In desperate need of quick advice

[Matt1990]

Specs:

nVidia GTX 260M
2.53Ghz Dual Core
4GB DDR3
320GB 7200 RPM Hd

This laptop is roughly 2.8 years old.

Here is my current situation.

I have a Sager NP 8662. It has been in and out of a local repair shop 4 times in the past 2.5 months. The problem is, when I turn the laptop on I immediately get a gray screen. This gray screen gradually gets lighter to almost fully white. I'm not sure what the repair shop was doing but they were only able to fix it for 2-3 weeks at a time. I eventually got a refund because they couldn't fix it. Today after getting my laptop back I turned it on and left it at the gray screen for over an hour and it eventually booted to the login screen. After it booted there was a windows message saying the computer had recovered from a blue screen. After watching about 30 seconds of a video it started to freeze up at which time I had to hold the power button to turn it off. Every time it had broke the past 4 times it was either while watching a video or playing a game. I can still hear the hard drive start up when the laptop starts up and I believe they also checked for faulty RAM so I don't think either of those are the problem. I have also tried hooking it up to an external monitor and that didnt work so I know my display is not to blame. My questions to you guys are:

1) What was the shop doing it to repair it for only 2-3 weeks at a time
2) What part is most likely to blame for the problem
3) How can I fix it?

I would consider myself somewhat knowledgable with disassembling my laptop so any advice or tips you guys have I would greatly appreciate it. Hopefully I can fix it myself as I don't want to spend another couple hundred at a repair shop. If I can't fix it myself I guess I'll have to take it back in tomorrow. It's just my luck my computer craps out the night before Diablo III..>.<

 

[erunion]

Sounds like a bad gpu

 

[Matt1990]

The bad thing is if it is the Gpu I don't think they make them anymore... At least I couldn't find it for sale on Amazon, newegg, or tigerdirect. How can I tell for sure that it's the Gpu and not the mobo?

 

[erunion]

Best way I know of would be to swap in a different video card...though that doesn't help much.

Does the grey screen occur before post(the beep) or after post but before windows loads?

 

[Matt1990]

Ermm.. I hit power. There is 2 seconds of black screen then immediately the gray screen. That's all I see.

 

[Matt1990]

Anyone else have any idea of what the problem is?

 

[Maziar]

Sounds like a defective GPU to me.Try searching for your card in ebay.That's the only place you may find it

 

[Matt1990]

There aren't any on eBay the past few days/weeks

 

[djscribbles]

I third the above. It's likely the GPU is overheating, if the local repair shop can't fix it anymore, and the laptop mfg is gone (?) then you're out of luck. I've repaired an HP laptop with this issue before, the repair lasted about 2 months, and it quit again. For my fix, I had to dissassemble the laptop and melt the solder under the GPU without frying the components or having other parts fall off; we have a tool at work designed for doing exactly this, however people do it with HW store heatguns/etc.

You can try looking online to see if you can find a replacement motherboard (GPU is soldered to the mobo probably), if you can't find a replacement mobo I wouldn't bother with fixing it again, it's probably never going to fix it permanently, you'll just be patching it up each time it goes down again. If you do fix it though, don't game on it ever, because it can't handle the heat.

I would recommend you disassemble the thing and sell the parts on ebay (the LCD, the processor, the ram, the chassis, keyboard, hard drive, cd drive, etc) with some luck you can make a decent amount to put towards a new laptop. (Don't sell the motherboard, as it's defective, other parts though should be fine, but you should probably include a disclaimer).

Alternatively, you can simply list the thing on ebay as broken (bad motherboard/GPU), you'll get a bit less money for less work. People can use these things for parts for themselves or just to part it out individually to make a small profit.

Don't feel too bad, even name-brands have these issues (I think it tends to be nvidia chips, but they may have cleaned up their act too), and they usually cost quite a lot to repair when they overheat and die if they are out of warranty.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

I also say GPU. Best thing is just put it online as a parts machine. Get a hard drive enclosure to put the old drive in so you have your data. Unfortunately nvidia chipsets were notorious for the heat problems. I have an acer laptop that also had heat issues but I actually bent the heatpipe, on purpose though, after removing the thermal pad in order to get the heatsink to make direct contact to the gpu. That along with new thermal paste dropped my gpu temps from 90 degrees celcius and above into the 60's. If it comes up again you may try that as a last ditch effort to save your laptop.

 

[Matt1990]

I was always vigilant about keeping dust out of my laptop and I replaced
thermal paste every 4-5 months or so. I always used my laptop with a cooler master storm cooler underneath it with 2 120mm fans running mid-high as well as a ceiling fan. The temperature in the room where I use it is always below 75 so im not quite sure how it could have overheated so easily...

 

[eggbrook]

Hardware failure sometimes just happens despite your best efforts. I have to throw my cards in with GPU failure.

 

[Matt1990]

Oh and it's not soldered to the motherboard. If I unscrew 2 screws I can lift it up then slide it out at an angle.

 

[pacioli]

Here is one on ebay... http/www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Alienware-M15x-M17x-GTX-260M-1GB-Video-Card-WDXVH-G92-751-B1-/251062234242?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3a7479ac82
$140
You can also upgrade it...
http/www.ebay.com/itm/New-Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-560M-1-5G-GDDR5-Video-Card-N12E-/110808839886?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item19ccb8b6ce
$200 for a GTX 560M or
http/www.ebay.com/itm/New-Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-560M-1-5G-GDDR5-MXM-3-0-Video-Card-N12E-gs-a1-/260973209446?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3cc3372766
$200 for a GTX 560M
http/www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Alienware-M17x-M18x-nVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-580M-2GB-DDR5-Video-Card-3MF8R-/251064084714?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3a7495e8ea
$450 for a GTX 580M

 

[Matt1990]

I think the only other option I have is gtx 280m and I can only use the MXM 2.1? Not the 3.0 ... I believe

 

[pacioli]

Then get a 260M/280M to replace it... or get a new lappy

 

[Matt1990]

I haven't been able to find a 260 or 280 they are all the 3.0 ones

 

[pacioli]

http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module
Here it says your gtx 260M is non-standard at MXM 2.1...

This should work...
http/www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD4670-1GB-DDR2-MXM-2-1A-VGA-Module-/120840940675?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item1c22ae6c83
$225 Radeon 4670

Here is the search for MXM 2.1
http/www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=MXM+2.1&_sacat=0&_odkw=Radeon+MXM+2.1&_osacat=0
8 hits..

 

[Matt1990]

So what's that mean for me... I'm screwed? Lol >.<

 

[pacioli]

So what's that mean for me... I'm screwed? Lol >.<

It just means it is rare...
the
NVidia FX 3700M should work too
http/www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-FX-3700m-1GB-MXM-Video-Card-for-HP-8730w-and-Lenovo-W700-/300710934323?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4603c4b733
That is like a GTX 280M