Stop Errors Caused by Driver or Hardware?

My Dell Precision M70 has an nVidia Quadro FX Go 1400 graphics card. I recently developed issues with the display — horizontal black and white lines after Windows Splash screen (XP), looping (display goes on and off and on again) and areas of the display once it stays on are FUBARed. This occurs if the computer has been turned off and left set and has occurred when it's been in standby for an extended period.

I've heard of components failing because of overheating, but after they've been allowed to cool down ( this doesn't occur if things are at "operating temperature")?

I've had two BSODs. I didn't get the first minidump because I re-installed Windows, drivers and apps after the first BSOD. This time I have the minidump attached and the Stop Error reads as follows:

STOP: 0x000000EA (0x89B08770, 0x89B059F8, 0xBA4EBCB4, 0x00000001) nv4_disp

Needless to say, the Microsoft Update site didn't have a driver update. A while back, I tried a driver update from nVidia itself and it didn't pass Windows Logo testing and blue screened my computer.

Can someone tell me EXACTLY what's going on with my graphics?

 

I guess I found my own answer. I installed debugging and the symbols and this is what it returned:

kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
* *
* Bugcheck Analysis *
* *
*******************************************************************************

THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER_M (100000ea)
The device driver is spinning in an infinite loop, most likely waiting for
hardware to become idle. This usually indicates problem with the hardware
itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly.
If the kernel debugger is connected and running when watchdog detects a
timeout condition then DbgBreakPoint() will be called instead of KeBugCheckEx()
and detailed message including bugcheck arguments will be printed to the
debugger. This way we can identify an offending thread, set breakpoints in it,
and hit go to return to the spinning code to debug it further. Because
KeBugCheckEx() is not called the .bugcheck directive will not return bugcheck
information in this case. The arguments are already printed out to the kernel
debugger. You can also retrieve them from a global variable via
"dd watchdog!g_WdBugCheckData l5" (use dq on NT64).
On MP machines it is possible to hit a timeout when the spinning thread is
interrupted by hardware interrupt and ISR or DPC routine is running at the time
of the bugcheck (this is because the timeout's work item can be delivered and
handled on the second CPU and the same time). If this is the case you will have
to look deeper at the offending thread's stack (e.g. using dds) to determine
spinning code which caused the timeout to occur.
Arguments:
Arg1: 89b08770, Pointer to a stuck thread object. Do .thread then kb on it to find
the hung location.
Arg2: 89b059f8, Pointer to a DEFERRED_WATCHDOG object.
Arg3: ba4ebcb4, Pointer to offending driver name.
Arg4: 00000001, Number of times "intercepted" bugcheck 0xEA was hit (see notes).

Debugging Details:
------------------

ERROR - could not read driver name for bugcheck parameter 3


FAULTING_THREAD: 89b08770

FAULTING_IP:
nv4_disp!drawableTrackingFree+dd
bf02f54d ?? ???

IMAGE_NAME: nv4_disp.dll

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 44224fe1

MODULE_NAME: nv4_disp

FAULTING_MODULE: bf012000 nv4_disp

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: GRAPHICS_DRIVER_FAULT

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1

BUGCHECK_STR: 0xEA

PROCESS_NAME: logonui.exe

LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from ba438a67 to 8054193f

STACK_TEXT:
b4baa95c ba438a67 ba4ebb94 00000000 00000000 nt!RtlpTraceDatabaseInternalFind+0x5e
b4baac50 804fdb17 ba4ebb40 b4baac9c b4baac90 watchdog!WatchdogKernelApc+0x13b
b4baaca0 80500dd4 00000000 00000000 00000000 nt!MmDeleteProcessAddressSpace+0xea
b4baace0 bf8781e9 00000000 00000000 00000000 nt!MiCopyHeaderIfResident+0x3f
b4baacfc bf02f54d 89d13a70 b4baad24 000000f0 win32k!BltLnkSrcCopyMsk32+0x160
b4baad20 ffffd8f0 ffffffff bf034d2f ba66a07e nv4_disp!drawableTrackingFree+0xdd
WARNING: Frame IP not in any known module. Following frames may be wrong.
b4baad2c ba66a07e 00008000 00000000 00000000 0xffffd8f0
b4baad30 00000000 00000000 00000000 e163d010 0xba66a07e


STACK_COMMAND: .thread 0xffffffff89b08770 ; kb

FOLLOWUP_IP:
nv4_disp!drawableTrackingFree+dd
bf02f54d ?? ???

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 5

SYMBOL_NAME: nv4_disp!drawableTrackingFree+dd

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: 0xEA_IMAGE_nv4_disp.dll_DATE_2006_03_23

BUCKET_ID: 0xEA_IMAGE_nv4_disp.dll_DATE_2006_03_23

While running Vista, (I'm running XP now) after coming out of sleep, a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark came up stating the display had successfully recovered from an error. Vista had installed it's own graphics driver which apparently is more stable than the original for XP.

At any rate, I'm looking at getting a replacement graphics card. I've already replaced the inverter board and video cable.