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HP dv8000t laptop problem - bad video card?

D

dealmaster00

Golden Member
System specs:
Core duo 2.0 GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Geforce Go 7600, 80GB HD, Windows XP

So...a couple of weeks ago my laptop would just spontaneously start rebooting about 5-10 minutes in to the system start. About half the time it would blue screen, the other half it would just restart without warning. I checked the minidumps left by some of the blue screens and they all pretty much pointed to nv4_mini.sys. Anyway...I ran chkdsk and let Memtest86+ run overnight for 2 nights and neither found any issues. The strange thing is that I have never had these reboots in Safe Mode (which I was in pretty often as I needed to finish up some schoolwork). Anyway, I ended up reformatting yesterday hoping that would help. Unfortunately, it didn't. As soon as I tried to install the video card drivers...BAM, restart. It took four or five tries until they installed but I still can't get into normal mode (yay safemode 😛). I should note that I have done this exact procedure of reformatting and installing drivers before, about a year ago when I first got the laptop (to clean off crapware), and everything went fine. Now, even starting from a clean slate, it's rebooting. I'm almost thinking that there is something wrong with my video card or something else related to it (power to video card?). So I called HP and I can pay $120 to extend my warranty so they can fix it. Do you guys think this is a good plan of attack? Anything else I could do before then?
 
A couple of questions first.

1. Do you have Windows Updates (auto) enabled?
2. Have you updated any drivers as of late?
3. What BIOS version are you using?
 
Yeah, I have Windows update auto enabled. I checked to see when the last update was installed and it was 08/30/07, ~ 3 weeks before the problem surfaced. The only recent thing I had installed was Matlab, but I have since reformatted and I'm getting the same problem without it. I'm using Bios version F.15...which was always stable for me.
 
OK, I just noticed something else. The reboots aren't always random. A lot of times, my computer will reboot just before getting to the login screen in Windows. I tried loading Windows in VGA mode and that seems to work OK, but as soon as I try to change the resolution, BAM, restart. I realized that when the screen powers off and tries to power back on for a resolution change (like in VGA mode and also right before getting to the login screen in normal mode), it fails, and a restart occurs. Well, I'm not sure what exactly fails but something does. What do you guys think? Could the video card the culprit?

Also...sometimes the resolution change does work, but a lot of the time it doesnt. In VGA mode and normal mode I still get random reboots but not so in safe mode.

FINAL EDIT: It was a defective video card. Sent back to HP and they repaired it and sent it back.
 
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