was very pleased with the results this far.

Good luck.

[makaveli559m]

I upgraded my RAM from 1.5 to 2.0 GIGs and now my video card went down from 256MB to 224 I was wondering if there is a fix because I remember reading something like that here.
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Thinkpad Z61 M 1.67ghz Centrino Duo 2.0 GB RAM 80 GB HD, Vista Business SP1