R40 Video Display Issue

[bpopilek]

Me again! My cousin has a Thinkpad R40 notebook that is having display issues. I am hoping someone may have an idea on what is going on. The PC will boot up and work fine most times, but after a while it will start fragmenting the entire screen. I have noticed that if I wiggle the screen back and forth, it will sometimes fix it, other times, nothing seems to work. I figured it was probably just a bad LCD cable, but after playing with it this evening I am not so sure. I was able to do a screen capture while it was acting up and low and behold, the print screen showed the same issues, just not as bad as what I was seeing. Now I am wondering if it is only the cable or if the ATI GPU is failing. Could a faulty cable cause the display chip to mess up too? The other thing, is I was unable to get an external monitor to work on this notebook at all. I tried pressing FN+F3 & FN+F6, still no external display.

Here is the screenshot that I took a little bit ago.
img]http://home.comcast.net/~bpopilek/images/desktop.jpg[/img]

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[vlyne]

You're in luck bpopilek, the moderators must still be out celebrating!

It looks like your R40 is suffering the classic problem of the ATI graphics chip separating from the motherboard. Check out this thread to find a makeshift solution.
Cheers

[bpopilek]

Thank you very much for the link! It's hard to do a search on something like this when I call it fragmenting, and others call it garbled! I will try that trick this evening and see if it resolves the problem. I am assuming that the reason the display seems to change status when I move the screen is because the whole thing is flexing at the same time. Thanks again!

-Brian

[AgentSkelly]

I just fixed this problem 100% with the GPU Wedge trick. For the R40, you have to make the wedge thicker and make sure that the area around the the TrackPoint device is firm so that it applies enough force to the GPU to seal it in.

[vlyne]

In my case, I took off what looks like a GPU heat pad (held down by three screws) and inserted an aluminium square plate, the size of the "chip" and rebolted the heat pad. Seems to work OK so far. I don't really like the idea of post-it notes considering the pressure it places on the keyboard and because of the thermal issue.
Cheers

[AgentSkelly]

In my case, I took off what looks like a GPU heat pad (held down by three screws) and inserted an aluminium square plate, the size of the "chip" and rebolted the heat pad. Seems to work OK so far. I don't really like the idea of post-it notes considering the pressure it places on the keyboard and because of the thermal issue.
Cheers

I ended up using a pad of aluminum foil after a suggest from a guy who makes electronics prototypes for a living.