HP dv6 230m Failing?

I have an HP dv6 laptop with an nVidia Geforce GT 230m graphics card. The laptop is out of warranty and I'm afraid the card is failing. When I boot the laptop, I get a blank screen after the windows logo.

Before, I thought it was due to a bad driver. I rolled back to 280.26 and this fixed the issue for awhile, but sometimes my framerate would plummet. New drivers came out and I thought I would give them a try. Now both the new and older driver result in a blank screen.

Is the card failing or is it some other issue? If it is failing, can I buy a replacement card somewhere? I haven't been able to find mobile cards very easily. I've attached my dxdiag.

Thanks!

 

First step: Hook an external monitor to the PC and start it up. If the external display works fine, it eliminates the internal video as the issue and focuses the problem on the notebook's LCD display.

If the video problem repeats on the external monitor, you're looking at either a replacement motherboard or (if you can find a local tech with the experience to do it right) removal and replacement of the GPU card via soldering. If a tech does the work, you are likely looking at a minimum of $200 for motherboard replacement. If you go this route, be sure you get a minimum 60-90 day written warranty on the parts and labor..

 

Plugging in an external monitor doesn't alleviate the issue. I was able to install the latest drivers and get my monitor working by using this trick online:

1. unplug battery and power supply
2. hold down power button for 1 minute.
3. plug in PS, turn on.

If this ends up being only temporary then I'll have to look into getting the card replaced by a pro. Thanks.

 

It sounds like a driver issue to me. The Windows logo comes up before drivers are loaded. You have both output from your graphics card/chip and display on your monitor. Then the drivers are loaded and everything goes blank.

Have you tried safe mode (F8) at start up during the HP screen? If safe mode loads then it is pretty much a driver problem. I don't think I have ever heard of a card going bad such that it can't reproduce certain resolutions but runs fine at lower resolutions.

Which driver are you using (provide link) please.

 

Yes it boots to safe mode just fine.

The driver currently loaded is this one: http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-winvista-64bit-280.26-whql-driver.html

At this point the laptop will not boot into normal mode as of last night with drivers installed. If I uninstall the drivers everything works fine. I've been trying to find an older driver that may alleviate the problem but so far I've come up blank.

 

A couple of things to try:

Go back to HP site and get their last one from 2007 http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...dlc=en&lc=en&os=2093&product=1842155&sw_lang= It will probably run fine.

Go to Nvidiaa and select an older WHQL version http://www.nvidia.com/object/nv_sea...ID:11;NB:1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&gl=us&q=GT+230M#913 Maybe choose the 196 or one of the 260-266 versions. Just keep it below the 280 version.

 

Downloading the drivers from the HP website is working so far, thanks!

 

One other thought is Nvidia Control Panel available in safe mode? I wonder if it retains resolution settings between driver versions and could be keeping a setting even though you change drivers?

Before installing a new driver check Control Panel?Programs and features and make sure there are no left over Nvidia applications. If there uninstall them before installing a new driver. I'm fairly sure the Nvidia installer deeltes old versions but it can't hurt to double check.

Edit: Good enough!

 

Just thought I might add that these models had a video problem, and following Sach2 with this is showing that this time it could well be the driver/.
If, however,after going as far as you can with the downating of drivers,you find one day that it will not give a picture, press down on the laptop on the right side of the keyboard, and see if it will show a picture o.k ,.
This can sometimes put pressure on the graphics chip, and get it running a picture. This was caused by weak soldering to the graphics card, and if you look around, say on U-tube, you will see a lot of people who have tried solving this- some worked, but really, if the picture refuses to show at some time it is a specialist job to re-flow the solder to the graphics chip/motherboard.Good luck