Portege Artifacts

Artifacts have taken over the screen of a Toshiba Portege S100 laptop



I just upgraded the RAM with a 1GB module, up from 512MB. Before the upgrade the system (XP pro) was incredibly slow but basically ok. After the upgrade, I turned it on, checked that 1.5GB memory was recognised under 'My Computer' properties; all seemed ok, then I turned it off.

About 5 minutes later the laptop is turned on again but this time there are strange artifacts distorting the screen as Windows loads and the login window looks very weird indeed. All text has vanished, and more artifacts.

Turned it off, removed the RAM, tried again. A few artefacts just as before.

Now, following a couple more restarts, the artefacts have taken over. When the computer is turned on, the 'Toshiba' logo comes up looking ok, then it's artifactmagedon.

While operating on this thing I had it on a wooden desk on a wooden floor, I removed the battery first and was generally careful to avoid static damage to the RAM or the innards of the poor Portege.

Halp! What's going on? Is this my fault or an awkward coincidence?

[Edit] Note - whoever set this computer up has made the BIOS inaccessible.

 

I'd really, really appreciate it if anyone has any ideas about what the reason for this might be, and what I could do about it! Bit of an embarassing situation

I'm confident the RAM is the right stuff and I installed it properly. I've even checked a manual PDF for the Portege S100 and found I'd followed the instructions for RAM instalation perfectly.

For now I'd settle for knowing which bit has gone wrong!

 

Greetings, Ijen.

Since this is presenting as a graphics issue, you might try reloading the GeForce Go 6200 indicated for your model.

What I'm afraid might have happened, however, is somehow your video got overclocked when you installed the new RAM - those artifacts are often indicative of excessive clock speed. It's going to be hard to verify that if the BIOS is inaccessible, though.

Do you have a discrete monitor available? If so, you could try plugging that in to verify that the problem is indeed with your video or with the laptop's display.

 

Cheers Caliban - I've just tried it with another monitor and yeah, the artifacts are the same.

So, reloading the GPU huh... well, as the BIOS is locked down I have a feeling I'll struggle here. Any tips on how to get round that?

I was wondering if I could flash the GeForce Go 6200 BIOS from a floppy drive... looking into that.

Just noticed a bunch of Youtube videos about baking GPUs in the oven at a high temperature for 10 mins. Is this for real? A last ditch kamikaze solution?

 

The BIOS thing was just me being dumb - apparently you just have to hold down esc. on a toshiba while it boots to access the BIOS. Can't see anything about clock speeds though...

Somehow after accessing the BIOS, I was able to boot into Safe Mode; no artifacts, no problem.

So, I downloaded Caliban's Go 6200 driver and display-20070906111617 from toshiba's own site. I've tried loading loading both but neither make a difference in normal mode.

I'm also worried about how hot it gets - after turning it on it rapidly gets very warm indeed.

Hrm. I've been looking for a BIOS tool and a BIOS image for this thing to see if I can set it back to default but I'm struggling here :cry

 

[Update]

In safe mode, in the device manager, I disabled the Geforce Go 6200 TE device.

There are still artifacts while the Windows logo is displayed but after the monitor refreshes, Windows boots into normal mode without artifacts.

For lack of better advice, I now plan to use Riva Tuner, or some such clock speed editing software, to see if I can set matters straight.

I'm making this up as I go along. Feel free to stop me exploding the universe.

 

Good morning.

Looks like you're on the right track. The fact that you can get Windows to load without the distortions is encouraging - pretty much indicates that this is not a hardware issue, so I'm glad I was wrong about that.

The temperature thing is troubling - I'd keep an eye on that.

 

I'm still working on the assumption that your original suggestion is correct, that the GPU became overlocked when I installed the new RAM. Events so far seem to support that theory.

The problem I'm finding now is that Riva Tuner, Powerstrip, NiBiTor.v6.01 won't function in Safe Mode and can't edit the GPU when it's disabled in normal mode.

So far I've been completely unable to locate a BIOS file for the Nvidia Geforce Go 6200 TE 64M / 6600 128M (device name in the device manager) and read the BIOS or save it from memory while the card is disabled. Of course, when it's enabled Windows won't load...

So, right now I'm stuck.

Perhaps it's time to put it in the oven like the good Youtube folk suggest :yum

 

Something I'd try (grasping at straws, here): power down, remove the new RAM, remove battery (all power sources), press the power button for several seconds (or any other method you might know of for clearing CMOS), replace the battery, power up and check symptoms.

Probably won't change things, but...

 

Well, I already updated the BIOS...

So, RivaTuner then.

There's GPU0\ \(Default Monitor)
I asume this is the motherboard's onboard backup video wosname currently in use.

Then there's GPU1 \ Unattached device - 64 bit nv43 (a4, 4pp, 3vp) with 64MB DDR

Hardware monitoring:
Core clock - 200.81MHz
Memory clock- 401.63MHz
Core VID - 0.0
Core temp - 81.16C and rising

$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Northbridge information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0400000000 Description : Intel Alviso
$0400000001 Vendor ID : 8086 (Intel)
$0400000002 Device ID : 2590
$0400000003 AGP bus : not supported
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : Unattached device
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0146
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : cf000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : b0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : ce000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : none
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : NV43 revision A4 (4pp,3vp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0146 (ROM strapped to 0146)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 64-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR (RAM configuration 01)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 65536KB
$0100000005 Core clock : 200.812MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 200.813MHz (401.625MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$010000000b HW masked units : pixel 01b, vertex 000b

Laptop gettin bloomin hot, turning it off again now.

I er... hrm. :cry