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..>.<

 

[Matt1990]

I was told only a 260 or 280 MXM 2.1 would work though

 

[pacioli]

the FX 3700M is the professional/enterprise GFX card version of the 280M. You can flash the bios of the 3700M to turn it into a gtx 280M.

New they run $1500+

on ebay... $200-$250

 

[Matt1990]

There's different ones. How can I be sure before buying which are compatible

 

[pacioli]

Get the one that say MXM 2.1

 

[Matt1990]

Well on eBay searching FX 3700M MXM 2.1 yields results for over $1,600.00..... A bit out of my price range

 

[pacioli]

just search FX 3700 there are some for less that are $200-$250

 

[dormantreign]

I'm not sure if you should be fixing the issue. You can get a replacement laptop new for 500-800$. What you could do is part the laptop off on ebay to get some money back to put towards the new one. It is almost 3 years old and the prices of more powerful laptops haven fallen to the point where as i said, don't bother to fix it.

 

[Matt1990]

Any rough estimates of how much I could get for this laptop if it was parted out or sold together for someone else to part out?

Edit: Is that Michio Kaku As your avatar, dormantreign? I'm on a phone it's a little hard to see

 

[pacioli]

Used laptops resale value sucks... I'd guess $100 to $200 tops for a broken lappy. A decent new laptop with a distinct graphics card like a 540M or 630M is going to cost > $750.

 

[Matt1990]

The next computer I'm getting will be a desktop anyway...hmm... I would have thought I could get at least 300 out of it

 

[Matt1990]

Best answer selected by Matt1990.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Unfortunately laptops are kind of disposable these days considering you can get a new basic laptop for 300.