disabling videocard

I have a laptop with bad video ram. It boots in safe mode with no problem, but in normal mode the screen has lines and it gets worse as it warms up until it freezes or crashes. So I was wondering if I can disable the video card from the software side so I don't have to take the whole thing apart. It's running windows xp and is a Toshiba 5105. Any help would be wonderful, thank you.

 

if you disable the video card you wont beable to see what your doing lol unless you have a 2d video device IE a MXM card but if thats your only video your SOL you can have it sent someware and have the Mainboard Replaced

if you have more then one video device open the control panel goto system > hardware > device manger and it should list all display adapters disable the one thats not working correctly 'just don't disable your primary display

also are you sure is bad video ram and not overheating take a vac and suck all the crap out of the vents

edit most laptops share video ram with system ram so yo can try to replace the system ram and hope it fix's it

 

Well, looking again, I can't tell anymore. It boots into safe mode and locks up, but just having plugged in it feels hot on the side the battery is not on. I ran a vac over the vents ( which are on the side overheating ) but no luck. Its also giving me random pixels in safe mode now, so any other ideas?

 

Try firmly pushing down on the keyboard while booting if it goes away while you're pressing down on it and not when you release it then its probably a faulty graphics chip mainboard solder problem. AKA new motherboard, if it has a built in card. Toshibas always run warm, so its not really a problem.

 

Pressing on it didn't work. It has an nvidia card I think if that helps any, and booting in safe mode, while its loading drivers, some of the characters are garbled.Any other ideas?

 

It probably doesn't have a card at all, it probably has an onboard graphics chip. My thought would be to get a knoppix disk and boot to that, take the hard drive, windows OS and drivers right out of the equation. If it boots up in knoppix and you still have artifacts then you have a big problem. Also if the machine has more than one stick of ram remove it and try each stick individualy.

 

I tried to boot it off a live linux cd, but I need to change the bios boot order. I can't actually enter the bios. I hit esc and it gives me either directions or a question, but its garbled so I can't read it. Any idea on how to get into the bios?

 

Its garbled like you artifacts on the screen in bios?

 

meh I think your system is cooked you can try this its a bit extream take the whole laptop and toss it in the freezer for 15 min and see if it will boot lol

 

If you do that there is a chance that moisture in the air around the hard drive (platters) could freeze costing you that data, and a hard drive.

 

yes there is a Small chance but 15 min is not enough to frezz it to that point 5 min might do it as well and at this point there is not much else that can be done with out more info

 

What will freezing it get you, if it works he has to live in Alaska, if it doesn't he learns nothing, if he wrecks the drive he'll be out forty bucks or more, and all of the data. Changing the mobo or sending it out to be repaired are the final two options, or there is always the option of buying a new laptop. Ebay is full of people who work on laptop motherboards, you send out the piece they send you back another one.

 

the Low temp of the frezzer causes the air in and around the components to contract and for some unknown reasion in a Lot of Cases it seems to breath life into pc hardware

video cards Hard Drives even cpus I had this old drive that would not boot and I needed to ge the data off so i put it in the frezzer and it worked long enought for me to do a backup I chill my video card every 6 mon to keep it from crashing

I know it sounds a littel Strange but if your carfull and don't put it in there when it hot or after its been running it Should be fairly safe

in hard drives the cold causes the parts to shrink bringing them back into tolerance and hopefulling buying you time to get the data off

with video card the cold and causes the tranisters to work again by reduceing the resistance in the chip

I know all this sounds like a buch of webcrap but i have done it a buch of time with old video card ram chips hard drives and most of the time it helped

 

Is there any reason I cant remove the hard drive and then freeze the rest? And by garbled I mean it displays the wrong characters or symbols on boot so when I think its asking me to press n1 (not a typo) I'm not sure what it really says.

 

ITs goint to be F1, and no there is no reason you can't pull the drive and freeze the rest but I have no idea what subzero temperatures do to LCD the L meaning Liquid. With garbled characters in bios, its the chip or the motherboard, either way freezing it won't matter in the long run.

 

Pressing f1 only gets me into boot options for safe mode or safe with networking ect. So I think this laptop will go back to my friend with a "sorry, your sol" note. But thank you all very much for trying.