Gateway laptop video problems

pamt726

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Apr 27, 2010
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My laptop is only a year old, but recently I have been experiencing some very wierd video images after it's been on for a while. One day when it started, I got so ticked off that I hit it -- and it stopped. Can anyone put me on the right path to repairing it. I'm pretty good at taking stuff apart, so I thought I'd try. The screen gets horizontal lines in it that lighten to white. You can't see anything on the monitor while this is happening.
 
Solution
warning! your gateway is overheating have the dust removed from the fan emediate and the thermal greace changed now or lose it

its not your screen, its not ram, its not hard drive, its not cables but its the gpu the graphic card, do that and it will be fine again.

dextermat

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Sep 21, 2007
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Gateway laptop are very low end computers and are known to build overheating damage.

1- you can contact gateway to replace motherboard (for about 400$)
2- buy an Asus laptop instead they are way better
 

pamt726

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Well, I'd be an idiot to spend $400 to replace the motherboard -- but, thanks for the suggestion. I don't really like Gateways; nor am I too particular about Asus. Since, unfortunately, I have to have a windows-based laptop to run legacy software for research work, I will continue to back the stupid thing up each day and wait till it totally blows. From there, it goes into the garbage can. Maybe by then, the software I have to use will have a Mac version.
 

pamt726

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Hmmm. I haven't tried applying pressure to the back of the LCD, but I will the next time it happens. I smacked it -- okay, it was a light tap -- around the handrest of the keyboard. Each time it stops. I am leaning more toward a monitor issue than heat, but can't dismiss either yet. I'll post more info when/if it happens again and will pay more attention to the amount of time it takes to act up. Thanks.
 

pamt726

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It starts after about 10 minutes, and as soon as you touch any part of the laptop, including the back, it stops. Sometimes it starts right away again; other times it doesn't do it for hours. I don't know what you mean by GPU temps. Can you explain, please. Thanks.
 

frozenlead

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I mean do you know the temperature of your GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) under load and idle conditions?

If the lines disappear and reappear with changing torques and pressures in different areas, it's probably LCD damage due to bending. You can kind of fix it by setting shims behind the LCD in certain places, or you can just replace the LCD.
 

pcfixed

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Nov 13, 2008
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warning! your gateway is overheating have the dust removed from the fan emediate and the thermal greace changed now or lose it

its not your screen, its not ram, its not hard drive, its not cables but its the gpu the graphic card, do that and it will be fine again.
 
Solution

pamt726

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Apr 27, 2010
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Well -- thanks to all who gave info: It was software-related -- nothing more/nothing less. Not dust, screen, cables, ram, or the gpu. After talking to Gateway and running the bios, they indicated that if the problem did not occur while the screen was showing the bios info, it was not hardware related. It didn't happen. I went through and removed software that I had installed prior to the problem, and it hasn't done it for over a week now.

To pcfix: I don't know if the software removal was coincidentally connected to removing dust from the fan, but I'm not complaining. Your fix would have been the closest to any other possibility, and I appreciate the suggestion.