Graphics corruption on Acer Laptop

Hi

This is my grandfather's computer and he's had it for a little under a year so we've still got warranty.

Acer Aspire 4810TZ-4011 Timeline 14.0-Inch Laptop

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0029U151M/ref=wms_ohs_product

It seems that it malfunctions like this when coming from standby. These graphic malfunctions are really uncommon but still obviously a cause for concern. I took two videos, one using camstudio, and one with my phone. Strangely Camstudio actually captured some of the graphics corruption. What can this be?

VIDEOS

Video captured by phone Pardon the noise

As captured by Camstudio

I was taking both videos at the same time

 

Greetings, LeoBloom.

If you've got a discrete monitor handy, you might try plugging it in (most portables have a VGA connector), see if your symptoms change.

You might also try uninstalling/reinstalling your chipset drivers - I'd give you a direct link, but since I don't know what operating system you're running, I'll have to point you to this page (there are no dedicated video drivers shown, so I'd guess that the video is included with the chipset software).

From those videos, however, I'm leaning towards display degradation.

 

Thank you for your reply Caliban,

My grandfather normally hooks it up to his HDTV with HDMI. I think he's also mentioned that sometimes it happens after unplugging the HDMI cable from the computer. It happens uncommonly enough that I don't know if we'll make it in time to test it before the warranty runs out, so I've got two questions

1. If there were display degradation, why would that affect what camstudio recorded internally?

2. How would it be best to show this problem to Acer when I send it out to warranty? Obviously, its not something they would necessarily encounter. I was simply thinking of sending them screen shots of those videos along with computer.

 

You're right about the degradation - didn't realize he was using a discrete monitor.

Yes, I'd ship it back to Acer, with full explanations of the problems. Don't know how you would send the videos, other than attachments to e-mails - if Acer were to give you a service order or RMA #, you might be able to reference that number in any correspondence, try to catch their attention. Or, as you have the videos on tinypc, link Acer to the videos via e-mail. Or, burn the videos to disk?

Interesting problem - good luck, and keep us posted.

 

Caliban, Acer told me to update my VGA driver and see if that fixes the problem. You've recommended to update the chipset drivers. I will do both but can you give me a quick explanation on what the chipset does and what it would have to do with the my issue?

Thanks

 

A good 'chipset' blurb can be found at Wikipedia - you can see that the north- and southbridges are the interfaces for everything.

I'm a firm believer in the GIGO law: garbage in, garbage out. In your case, if the possibility exists that your graphics software could be corrupted, then it is also possible that your northbridge software could be corrupted, giving the symptoms of a graphics problem. This is especially true with onboard graphics - I can see how a dedicated graphics port might somewhat circumvent the northbridge.

I may be out in right field on this, but usually if I suspect graphics drivers, I reload both video and chipset software.

 

Ok, only one thing. I have Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family, specifically Intel Graphics Media accelerator 4500MHD. It seems that only one driver takes care of the chipset and the graphics because it has some sort of built in graphics accelerator? If someone can just confirm that this is the case?

 

The combination of drivers is quite common, especially with portables - saves time and money.

 

Okay, well, that's updated then. Strange though, seeing that the Acer website has drivers for VGA and Chipset as separate, although quite outdated. Thanks a bunch for your help Caliban, I have a 90 day warranty period now to see if it starts flickering like that again.

 

Good luck, and keep us posted. :major